Many of us at some time have probably looked at a dictionary and wondered, 'how many words are in there and how many do I know?' With new words being coined all the time and old words slipping out of use, it's impossible to know for sure how many words are in our language. No dictionary contains all the words. Estimates vary but they range, for English, from about half a million to about a million words. That million, though, includes about half a million highly technical/scientific words seldom found in standard dictionaries.
A good standard dictionary that serves us extremely well will likely contain less than 10 per cent of all English words and less than 20 per cent of all non-scientific words. My 'Concise Oxford' boasts 1,696 pages and '140,000 meanings.' I assume this indicates the actual number of words is perhaps only about 60,000 or fewer since many have two or more meanings. We can be sure the Oxford people chose that word 'meanings' carefully rather than using 'words defined.' Making such distinctions is their job!
How many?
How many words a person knows, of course, varies by individual, but a good estimate can be made. Studies show on average it is about 50,000 words actively (we use them and don't have to think too hard to do so), and about another 12,500 passively (we don't use them, but know them when we hear them): a total of about 62,500 words. Is it coincidence this is roughly the same number a good store-bought dictionary contains?
Adult English-speakers, studies show, on average speak about 15,000 words a day and about 370 million in a lifetime (this includes many repeats, each use being 'a word'). And we all know someone who's trying to increase the average, don't we!
Where from?
Where do words come from? Beyond the obvious (many somebodies invented them), the answer of how it works is being vigorously researched. Recent columns here have outlined several scientific efforts under way to get to the real roots of language. Many linguists now believe that once speech arises in some incipient form, language itself evolves via a process that seems to occur 'naturally.'
Professor Simon Kirby, chair of language evolution at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, is doing intriguing research with fascinating results. It doesn't 'prove' anything yet, but it gives us good glimpses into how it probably works, subject to more research.
Indications
Professor Kirby designed an experiment he can do in an afternoon. He invented an 'alien language' consisting of a series of made-up words for 'alien fruit.' Nothing more. It isn't really a language, just a random batch of invented names for a batch of fictional fruit. A subject is shown fanciful drawings of the non-existent fruit and must learn the names of each. Then they are tested. Because it is at first random words with no connections between them, the subjects do poorly.
But Prof. Kirby is sneaky. During the test he introduces a picture of a new alien fruit the subject hasn't seen before. They have no word for it. Most subjects don't even notice! They simply make up a word for it that seems consistent with the 'alien' words they did learn (trying to recall the word they think they must surely have been given).
Next, the word or words the first subject unknowingly invents are included in the words taught to the second subject, and so on. Each subject believes they are simply giving back the words they learned, but in fact with each person the incipient language is changing over time, little by little. And over time the 'language' not only grows, but converts itself from a random, chaotic language to one with an identifiable structure with combinations that can be more easily learned! After a mere nine 'generations' many of the words can be broken into parts, each with a different meaning; parts that can be recombined for new meanings.
"This happens gradually, it happens without anyone knowing and yet it is the exact feature of language that makes it unique, makes language different from everything else in nature," says Prof. Kirby.
Conclusions
This suggests strongly that nobody designed English or other languages; nobody began with any established rules, rather these evolved. Second, the research gives a glimpse of how language changes over time. It suggests that language itself is a living entity with a life of its own. Prof. Kirby says this is one thing that makes it so fascinating, but also so difficult to pin down. It's a complex process.
The last word
Here is Professor Simon Kirby on what he takes from his own research:
"No one designed English, no one sat down and said it would be useful if it had relative clauses or grammar, it just happens, happens by this blind, unconscious process of transmission."
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