The most frequently used words of spoken English

Abstract

In 1963 a method was published for the analysis of word frequencies in spontaneous (story-telling) spoken language. The immediate purpose was to provide a means for computer analysis of part-of-speech usage in a study of linguistically impaired aphasic patients. A dictionary of most frequently used words in response to a 20-card administration of the Thematic Apperception Test based on the verbal output of 12 subjects was compiled. The present paper is a revision of the dictionary based on 54 adults. An alphabetical listing of the words in the new directory with part-of-speech identification of each word is included.