Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright guide us through the top
20 words in English. Not the best or most popular (that would include
tentacular, ping-pong and sesquipedalian (look it up - it's a cracker). Plus a lot
of swearing. No this is the 20 most commonly used. It's actually quite a boring
list - full of 'And', 'I', 'of' etc - but look a little closer and it tells you
all about the structure of language. The little words you really can't do
without that glue all the other ones together.
-No nouns, very few verbs.
-Top 5; the, be, to, of, and
-Top 5; the, be, to, of, and
-And is said and comes out as 'n'
-These are the very frequent items that we use, that are entrenched in our brains -you process them faster; don't realise they are happening - they hold our language together.
-Nouns and verbs - content words (words with meanings)
-Grammatical words - 't' 've' 'n' 'that' 'which 'when' (words that hold our language together)- without these grammatical words, there would be no sentences; nothing would make sense
-Grammatical words - 't' 've' 'n' 'that' 'which 'when' (words that hold our language together)- without these grammatical words, there would be no sentences; nothing would make sense
-Google; won't search grammatical words .e.g. 'language and literature' - wouldn't search 'and'
-Context changes meanings
-Pharrel Williams - Happy; sounds weird without grammatical words and only content words (they make sentences make sense)
-50% of our words are nouns, 21% verbs, 15% adjectives
-Top 20 - exclusively old English (anglo saxons)
-Blogs - informal - speech-like; 'internet-talk'
-Pop song lyrics - items that come up frequency; top ten - 'i' 'me' 'my' - unlike spoken and written language - very ego-centric - 'love' 'make' 'baby' 'sad' 'alone' 'rain'
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