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Word Collecting Introduction This chapter deals with collecting words: knowing what a word is, what it goes with an d wh y the y ca n b e difficul t t o learn . I t als o look s a t word frequenc y lists and which words are most useful t o teach . What Is a Word? A word can be described a s the smallest unit of speech tha t has meaning an d can stan d alone . I n it s written form , a word i s separated fro m anothe r wor d by a space. We could also say that a word consists of one or more morphemes, or units of meaning. Are book and books one word or two? We'd probably coun t them as one word, because if we know the meaning of book and tha t 'boo k + s' is the plura l form , w e know th e meanin g i s more than one book. Books has tw o morphemes, 'book ' an d ' + s' which give s it the plural meaning. Unhelpful has three morphemes : un/help/ful, wit h help being th e root , o r main part . We can clearly see that book, sit and bank are thre e words, or lexical units, but ca n we consider sit, sits and sitting as knowing one word o r thre e words ? In 'Please take a seat' and 'Phase be seated', are seat and seated considered a s two different word s or different form s o f the same word? Most researchers woul d count them a s different form s o f the same word, as they share th e same basic root seat. There appears to be a close connection between these words to the exten t that even elementary level learners of English would be able to recognise tha t they ar e base d o n th e sam e roo t an d s o we would conside r the m a s part o f the same word family. Can we consider bank as in the Hang Seng Bank and a river bank as one wor d o r tw o different words ? Her e th e spellin g an d soun d 8฀HARS H฀WORDS !฀ENGLIS H฀WORD S฀FO R฀CHINES E฀LEARNER S฀ are th e sam e bu t th e meaning s ar e clearl y different. No w we have on e wor d form bu t tw o meanings an d w e would coun t thes e a s two words, just a s the y would b e give n tw o separate entrie s i n a dictionary . Words ca n als o b e classifie d b y their rol e i n a sentenc e an d s o we hav e different part s o f speech o r word classes. These are : Nouns Adjectives Verbs Adverbs Pronouns Prepositions Conjunctions Determiners table, chair, honest y green, bright, ol d sit, eat, thin k quietiy, fast, smoothl y he, she , the m to, from, fo r and, but, so a, an, th e The first four nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are content words and the y give u s th e basi c meanin g o f a sentenc e an d ar e ofte n use d i n newspape r headlines, advertisements an d notes : Russian nuclear sub sinks. The remainin g four pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners are known a s functio n word s an d carr y grammatica l features . Fortunatel y fo r English languag e learner s ther e i s a fairly limite d se t o f abou t 300 functio n words an d the y hav e remaine d unchange d fo r a very lon g time . Example s include 7 , no, someone, first,such,others, once, now, and, until, enough and few. Content words, however, ten d t o increase with new words and meaning s being added t o dictionaries ever y year. Words whose meanings hav e change d or take n o n additiona l meaning s i n th e pas t fifty years includ e gay, (merry , homosexual) and file (box or holder for papers, computer information store d on a disk). New words recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary include cyberspace, rave, and grunge. A lemma consists...

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