Books of English word frequencies have in the past suffered from severe limitations of sample size and breadth. They have also tended to be restricted to word forms alone. Most importantly, almost all have dealt only with written language. This book overcomes these limitations. It is derived from the British National Corpus - a 100,000,000 word electronic databank sampled from the whole range of present-day English, spoken and written - and makes use of the grammatical information that has been added to each word in the corpus.

About the Author

Geoffrey Leech collaborated in the compilation of the British National Corpus 1991-95 and is a member of the current British National Corpus Committee. A senior figure in the field of linguistics and the English language he has authored, co-authored and co-edited more than 20 books on linguistics and the English language.

Paul Rayson is a research fellow in the Department of Computing, Lancaster University and has written several articles on corpus linguistics.

Andrew Wilson teaches computer corpus linguistics, in the Department of Lingustics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University and has written widely in the area of corpus linguistics.

Reviews

'For corpus linguists, this book is of paramount importance for analysing and establishing the saliency of lexical items with a comparative corpus, such as journalistic or scientific English.'

Lexicos 15, Afrilex Series 15: 2005

Book Information
ISBN 9780582320079
Author Geoffrey Leech
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 489g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 155mm * 17mm