[Corpora-List] Word frequency question

From: rc2252@columbia.edu
Date: Tue Oct 18 2005 - 22:19:54 MET DST

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    Hi,

    I work for Dr. Jennifer Manly at the Sergievsky Center at Columbia
    University. I am writing to get some expert guidance. We are doing
    a study where we are trying to match two word list tests (to test
    for literacy), one that is in Spanish, Word Association Test (WAT),
    and one that is in English, Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), so
    we can compare results on these tests when testing Spanish and
    English speaking populations. We are hoping to match the words by
    comparing their frequencies.

    At this moment we have found two books one in English, "Word
    Frequency" by John B. Carroll (1971) and one in Spanish,
    "Diccionario de frecuencias de las unidades lingčuâisticas del
    castellano" by Josâe Ramâon Alameda y Fernando Cuetos (1995). Any
    thoughts on these books as sources to search word frequencies for
    both English and Spanish words (only concerned with the word form
    not the meaning)? Is it better to use books with the same
    publication date? Also, does anyone have recommendations of other
    sites or books we could use to get word frequencies?

    A second issue we have is that even if when we find the word
    frequencies ratings for words on the WRAT and WAT, we are not sure
    the words would be comparable since their frequencies are being
    derived from different corpora. Does anyone have any ideas how we
    would go about being able to use frequency to compare Spanish and
    English words?

    And Finally, we feel that an additional way to make these tests
    comparable is to consider the phonemic complexity of each word on
    both the WRAT and WAT. Any suggestions as how to identify a word's
    phonemic complexity?

    Thank you,

    Raquel Cabo 

    -- 
Raquel Cabo
G.H. Sergievsky Center
Columbia University
Research Assistant to Dr. Jennifer Manly
rc2252@columbia.edu

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