Word frequency counts

Abstract

Abstract Lexical frequency is one of the major variables involved in language processing. It constitutes a cornerstone of psycholinguistic, corpus linguistic as well as applied research. Linguists take frequency counts from corpora and they started to take them for granted. However, voices emerge that corpora may not always provide a comprehensive picture of how frequently lexical items appear in a language. In the present contribution I compare corpus frequency counts for English and Polish words to native speakers’ perception of frequency. The analysis shows that, while generally objective and subjective values are related, there is a disparity between measures for frequent Polish words. The direction of the relationship, though positive, is also not as strong as in previous studies. I suggest linking objective with subjective frequency measures in research.