frequencyfrequency^1 n
see sound wave
frequency^2 n
the number of occurrences of a linguistic item in a text or corpus. Different
linguistic items have different frequencies of occurrence in speech and
writing. In English, function words(e.g. a, the, to, etc.) occur more fre-
quently than verbs, nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. Word frequency counts
are used to select vocabulary for language teaching, in lexicography, in the
study of literary style in stylistics, and in text linguistics.
The twenty most frequently occurring words in a corpus of over one million
words in a study of written American English by Kucera and Francis were:
the, of, and, to, a, in, that, is, was, he, for, it, with, as, his, on, be, at, by, I.
frequency count n
a count of the total number of occurrences of linguistic items (e.g. syllables,
phonemes, words, etc.) in a corpus of language, such as a written text or
a sample of spoken language. The study of the frequency of occurrence
of linguistic items is known as language statistics and is a part of com-
putationaland mathematical linguistics. A frequency count of the
vocabulary occurring in a text or opus is known as a word frequency count
or word frequency list.
frequency hypothesisn
the hypothesis that the order of acquisition of linguistic items is determined
by their frequency in input.
frequency polygon n
see distribution
fricative n
also spirant
a speech sound produced by narrowing the distance between two articulators
so that the airstream is not completely closed but obstructed enough that a
turbulent airflow is produced, as in the English /f/, /v/, /s/ and /z/ sounds in
enough,valve, sister, and zoo.
frictionless continuant n
a speech sound (a consonant) which is produced by allowing the airstream
from the lungs to move through the mouth and/or nose without friction.
For example, for some speakers of English the /r/ in /rväz/ rose is a friction-
less continuant.