This contribution examines the macro quantitative features of 15 lowfrequency word classes. The relationship between word frequency classes and the sizes of the frequency classes obeys Altmann’s power law, and the sizes of lowfrequency word classes increase along with the increase of text length. The relationship between text length and the sizes of low-frequency word classes also obeys Altmann...

Low-frequency words produce more hits and fewer false alarms than high-frequency words in a recognition task. The low-frequency hit rate advantage has sometimes been attributed to processes that operate during the recognition test (e.g., L. M. Reder et al., 2000). When tasks other than recognition, such as recall, cued recall, or associative recognition, are used, the effects seem to contradict...

The role of word frequency in lexical access during the production of homophones remains unresolved. In the current study, we address whether specific-word (the frequency of occurrence of the word "nun") or homophone frequency (the summed frequency of words with the pronunciation /nLambdan/) determines the production latencies of homophones. In Experiments 1a, 2a, and 3a, participants named pic...

In 3 experiments, the effect of word frequency on an indirect word fragment completion test and on direct free-recall and Yes-no recognition tests was investigated. In Experiment 1, priming in word fragment completion was substantially greater for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words, but free recall was unaffected. Experiment 2 replicated the word fragment completion result and sh...

Word frequency is an important predictor of word-naming and lexical decision times. It is, however, confounded with contextual diversity, the number of contexts in which a word has been seen. In a study using a normative, corpus-based measure of contextual diversity, word-frequency effects were eliminated when effects of contextual diversity were taken into account (but not vice versa) across t...

Immediate memory span and maximal articulation rate were assessed for word sets differing in frequency, word-neighborhood size, and average word-neighborhood frequency. Memory span was greater for high- than low-frequency words, greater for words from large than small phonological neighborhoods, and greater for words from high- than low-frequency phonological neighborhoods. Maximal articulation...

Recent research suggests that the time to recognize a visually presented word may be a function of the frequencies of orthographically similar words. More precisely, recognition latencies and errors appear to increase significantly as soon as the stimulus word is orthographically similar to at least one other higher frequency word. This phenomenon, referred to as the neighborhood frequency effe...

Using a corpus of Medieval Spanish text, we examine factors affecting the Modern Standard Spanish outcome of the initial /f/ in Latin FV-words. Regression analyses reveal that the frequency of a word's use in extralexical phonetic reducing environments and lexical stress patterns significantly predict the modern distribution of f-([f]) and h-(Ø) in the Spanish lexicon of FV-words. Quantificatio...

Akhtar [Akhtar, N. (1999). Acquiring basic word order: Evidence for data-driven learning of syntactic structure. Journal of Child Language, 26, 339–356] taught children novel verbs in ungrammatical word orders. Her results suggested that the acquisition of canonical word order is a gradual, data-driven process. The current study adapted this methodology, using English verbs of different frequen...