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Applied Linguistics 1993 14(2):188-206; doi:10.1093/applin/14.2.188
© 1993 by Oxford University Press
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Metacognitive and Other Knowledge about the Mental Lexicon: Do We Know How Many Words We Know?

EUGENE B. ZECHMEISTER, CATHERINE A. D'ANNA, JAMES W. HALL, CYNTHIA H. PAUS and JULIE A. SMITH

Loyola University of Chicago
Northwestern University
Loyola University of Chicago

We asked a diverse sample of laypersons (N = 69), as well as a small group of scholars (N = 5), about the number of words they knew, about the number of words in the English language, about the size of English-language dictionaries, and about other topics related to vocabulary size. Respondents in both groups typically viewed their personal lexicon as containing less than 40,000 words, and the size of their active vocabulary as no more than 20,000 words. An attempt was made to reconcile these estimates based on metacognitive knowledge of lexicon size with estimates derived from empirical studies on vocabulary size, which often have indicated a much larger adult mental lexicon. We argue that estimates of a very large mental lexicon are misleading, and that a careful analysis of the goals and methods of studies providing these estimates, together with data obtained from several recent studies of vocabulary size, suggest a more moderate-sized lexicon, one that actually is closer in size to how people are likely to respond when asked: ‘How many words do you know?’


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