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From: herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
Newsgroups: comp.compression
Subject: Re: word frequency in English
Message-ID: <4236.2805a58b@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 17:18:19 GMT
References: <13834@adobe.UUCP>
Lines: 20

In article <13834@adobe.UUCP>, mjward@adobe.COM (Michael J. Ward) writes:
> Where can I find a list/dictionary/datafile of English words sorted by
> relative frequency in various classes of usage. For example, is "a" the most
> commonly used English word. followed by "the"? How about "that" compared to
> "sesquipedalianism"? Who's doing binary lookup tables based on word
> frequency?  --Mike Ward

One such histogram is Strong's Concordance of the King James Bible, a
19th century exhaustive (down to a complete list of occurences of
the words "a", "the", and "and") list of occurences of the words
in an English book published in 1611.  A photo reproduction of the 
concordance is available in a bookstore near you for ten or twelve dollars.

dan herrick
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com

PS.  I know he doesn't want a paper document, but Strong's is a
fantastic work done before von Neumann was born and looking it
over is a valuable educational experience for people interested
in what Mike asked about.