From context to cortex

Features an excerpt from Steven Pinker's 'The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language'(1994). Number of words in vocabulary of average six-year-old and average high school graduate; More.
By PT Staff, published on March 01, 1995

Number of words in Funk & Wagnall's New Unabridged Dictionary: 450,000.Number of words in vocabulary of average high school graduate: 60,000. Number of distinct words in Shakespeare's collected works: 15,000. Number of words in vocabulary of average six-year-old: 13,000. Rate at which children learn a new word between the ages of one and eighteen: every 90 minutes.

By Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Norton, 1994)

Tags: distinct words, funk wagnall, language instinct, norton, school graduate, steven pinker, unabridged dictionary, vocabulary

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