Is the Lemma More Appropriate than the Flemma as a Word Counting Unit?

Abstract

Word lists have long been used to guide learners’ lexical acquisition, develop course materials, and form a basis for vocabulary tests. This has led to several recent publications discussing the principles of optimal word list development (Nation 2016; Brezina and Gablasova 2017; Stein 2017). A key consideration is the principle by which words are grouped on such lists. That is, if a learner exhibits knowledge of a headword, how many related words can that learner be safely assumed to also know? This question is important, since we need reliable principles to break down the challenge of vocabulary acquisition. Influential word lists, such as Nation’s version of the General Service List that accompanies the Range program (Heatley et al. 1994) and Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List, as well as instruments, such as the Vocabulary Size Test (Nation and Beglar 2007), utilize the word family as a grouping principle, with headwords being grouped together with many of their inflections, regular derivations, and irregular but frequent derived forms. However, there is growing evidence that for many second language learners, the word family may not be appropriate for purposes of pedagogy and assessment (Schmitt and Meara 1997; Mochizuki and Aizawa 2000; Gardner 2007; Ward and Chuenjundaeng 2009).

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