Estimating the Size of Vocabularies of Children and Adults

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Notes

1. The analysis reported here was first undertaken by both authors in 1949 and worked on intermittently through 1957. It remained as a typewritten manuscript until the untimely death of Irving Lorge in January 1961, when Jeanne Chall received the consent of Mrs. Sarah Lorge to prepare it for publication. The major findings were reported by Dr. Lorge at various educational conferences and by Chall in Readability: An Appraisal of Research and Application, Ohio State University, 1958. With the renewed interest in the size of children’s vocabularies, especially in regard to controversial issues in the teaching of reading, a committee of Dr. Lorge’s colleagues and former students devoted to the preparation for publication of Dr. Lorge’s unfinished works concurred that it would be timely now to publish the study in its entirety.

Acknowledgments are made with grateful appreciation for the assistance of Drs. Harold H. Abelson, William Bristow, John Carroll, Leo P. Chall, Helen Davidson, Lorraine K. Diamond, Joshua A. Fishman, David Fox, Arthur I. Gates, Nancy Larrick, Walter H. MacGinitie, and J. Wayne Wrightstone in reading the manuscript and for their comments and many helpful suggestions. Responsibility for the study, however, is Jeanne Chall’s.