English letter frequencies and their applications: part II--digraph frequencies.
This article continues the presentation of new data regarding the frequencies of English letters organized by word length and letter position. Digraphs (defined here as all two-letter combinations) were the objects of study. The frequencies of digraphs were derived from a sample of 320,780 English words (including 6505 different words), which were credibly demonstrated by Whissell to be a parsimonious representation of modern English word usage. A total of 997,380 digraphs were counted and sorted by locations according to word length and digraph positions within words. As assessed by the Whissell source, the data about digraphs presented accurately represent the frequencies with which digraphs occur in modern English. How these data can provide a resource for reading research and practice is explored.
Ridley
Dennis R
DR
Office of Institutional Research and Planning, Virginia Wesleyan College, Norfolk, VA 23502-5599, USA.
Lively
B Malcolm
BM
D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010507:Periodicity; D014825:Vocabulary