Что такое word family

Обновлено: 05.07.2024

A word family is the base form of a word plus its inflected forms and derived forms made from affixes. In the English language, inflectional affixes include third person -s, verbal -ed and -ing, plural -s, possessive -s, comparative -er and superlative -est. Derivational affixes include -able, -er, -ish, -less, -ly, -ness, -th, -y, non-, un-, -al, -ation, -ess, -ful, -ism, -ist, -ity, -ize/-ise, -ment, in-. The idea is that a base word and its inflected forms support the same core meaning, and can be considered learned words if a learner knows both the base word and the affix. Bauer and Nation proposed seven levels of affixes. (Википедия)

Насчет того, что может уже считаться выученным – некоторое преувеличение, так как, например, зная слово cook и аффикс -er точное значение слова cooker надо немного уточнить. Но все-таки это уж точно не то же самое, что учить это слово как отдельное от cook.
И еще один текст, от которого я отталкиваюсь:

A word family is a group of words that share the same root but have different affixes, as in care, careful, careless, carefree, uncaring, carer … Careful, careless, etc are all derivatives of care, in that, through the process of affixation, new lexical words are formed. These new words often belong to different word classes: care = verb, noun, careful = adjective, carer = noun. By contrast, grammatical forms of care, such as cares, caring and cared, are called inflections. Inflections all belong to the same word class. A word family, then, is a base word plus its inflections and its most common derivatives. The concept of word family is useful for compiling vocabulary lists and in estimating the vocabulary needs of learners. For example, rather than calculate that learners need to know 3000 individual words to achieve independent user status, it is more accurate to say that they need 3000 word families.
(An A-Z of ELT, Macmillan Books for Teachers).

На всякий случай дам корявенький перевод смысла:

Гнездо – это группа слов, имеющих одинаковый корень, но различные аффиксы - например: care, careful, careless, carefree, uncaring, career … Careful, careless и т.п. – производные от care, т.е. новые слова образуются с помощью аффиксов (приставок и суффиксов). Эти новые слова часто принадлежат к разным частям речи: care - глагол, существительное, careful - прилагательные, carer - существительное. Грамматические формы слова, такие как cares, caring и cared, наоборот, принадлежат к той же части речи, что и слово, от которого они образуются. Таким образом, гнездо – это базовое слово плюс все его грамматические формы, а так же наиболее употребляемые производные от него. Понятие гнезда полезно при составлении лексических списков и расчетах необходимого словарного запаса изучающих. Например, точнее сказать, что для достижения уровня "независимый пользователь" необходимо знание 3000 гнезд, а не 3000 отдельных слов.

Таким образом, два тезиса:

1. Гнездо – это набор слов, объединенных общим корнем
2. Знание трех тысяч наиболее частотных гнезд дает словарный запас, соответствующий уровню 'independent user'. Это не ахти какой поднебесный уровень (B1,B2), но это действительно тот уровень, при котором уже можно как-то начинать "пускаться в свободное плавание", т.е. что-то читать и смотреть достаточно интересное (разумеется, речь только о словарном запасе, а не всех необходимых для этого навыках).

Харбин совершенно справедливо отмечал, что при определении что входит в "гнездо", а что нет, возможен некоторый волюнтаризм. Но для практических нужд это обычно не очень важно. Понятно, что слова law , lawyer, lawful, unlawful, lawless, lawlessness или thick, thicken, thickly, thickness составляют гнезда, а какая-то уж совсем аптекарская точность при определении этого, повторюсь, не нужна.

Если же говорить о compounds (т.е. словах с двумя корнями), то их можно отнести к любому из двух составляющих их слов. Но мне лично больше нравится относить watchband, например, к гнезду 'band', так как это разновидность ленты/ремешка, а не часов. Но на подсчете это же никак не отражается.
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Далее можно легко сделать такую вещь. Берем все слова, составляющее гнезда из первой тысячи по частотности , в виде списка помещаем в дополнительный словарь спелл-чекера и переключаем проверку орфографии на русский язык. Таким образом в любом тексте будут подчеркиваться красным слова, выходящие за рамки этой первой частотной тысячи. Потом во второй доп. словарь вводится сумма слов второй тысячи гнезд и в третий – третья . Это позволит посмотреть то же самое для второй и третьей тысячи. Примеры того, как это выглядит, я дам в теме про частотные словари, где попробую представить те варианты работы с ними, которые мне кажутся заслуживающими внимания.

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About

WORD FAMILY FRAMEWORK OF GENERAL ENGLISH

What is the Word Family Framework (WFF)? The WFF is a searchable resource for teachers and learners of English that consists of over 22,000 vocabulary items arranged according to six levels aligned to the Common European Framework of Reference.

What can the WFF be used for? The WFF can be used by institutions, teachers and learners to construct target vocabularies for individual learning, syllabus and lesson planning, materials design and exam preparation. It can be used for two different types of vocabulary selection:

'Vertical searches'

identifying all the vocabulary items at one CEFR level
identifying all the items at several CEFR levels

'Horizontal searches'

identifying the CEFR level of an individual word or group of words
identifying the CEFR levels of all the members of a word family in order to decide which items may be worth learning
identifying unknown members of word families in order to extend a learner's vocabulary

How can the WFF be searched? The WFF can be searched in three main ways:

1 For horizontal searches to look for a particular word or item, type the term you
are looking for in the search box:

Then click the Start box:

2 For vertical searches to find all the items at one or more CEFR levels, tick () all the CEFR levels you want:

Then click the Start box:

3 To download the complete WFF, click the Download box:

How does the WFF link to the Common European Framework (CEFR)? The CEFR includes statements about the vocabulary range of a learner at each of six levels, A1 to C2:

Has a good command of a very broad lexical repertoire including idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms; shows awareness of connotative levels of meaning.

Has a good command of a broad lexical repertoire allowing gaps to be readily overcome with circumlocutions; little obvious searching for expressions or avoidance strategies. Good command of idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms.

Has a good range of vocabulary for matters connected to his/her field and most general topics. Can vary formulation to avoid frequent repetition, but lexical gaps can still cause hesitation and circumlocutions.

Has a sufficient vocabulary to express him/herself with some circumlocutions on most topics pertinent to his/her everyday life such as family, hobbies and interests, work, travel, and current events.

Has sufficient vocabulary to conduct routine, everyday transactions involving familiar situations and topics.

Has sufficient vocabulary for the expression of basic communicative needs.
Has sufficient vocabulary for coping with simple survival needs.

Has a basic vocabulary repertoire of isolated words and phrases related to particular concrete situations.

Source: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment, Council of Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2001, page 112

The CEFR's descriptors make quantitative statements about the learner's vocabulary repertoire at each level, but stop short of stating how large this repertoire might be at each level or which vocabulary items would be appropriate for each level. However, the CEFR invites users of the Framework to 'consider and where appropriate state:

which lexical elements (fixed expressions and single word forms) the learner will need/be equipped/ be required to recognise and/or use;
how they are selected and ordered.'

It is just this selection and ordering of lexical elements that the WFF offers to users.

How large is the WFF? The WFF includes more than 22,000 words and vocabulary items. It starts with a list of some 6000 of the most common and useful headwords, arranged alphabetically for easy access. Most headwords provide the starting point for a word family, which includes the cognates, derivatives and compounds which make up the family. All family members are then presented across a number of levels, so that the relative value of each item may be quickly determined. The approximate numbers of headwords and the vocabulary items generated can be seen in this table:

CEFR level

no. of new headwords

cumulative
headword total

no. of new vocabulary items

cumulative total of vocabulary items

How were the words in the WFF chosen? The vocabulary items presented in the WFF have been chosen from a survey of a large number of published sources and wordlists produced in the UK, USA, Germany, Europe and China. These lists vary in size and function, and the items in the lists were selected according to differing criteria. The research that preceded the development of the WFF therefore began by surveying these lists in detail to identify the levels of agreement between these different sources. In this way, the WFF presents a consensus of views about the level of each vocabulary item.

How does the WFF differ from dictionaries and wordlists? Traditionally, dictionaries and wordlists present lexical items in alphabetical order. The WFF, however, presents words in word families. Each family may include items that depart from strict alphabetical order. So, for example, the family value includes words such as devalue, evaluate and invaluable, which would be widely separated from value, valuable and valueless in a conventional dictionary or list. They are presented together here because it is widely believed that seeing words as members of a family rather than in isolation promotes effective vocabulary learning:

headword

value

valuation nCU
invaluable adj

What is column X and how do I use it? As can be seen here, in addition to the six levels aligned to the CEFR, the WFF includes a column X. This column includes extra members of word families which are either a) off the A1-C2 scale or b) not included in the main scale because there is insufficient data in the research data. It presents items of various kinds:

Family members that fall outside the common core of the most frequent English words but which may be useful to learners and which should prove relatively easy to learn because they are related to core member of the family. Items in column X typically include:

Note: Column X does not include vocabulary items that belong to any word family not already included in A1-C2.

Learners and teachers may select from column X the items which they find useful and easy to learn or teach. In this way, the WFF allows users not only to select vocabulary at a particular level (vertical searching), but also to look across levels at items within the same family (horizontal searching).

What does the WFF not include? The WFF includes a wide range of over 22,000 items of English vocabulary. It covers both British and American English, with variant spellings (honour/honor) and variant terms (lift/elevator). However, it is a framework of general English and so it does not include vocabulary items from academic, business, scientific or technical English. Neither does it include dialect or obsolete words found outside the common core of British or American English.

Can I adapt the WFF to my own context? It is recognized that the WFF may not be fully appropriate for all learners or all learning situations. For this reason, the WFF will incorporate an interactive dimension, and users are invited to discuss their views and the ways they use the WFF with the British Council and other users in the WFF discussion forum (click for access). Our intention is that this discussion will lead to the introduction of a facility which will enable users to download and adapt the WWF to their particular local contexts.

The WFF was developed for the British Council by Richard West, who would like to acknowledge the contributions made by Dr Wendy Scarlin and Mrs Judy Hermitte.

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