Vocabularios

Vocabularios are inventories of words that constitute a language’s lexicon, or sets of words a person or group uses. In linguistics, the term can refer to the overall lexicon of a language at a given time, or to a curated list of words collected for study or reference. The plural form vocabularios is often used in Spanish-language contexts, including dictionaries compiled by learners, educators, or lexicographers. A vocabulary can be active (words people use in speech or writing) or passive/receptive (words recognized but not regularly used). It can also be divided into general vocabulary and specialized vocabularies, such as technical, medical, or legal vocabularies.

Construction and measurement: Vocabularios are built from data sources like corpora, dictionaries, textbooks, and field notes. Frequency-based lists reveal common words, while size and diversity measures indicate lexical depth. Etymology and semantic relations (synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms) are often included in vocabularios used for language learning or lexicography. Learner vocabularies are frequently organized into core layers (high-frequency words) and peripheral layers (lower-frequency terms), sometimes enhanced with semantic fields and collocations.

Applications: In education, vocabularios guide instruction, assessment, and spaced-repetition systems. In linguistics and natural language processing, lexicons enable parsing, word sense disambiguation, translation, and sentiment analysis. The notion of vocabulary also informs language preservation efforts, where documenting regional vocabularios supports cultural heritage.

Examples: A vocabulario básico for beginners might include common nouns, verbs, and adjectives; a vocabulario técnico targets a specialized domain.