Vokabulærer

Vokabulærer (singular vokabulær) is a term used in linguistics and language teaching to refer to the collection of words and fixed expressions that a person knows and can use. In broader use, it can also denote the lexicon of a language or a specific corpus. For an individual, vokabulærer comprises both receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary.

Receptive vocabulary consists of words recognized in listening and reading, while productive vocabulary includes words used in speaking and writing. Active vocabulary is typically smaller and used in real communication, whereas receptive vocabulary is usually larger, providing comprehension even if some words are not regularly spoken.

A person’s vokabulærer is shaped by age, education, reading habits, and exposure to language. They evolve with new domains and media. In research, some frameworks group words by lemmas, base forms, and morphological variants; multiword expressions such as idioms are also part of a user’s vokabulærer, but are harder to quantify.

In education and assessment, vokabulærer size serves as a proxy for language proficiency. Techniques include frequency lists, standardized tests of receptive and productive vocabulary, and corpus-based estimates that reflect real-world usage.

In computational linguistics, vokabulærer underpin lexicons used by natural language processing, search engines, and language modeling. Variation across dialects, genres, and domains means a vocabulary is not a fixed entity but a dynamic resource.