The use of film subtitles to estimate word frequencies

Boris New; Marc Brysbaert; Jean Veronis; Christophe Pallier

doi:10.1017/S014271640707035X

The use of film subtitles to estimate word frequencies

Boris New
, Marc Brysbaert
, Jean Veronis
, Christophe Pallier

Laboratoire de Probabilités et Modèles Aléatoires
Royal Holloway University of London
Aix Marseille Université
CEA

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

248 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We examine the use of film subtitles as an approximation of word frequencies in human interactions. Because subtitle files are widely available on the Internet, they may present a fast and easy way to obtain word frequency measures in language registers other than text writing. We compiled a corpus of 52 million French words, coming from a variety of films. Frequency measures based on this corpus compared well to other spoken and written frequency measures, and explained variance in lexical decision times in addition to what is accounted for by the available French written frequency measures.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	661-677
Number of pages	17
Journal	Applied Psycholinguistics
Volume	28
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S014271640707035X
Publication status	Published - 1 Jan 2007
Externally published	Yes

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10.1017/S014271640707035X

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The use of film subtitles to estimate word frequencies

Abstract

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