Longman Defining Vocabulary

One way to reduce circularity in dictionary definitions is through the use of a controlled vocabulary. In the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE), the definitions for over 80,000 words and phrases are written using only the central senses of around 2000 words in the dictionary's core defining vocabulary. This core vocabulary was developed from the General Service List of high-frequency words and their most common meanings (West, Michael. 1953. A General Service List of English Words. London: Longman).

The words appearing in LDOCE definitions are restricted to non-idiomatic uses of only their higher-frequency classes and senses. If a reader understands the 2000 words in the LDOCE's core defining vocabulary, the remaining 78,000 definitions in the LDOCE can be understood without encountering a circular reference.

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Natural Semantic Metalanguage

An ideal dictionary definition explains the meaning of its headword using only words that are simpler and easier to understand than the headword being defined. If you repeat this process of "reductive paraphrase" for every headword in the dictionary, you will ultimately find a core subset of headwords that cannot be further reduced to simpler terms. These irreducible words are "semantic atoms" (also called "semantic primes").

By finding and comparing the semantic atoms of many languages, linguist Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues have developed Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), which identifies a common set of concepts appearing as the semantic atoms in all languages. You can find more information about NSM at Griffith University's Natural Semantic Metalanguage Homepage.

NSM semantic atoms and reductive paraphrase are used by Learn These Words First to create a dictionary without circular definitions. Lessons 1 and 2 introduce the 61 NSM semantic atoms in English (the atoms identified as of 2002). These are used to explain 300 "semantic molecules" in Lessons 3 through 12. The rest of the words in the dictionary are defined using only the semantic atoms and molecules.

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Why learn these 360 words first?

Many language courses teach vocabulary in topical lessons of about 30 words each (food, animals, clothing, colors, family, etc.). After learning 360 words in your first 12 lessons, you may understand words for about 12 topics, but the words you know will probably be inadequate for explaining most ideas outside of these limited topics.

Instead of arranging words by topic, the lesson vocabulary of Learn These Words First was carefully selected to maximize the explanatory power of your first 360 words:

• The lessons teach most of the highest-frequency words in English. After learning these 360 words, you will know more than half of the words you see on any typical page of English text.
• These 360 words are powerful for explaining things: They can explain all the other words in the dictionary. (They are used to define all 2000 words in the Longman Defining Vocabulary, which is used to define every word in the Longman Dictionary.)
• By learning these words first, you can use an English-English dictionary, so you can be immersed in English instead of relying on a bilingual dictionary.

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