Frequencies

89  Other groups 

There are a number of groups in the classification that do not belong with Searle’s speech acts. Some of them are redundant, like Answer, where almost every expression also belongs to groups like Affirmation, Confirmation and Declination. Repetition includes expressions that could just as well be categorised as OCM (here Reformulation and Correction). Unclear is a group for what was left over.

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1999). It is therefore also of interest to extract lists of frequencies regarding the words used in specific activities, as well as to examine the potential differences between different activities.

4.6.1 Frequencies in the games shop 

Table 4.10 shows the 20 most common words in the GSLC (Allwood, 2000a) and the 20 most common words uttered by the customers and the sales assistants in the games shop.

Table 4.10. The 20 most frequent words in the GSLC and in the games shop. 

The 20 most frequent words, (SST= “skriftsammanfört tal”- transferred into ordinary written language)

  GSLC  SST  %    Customer  %    Shop assistant  % 

1  det  (it)         77810  6.16  1  det  (it)       212  5.71  1  det  (it)       319  5.86  2  är  (is)       36843  2.92  2  ja  (yes)       137  3.69  2  ja  (yes)       208  3.82  3  och  (and)    35471  2.81  3  jag  (I)         119  3.20  3  är  (is)      170  3.12  4  ja  (yes)        32404  2.56  4  är  (is)         119  3.20  4  du  (you)     130  2.39  5  att  (to)        30440  2.41  5  har  (have)  84  3.26  5  jag  (I)      123  2.26  6  jag  (I)      28628  2.27  6  den  (it)        80  2.15  6  har  (have) 117  2.15  7  så  (so)         26059  2.06  7  så  (so)         68  1.83  7  inte  (not)   108  1.98  8  som  (as)     19205  1.52  8  här  (here)   67  1.80  8  vi  (we)        101  1.85  9  inte  (not)    18691  1.48  9  du  (you)      63  1.70  9  den  (it)         90  1.65  10  har  (have)  18469  1.46  10  dom  (they)  57  1.53  10  så  (so)      87  1.60  11  vi  (we)         18421  1.46  11  inte  (not)     57  1.53  11  dom  (they)  82  1.51  12  på  (on)        17719  1.40  12  m       51  1.37  12  och  (and)     74  1.36  13  man  (you)   17377  1.38  13  ni  (you)        50  1.35  13  en  (a)      70  1.29  14  då  (then)     17343  1.37  14  och  (and)    49  1.32  14  i  (in)      64  1.17  15  i  (in)       17039  1.37  15  en  (a)       44  1.12  15  på  (on)         63  1.16  16  du  (you)      16040  1.27  16  för  (for)       43  1.12  16  ska  (will)      60  1.10  17  en  (a)      15506  1.23  17  då  (then)     41  1.10  17  här  (here)    59  1.08  18  ju  (aff.)       15286  1.21  18  kan  (can)     37  0.97  18  eller  (or)      55  1.01  19  men  (but)   14623  1.16  19  okej  (okay) 36  0.97  19  då  (then)     54  0.99  20  dom  (they) 14534  1.15  20  var  (was)     33  0.89  20  för  (for)       53  0.97 

  1,263,408  37.3    3715  38.9    5447  38.3 

The 20 most frequent words amount to about 38% of the total number of words uttered in the games shop, and 12 of these words are the same in all three groups. The words are:

det (it), är (is), och (and), ja (yes), jag (I), så (so), inte (not), har (have), då (then), du (you), en (a) and dom (they). The words vi (we), på (on) and i (in) are among the 20 most frequently uttered by the sales assistants, as well as in the corpus as a whole, but not for the customers in the games shop (where they were in places 48, 26 and 32, respectively).

Three other words, för (for), den (that) and här (here), are among the 20 most frequent in both groups in the games shop, but not in the corpus as a whole where they had places 21, 22 and 23, respectively. Then there are a few words that are among the 20 most frequent in only one of the three groups. Ska (will) and eller (or) are among the 20 most frequently used by the customers, but occupy places 30 and 25 for the customers and

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place 31 for both in the corpus as a whole. Var (where/were), kan (can), m, ni (plural of you) and okej (okay) are among the 20 most frequently used by the customers, but are in places 30, 29, 21, 95 and 53 for the sales assistants and in places 30, 27, 25, 75 and 113, respectively, in the corpus as a whole. Att (to/that), som (as), man (man/you), ju

(affirmative adverb) and men (but) are among the 20 most frequent in the corpus, but in places 21, 33, 29, 37 and 22 for the customers, and places 26, 25, 38, 35 and 24,

respectively, for the sales assistants in the games shop. The differences that are found between the two roles in the activity Games shop and the corpus support the claim that different words are used in different contexts, and that in a given context, the role of the speaker influences the words he or she is likely to use.  

4.6.2 The Food shop 

In addition to the games shop, transcriptions from the food shop in the activity Shop in GSLC have also been studied in the same way. The recordings were made by the counter and they include the interaction between the customers and the shop assistant while the customer is putting the goods on the conveyer belt, paying, putting the goods into bags and leaving the store. It is a much more limited activity than the one in the games shop, and this is reflected in the transcriptions and in the frequencies of the words that are used.

At the Food shop there are two words that are very frequent, and used by both the customers and the shop assistants: hej = hello and tack = thank you. Hej (hello) is the second most commonly used by both customers and shop assistants in the food shop.

Tack (thank you) is in the sixth and fourth places, respectively. This is to be compared with the fact that hej (hello) is in place 165 in the corpus as a whole, and tack (thank you) is in place 127, and that neither of them is among the 20 most common in the games shop. For the shop assistants in the food shop, femtio (fifty), kronor (crowns), bra (good) and varsågod (here you are) are in places 6, 9, 10 and 11, respectively, whereas in the corpus as a whole these words are found in places 163, 104, 77 and 596.

It is worth mentioning that charge cards or credit cards were not used in either of the two shops. The recordings were made in the mid 1990s, when cards were not as commonly used as today. Recordings in the same kinds of shops today would give us additional expressions like “Vill du ha det på summan? (do you want to charge the exact sum), “Har du Medmera-kort/ICA-kort? (do you have a membership card)” and “Då kan du knappa in din kod. (you can enter your code now)”, and probably a few alterations in the lists of frequencies as well. Despite that, the main structure of interactions in shops has probably not changed very much – the same kinds of shops still exist and the customers that do not choose to use the self-scanning in the food shops would still have to put their goods on the conveyer belt and pay the cashier for their purchase. In some of the later chapters data from more recent recordings in shops are mentioned: this discussion will continue there.

92  Parts of speech 

Another feature that may be of interest in a VOCA is how the different words are distributed according to parts of speech. Vocabularies based on frequent words are common in the English-speaking countries, with systems like WordPower™^xxviii and WordCore™^xxix that combine frequent words with on-screen keyboards and word prediction. By taking the 20 most frequently used words in the whole of GSLC and in the games shop and adding all the customer words having a frequency of 7 or more from both shops, we get a list of 88 words that make up 68% of the total number of words uttered by the customers in the games shop. Three words that are less commonly used by the customers in the games shop are then included, because they are so frequent in the food shop: femtio, kronor och varsågod. When we sort the words into their equivalent parts of speech and display them in order of frequency, we get the following list:

Pronouns: det (it), jag (I), den (it), du (you), dom (they), ni (you, plur.), man (man/you ‐  impersonal pron.), han (he), vi (we), nåt (something), några (some), ingen (no), mej (me), nån

(someone), inget (no/none).

Conjunctions: och (and), men (but), att (that), eller (or), som (as).

Auxiliaries: är (is), var (were), har (have), kan (can), ska (will), får (have to/may), vill (want),

skulle (should).

Verbs: ha (have), vet (know), tror (think), få (get), tar (take), ta (take), köpa (buy), spelar (play),

kolla (look), finns (exists), se (see), kostar (cost).

Prepositions: för (for), på (on), till (to), i (in), med (with), om (about).

Interrogatives: var (where), vad (what), när (when).

Adverbs: så (so), här (here), inte (not), då (then), där (there), bara (just), också (too), ju

(afirmative adv. ), nu (now), lite (a little), mycket (much), bra (good), in (in), väl (probably), nog

(probably).

Adjectives: sånt, såna, sån (such/like that), nya (new). 

Nouns: kort (card), kronor (crowns).

Numerals: en (a/one), ett (a/one), två (two), fyra (four), femtio (fifty).

Feedback: ja (yes), m (m), okej (okay), nä (no), jaha (well/ I see), just (just), va (what).

Interjections: tack (thank you), hej (hello), varsågod (here you are/please).

Other: eh, hm, äh (Used for own communication management).

It is obvious that there are few nouns among the most frequent words, supporting the claims that a core vocabulary dominated by function words (Balandin & Iacono, 1999;

Beukelman & Mirenda, 1998) is very useful for people who use AAC systems with a limited number of words. For the more specific vocabulary items like nouns and additional verbs etc. a fringe vocabulary can be added (ibid.).

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