THE WORDS AND SOUNDS OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 307 



"price," "car," "letter," "fine," "company," "stuff," "number"; 

 in written English these words are "people" and "very." The pre- 

 dominance of business words in this list for telephone conversation 

 suggests the influence of trade between England and France in the 

 Middle Ages. 



More detailed comparisons may be drawn from Table V, which 

 lists the first 25 nouns, the first 25 verbs and the first 25 adjectives and 



TABLE V 

 Twenty-five Commonest Words by Parts of Speech 

 Compared with Written English 



The words not common to both lists appear in capital letters. 



adverbs, for both telephone conversation and written matter. Among 

 the nouns only eight are common to the two lists. The effects of 

 business are apparent in the telephone list. On the other hand, the 

 nouns of the written English list reflect the fact, pointed out by Dewey, 

 that the list was obtained from a study made soon after the war. 

 Among the verbs 15 words are common to the two lists and those which 

 differ are concentrated at the end. Approximately half the adjectives 

 and adverbs appear in both lists. The nouns from telephone conver- 



