642 more word families
642 word families and 29 pairs of synonyms join the French lexicon, all checked one by one.
Lexikit now knows 642 more word families, such as jardin, jardiner, jardinier (garden, to garden, gardener). With the ones I had written by hand, that makes nearly 800 families. There are also 29 new pairs of synonyms.
Two sources that must agree
Writing 800 families by hand would have taken months. So I first cross-checked two sources. Lexique 3.83, a French database built by researchers in psycholinguistics, gives the words that exist and their frequency. Wiktionary gives their origin and their derived words. A word only enters a family if both sources agree.
A review, word by word
Two sources in agreement are not enough. “Répartir” (to share out) does come from “partir” (to leave), but a child does not make the link. So every family was read over with a rule: the word keeps a meaning the child can connect to the starting word. The families leave out compound words, adult words and words of the same form with no link in meaning, such as “coude” (elbow) and “coudre” (to sew).
Each family is also checked against the word's picture in the lexicon. When the picture for “jet” shows a plane, the word cannot join the family of “jeter” (to throw).
Zero errors
I set this goal for the whole lexicon, because in a vocabulary app, a mistake is learnt as well as a right word. If you find an error, tell me through “Your feedback”, and I correct it.
