The British and American Word Families (BAWF) Morphological Database

Core Word Information

• Word: The surface wordform (as it appears in the dictionary and corpora)
• Word_frq_Zipf: Zipf frequency score of the wordform, - basically a 1-7 scale of how frequent a word is calculated from a large English corpus (higher value = more frequent in everyday language use). A Zipf value of 1 is among the 1,000 most common words.
• FLemma: The lemma of the word (ignoring part of speech)- dictionary headword.
• GPT_Coded_Word_Parts: Morphological breakdown of the word into prefixes, root(s), and suffixes, generated by fine-tuned GPT analysis.

Baseword / Root Information

• Baseword: The central baseword form of the word after removing affixes according to GPT.
• Baseword_frq_Zipf: Zipf frequency score of the baseword itself.
• Baseword_Family_Size: Number of different wordforms that belong to the same baseword family (excluding compounds).
• Baseword_FamilySize_Incl_Compounds: Number of different wordforms in the baseword family, including compounds.
• Baseword_Zipf_Inc_Compounds: Zipf frequency of the baseword, adjusted to include compounds.

Root & Etymological Information

• GPT_Root: The primary root identified using GPT-assisted morphological analysis.
• Avg_Root_Zipf_BNC_COCA: Average Zipf frequency (based on BNC-COCA data) of words sharing the same root.
• Root_FamilySize: Number of different wordforms sharing the same root (excluding compounds).
• Root_FamilySize_Inc_Compounds: Number of different wordforms sharing the same root, including compounds.
• Avg_Root_Zipf_Inc_Compounds: Average Zipf frequency of words sharing the root, including compounds.

Greek / Latin Roots

• Greek_Latin_Root_1: First identified classical (Greek or Latin) root.
• Greek_Latin_Meaning_1: Meaning of the first classical root.
• Greek_Latin_Root_1_FamilySize: Number of different wordforms containing this classical root.
• Avg_Greek_Latin_Root_1_Zipf_BNC_COCA: Average Zipf frequency of words containing the first classical root.
• Greek_Latin_Root_2: Second identified classical root (if present).
• Greek_Latin_Meaning_2: Meaning of the second classical root.
• Greek_Latin_Roots_FamilySize_Incl_compounds: Total family size for classical roots, including compounds.
• Greek_Latin_Roots_Zipf_Incl_compounds: Zipf frequency measures for classical roots, including compounds.

Prefixes & Suffixes

• Prefix_1 to Prefix_3 and Suffix_1 to Suffix_6: Include meaning, all forms, frequency, count, and mean Zipf scores.

Other Morphological & Psycholinguistic & Educational Measures

• N_Morphemes: Total number of morphemes in the word.
• Reading AoA (Green et al., 2025): Age of Acquisition for Reading this word- when people typcalliy learn to read the word.
• Vocabulary eXpected Grade Level (Flor et al., 2024): Expected U.S. grade level at which a word is known- from 0 (kindergarten) to 16 (fourth year of college) (.
• GPT_Familiarity (Brysbaert et al., 2024): GPT-estimated familiarity rating - values above 3 are typcially well-known and so more useful for teaching.

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