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Vocabulary - Present and
Past Meanings (Ong 8)

Oral

• Access to vocabulary consists of the few thousand words held in operating memory.
• The number of past meanings that are available is zero because the irrelevant fades from operating memory.

Literate

• Vocabulary consists of the 1.5 million words or more accessible in print and electronic dictionaries.
• Hundreds of thousands of past meanings are accessible in print and electronic dictionaries.

  Example

The Oxford English Dictionary features the definitions and etymologies of 500,000 words.

Exception: Primally-strong emotions trigger a default back to the oral mode.

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