英語で一番多い単語「the」は16語に1語。2位はその約半分…「ジップの法則」の謎

Q1. What is the passage mainly about?

1. AHow to spell difficult English words
2. BA pattern in how often words are used
3. CWhy "of" is a new word
4. DHow to count to 100 million

the や of の回数を例に、単語の使われ方のパターン（ジップの法則）を説明しているので B。

Q2. About how often is "the" used, according to the passage?

1. AOne word in 2
2. BOne word in 16
3. COne word in 100
4. DOne word in 100 million

About one word in 16 was "the." とあるので B。

Q3. In the passage, "pattern" is closest in meaning to ...

1. Aa mistake
2. Ba regular way that something happens
3. Ca kind of word game
4. Da long story

Word counts follow a rough pattern は「単語の回数はおおよその規則的な傾向に従う」という意味なので B。

Q1. What is the main idea of the passage?

1. A"I" is the most common word in written English.
2. BWord counts roughly follow Zipf's law, but the pattern is not perfect and its cause is unknown.
3. CLancaster University invented Zipf's law.
4. DConversation and writing use exactly the same words in the same order.

the と of の例で法則に合うこと、and でずれること、理由がまだ説明できていないことを述べているので B。

Q2. Which words become second and third in spoken English?

1. A"of" and "and"
2. B"a" and "in"
3. C"I" and "you"
4. D"the" and "of"

"I" and "you" move up to second and third とあるので C。

Q3. What can we infer about "and"?

1. AIt appears exactly a third as often as "the."
2. BIt appears more than a third as often as "the."
3. CIt is not in the corpus.
4. DIt is the most common word in conversation.

"And," in third place, is used more often than the law predicts とあり、法則の予想は「1位の3分の1」なので、それより多いと推測できる。正解は B。

Q1. What is the passage mainly about?

1. AHow monkeys learn English
2. BZipf's law, the evidence for it, and the open question of why it holds
3. CA new way to teach Japanese grammar
4. DThe history of the British National Corpus

法則の当てはまり、ずれ、説明のつかない事実、日本語の問題、学習者への意味までを扱っているので B。

Q2. In the alien story experiment, what followed a near-Zipfian pattern?

1. AThe length of each story
2. BThe ages of the participants
3. CThe counts of the eight invented names
4. DThe number of spaces in the text

the counts of those names fell into a near-Zipfian pattern とあるので C。

Q3. Why does the writer warn about the table comparing English and Japanese?

1. ABecause it uses only spoken Japanese
2. BBecause it mixes surveys with different rules and may leave out words like "the"
3. CBecause it shows that Japanese has no words
4. DBecause it was written by monkeys

yet it mixes surveys with different rules, and its English figures may leave out words like "the" とあるので B。