A couple of late observations about this thread:
1. Below it is noted that Shakespeare's used 24,000 words in his
writing. In the LotR alone, Tolkien apparently used 15,000 different
"active words."
The term comes from the introduction to Richard E. Blackwelder's A Tolkien
Thesaurus, which book, I have happily learned, is among the holdings of my
local library, along with Blackwelder's supplementary pamphlet, Tolkien
Phraseology. The Thesaurus is non-circulating (strangely the
Phraseology circulates) and I didn't have much time at the library, but
I was able to skim it briefly and make a few notes.
Blackwelder writes in the introduction, "I have omitted most articles,
conjunctions, prepositions, common adverbs, and auxiliary verb forms, along
with the most common words of size, number, color, and direction." In the
Phraseology, intended primarily as a companion to the Thesaurus
for the non-scholarly reader, he gives a sample phrase: "Moment of
silence...Have you no such custom at meat," (ellipsis in Blackwelder) and notes
the four words in that phrase which he considered "active," which means six
words (of, have, you, no, such, at) are not. However, Blackwelder also
notes that "almost any word given special stress is included" in the
Thesaurus, and gives this example: "'I was held captive.'
'You?' cried Frodo. 'Yes, I, Gandalf the Grey.'" The
"You" and second "I" are indexed by Blackwelder. So I don't know how
representative the active/inactive ratio of the "Moment of silence" passage is
to the LotR as a whole, nor which usually inactive words are included because
they occasionally receive special emphasis. (I noticed that "is" is one
such example--the Clinton Library dedication brought that word to mind--because
it's emphasized by Gandalf in conversation with Treebeard. "An" is not
indexed. "A" is, but as a contraction of "have," and as an exclamation,
not as an article.) Additionally, many "inactive" words will be
frequently repeated. Even so, clearly they will increase the total.
Add to that the words in Tolkien's other works, and he may indeed approach or
exceed Shakespeare's word count. To be fair, I think that Tolkien's
surviving work, especially including the HoME, notably surpasses Shakespeare's
in quantity.
2. I highly recommend checking out the two links that Curious provides
below ("Here:" and "And here:" under my "Thanks") to learn more about the
supplantation of "philology" by "linguistics." Fascinating stuff.
Note that would-be "philologists" are advised to obtain two doctorate
degrees.
