The word "run" is a relatively high frequency word. How many different meanings for "run" does a learner need to know? Is that in isolation? With collocations? As phrasal verbs?
In many languages, the most frequently appearing words also have the most varied meanings. Interestingly, many highly vernacular languages also use relatively few words, but those words have a lot of meanings that are clearly known by the speech communities.
FWIW, some theoretical linguists consider this a non-issue. People in the field (i.e., people might die if I get this wrong) know otherwise.
While your idea sounds nice in principle, I hope you will accept the idea that reality may be slightly more complex.
* Collins Cobuild has 50+ meanings for "run" if phrasal verbs are included. Most non-native speakers are not even aware of the potential breadth of meanings it offers.
It's not just an idea, I've used it to learn about 2000 Hebrew words, albeit in a somewhat different form and along with other methods/materials.
I'm a somewhat experienced language learner. I'm fully aware that words have multiple meanings but that's not as problematic as you think. A lot of distinct meanings of "run" are related, so it's not like you need to memorize every one individually. Besides, they aren't all equally important. In many cases, those different meanings are paralled in my native language (or another language I know), e.g you can translate "run" as "correr" in "he runs", "the river runs..." and "they ran the risk...". More to the point, I always study words in context. In this method the context is provided by the rest of the sentence.
The word "run" is a relatively high frequency word. How many different meanings for "run" does a learner need to know? Is that in isolation? With collocations? As phrasal verbs?
In many languages, the most frequently appearing words also have the most varied meanings. Interestingly, many highly vernacular languages also use relatively few words, but those words have a lot of meanings that are clearly known by the speech communities.
FWIW, some theoretical linguists consider this a non-issue. People in the field (i.e., people might die if I get this wrong) know otherwise.
While your idea sounds nice in principle, I hope you will accept the idea that reality may be slightly more complex.
* Collins Cobuild has 50+ meanings for "run" if phrasal verbs are included. Most non-native speakers are not even aware of the potential breadth of meanings it offers.