Word

This article is about the unit of speech and writing. For Some semanticists have put forward a theory of sothe Microsoft Oce word processor, see Microsoft called semantic primitives or semantic primes, indenWord. For other uses, see Word (disambiguation).
able words representing fundamental concepts that are
intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning,
In linguistics a word is the smallest element that may be
words and their associated
uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content without circularity, of other
conceptual denotations.[3]
(with literal or practical meaning). This contrasts deeply
with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning
but will not necessarily stand on its own. A word may
1.2 Features
consist of a single morpheme (for example: oh!, rock,
red, quick, run, expect), or several (rocks, redness, quickly,
In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax, words
running, unexpected), whereas a morpheme may not be
(also called lexical items in the literature) are construed
able to stand on its own as a word (in the words just menas bundles of linguistic features that are united into
tioned, these are -s, -ness, -ly, -ing, un-, -ed). A coma structure with form and meaning.[4] For example, the
plex word will typically include a root and one or more
word bears has semantic features (it denotes real-world
axes (rock-s, red-ness, quick-ly, run-ning, un-expectobjects, bears), category features (it is a noun), number
ed), or more than one root in a compound (black-board,
features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns,
rat-race). Words can be put together to build larger eleand demonstratives in its domain), phonological features
ments of language, such as phrases (a red rock), clauses
(it is pronounced a certain way), etc.
(I threw a rock), and sentences (He threw a rock too but
he missed).

1.3 Word boundaries

The term word may refer to a spoken word or to a written word, or sometimes to the abstract concept behind
either. Spoken words are made up of units of sound
called phonemes, and written words of symbols called
graphemes, such as the letters of the English alphabet.

The task of dening what constitutes a word involves

determining where one word ends and another word
beginsin other words, identifying word boundaries.
There are several ways to determine where the word
boundaries of spoken language should be placed:

Denitions

Potential pause: A speaker is told to repeat a given

sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker
will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries.
However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker
could easily break up polysyllabic words, or fail to
separate two or more closely related words.

Further information: Lexeme and Lemma (morphology)

The ease or diculty of deciphering a word depends on
the language. Dictionaries categorize a languages lexicon
(i.e., its vocabulary) into lemmas. These can be taken as
an indication of what constitutes a word in the opinion
of the writers of that language.

1.1

Indivisibility: A speaker is told to say a sentence

out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again
with extra words added to it. Thus, I have lived in
this village for ten years might become My family
and I have lived in this little village for about ten or so
years. These extra words will tend to be added in the
word boundaries of the original sentence. However,
some languages have inxes, which are put inside a
word. Similarly, some have separable axes; in the
German sentence Ich komme gut zu Hause an",
the verb ankommen is separated.

Semantic denition

Leonard Bloomeld introduced the concept of Minimal Free Forms in 1926. Words are thought of as
the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by
themselves.[1] This correlates phonemes (units of sound)
to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written
words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense
by themselves (for example, the and of).[2]

Phonetic boundaries: Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to
1

PHILOSOPHY

spot where a word boundary should be. For exam- 2 Morphology

ple, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word, a word boundary is likely to fall Main article: Morphology (linguistics)
after each stressed syllable. Another example can Further information: Inection
be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example,
Turkish):[5] the vowels within a given word share the
same quality, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. Nevertheless, not all languages have such convenient phonetic
rules, and even those that do present the occasional
exceptions.

Orthographic boundaries: See below.

1.3.1

Orthography

In languages with a literary tradition, there is interrelation

between orthography and the question of what is considered a single word. Word separators (typically spaces)
are common in modern orthography of languages using Letters and words
alphabetic scripts, but these are (excepting isolated precedents) a relatively modern development (see also history love) may have a number of dierent forms (for example,
of writing).
loves, loving, and loved). However, for some purposes
In English orthography, compound expressions may con- these are not usually considered to be dierent words,
tain spaces. For example, ice cream, air raid shelter and but rather dierent forms of the same word. In these langet up each are generally considered to consist of more guages, words may be considered to be constructed from
than one word (as each of the components are free forms, a number of morphemes. In Indo-European languages in
particular, the morphemes distinguished are
with the possible exception of get).
Not all languages delimit words expressly. Mandarin
the root
Chinese is a very analytic language (with few inectional axes), making it unnecessary to delimit words
optional suxes
orthographically. However, there are a great number of
a desinence, or inectional sux.
multiple-morpheme compounds in Mandarin, as well as
a variety of bound morphemes that make it dicult to
Thus, the Proto-Indo-European *wrdhom would be anaclearly determine what constitutes a word.
lyzed as consisting of
Sometimes, languages which are extremely close grammatically will consider the same order of words in dif1. *wr-, the zero grade of the root *werferent ways. For example, reexive verbs in the French
innitive are separate from their respective particle, e.g.
2. a root-extension *-dh- (diachronically a sux), rese laver (to wash oneself), whereas in Portuguese they
sulting in a complex root *wrdhare hyphenated, e.g. lavar-se, and in Spanish they are
[6]
joined, e.g. lavarse.
3. The thematic sux *-oJapanese uses orthographic cues to delimit words such as
switching between kanji (Chinese characters) and the two
kana syllabaries. This is a fairly soft rule, because content
words can also be written in hiragana for eect (though
if done extensively spaces are typically added to maintain
legibility).

4. the neuter gender nominative or accusative singular

desinence *-m.

3 Philosophy

Vietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alpha- Philosophers have found words objects of fascination
bet, delimits monosyllabic morphemes rather than words. since at least the 5th century BC, with the foundation
In character encoding, word segmentation depends on of the philosophy of language. Plato analyzed words
which characters are dened as word dividers.
in terms of their origins and the sounds making them

3
up, concluding that there was some connection between
sound and meaning, though words change a great deal
over time. John Locke wrote that the use of words is to
be sensible marks of ideas, though they are chosen not
by any natural connexion that there is between particular
articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would
be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary
imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the
mark of such an idea.[7] Wittgenstein's thought transitioned from a word as representation of meaning to the
meaning of a word is its use in the language.[8]
Archaeology shows that even for centuries prior to this
fascination by philosophers in the 5th century BC, many
languages had various ways of expressing this verbal unit,
which in turn diversied and evolved into a range of expressions with wide philosophical signicance. Ancient
manuscripts of the Gospel of John reveal in its 5th chapter
the Rabonni Yshua chastising the pharisees expecting to
nd life in writings instead of himself. This perhaps could
have led to Johns introduction in chapter of a description
in the Greek translation as the logos. A famous early
scientist, scholar and priest, Thomas Aquinas, inuenced
Cartesian philopsophy and mathematics by interpreting
such passages consistently with his philosophy of logic.

Classes

Main article: Lexical category

Grammar classies a languages lexicon into several
groups of words. The basic bipartite division possible for
virtually every natural language is that of nouns vs. verbs.
The classication into such classes is in the tradition
of Dionysius Thrax, who distinguished eight categories:
noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, preposition, adverb,
conjunction and interjection.
In Indian grammatical tradition, Pini introduced a similar fundamental classication into a nominal (nma, suP)
and a verbal (khyta, tiN) class, based on the set of
desinences taken by the word.

See also
Longest words

[4] Adger (2003), pp. 367.

[5] Bauer 9
[6] Note that the convention also depends on the tense or
moodthe examples given here are in the innitive,
whereas French imperatives, for example, are hyphenated,
e.g. lavez-vous, whereas the Spanish present tense is completely separate, e.g. me lavo.
[7] Locke ECHU BOOK III Chapter II Of the Signication
of Words. Rbjones.com. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
[8] Ludwig Wittgenstein (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 13 March 2012.

7 References
Adger, David (2003). Core Syntax: A Minimalist
Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
0-19-924370-0.
Barton, David (1994). Literacy: An Introduction to
the Ecology of Written Language. Blackwell Publishing. p. 96.
Bauer, Laurie (1983). English Word-formation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521-28492-9.
Brown, Keith R. (Ed.) (2005) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.). Elsevier. 14 vols.
Crystal, David (1995). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1 ed.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-40179-8.
Fleming, Michael et al. (2001). Meeting the Standards in Secondary English: A Guide to the ITT NC.
Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 0-415-23377-1.
Goddard, Cli (2002). The search for the shared
semantic core of all languages. In Cli Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka. Meaning and Universal
Grammar: Theory and Empirical Findings (PDF).
Volume I. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 540.
Katamba, Francis (2005). English Words: Structure,
History, Usage. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-29893-8.
Plag, Ingo (2003). Word-formation in English.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521-52563-2.

Utterance

Simpson, J.A. and E.S.C. Weiner, ed. (1989). Oxford English Dictionary (2 ed.). Clarendon Press.
ISBN 0-19-861186-2.

Notes

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and

Universals. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19870002-4.

[1] Katamba 11
[2] Fleming 77
[3] Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard 2002

8 External links

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1

Text

Word Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word?oldid=674630280 Contributors: William Avery, Stevertigo, D, Jahsonic, Ixfd64, Alo,
Ahoerstemeier, Mxn, Eszett, Vanished user 5zariu3jisj0j4irj, Dfeuer, Furrykef, Hyacinth, Joy, MD87, Cncs wikipedia, Fredrik, Mayooranathan, Pingveno, MSGJ, Dissident, Bnn, Everyking, Justzisguy, Andycjp, Alexf, Quadell, Ran, Antandrus, Beland, OverlordQ,
Mzajac, DanielDemaret, Karl-Henner, Cynical, Gscshoyru, Zondor, Trevor MacInnis, Mike Rosoft, Jiy, Discospinster, Rich Farmbrough,
Dbachmann, ESkog, Ntennis, MBisanz, Kwamikagami, Shanes, Triona, Jpgordon, Bobo192, Smalljim, R. S. Shaw, AllyUnion, Chirag,
LuoShengli, Jojit fb, Darwinek, Helix84, Nsaa, Ranveig, Alansohn, Mark Dingemanse, Jeltz, Riana, AzaToth, SlimVirgin, Lightdarkness, Avenue, Snowolf, Wtmitchell, Velella, Fordan, Ish ishwar, Garzo, Docboat, Shafticus, BlastOButter42, Kusma, Versageek, HenryLi, Bookandcoee, Angr, Velho, Simetrical, Woohookitty, Mindmatrix, RHaworth, TigerShark, Logophile, Bellenion, Mazca, Qaddosh, JeremyA, Umofomia, Wayward, Stefanomione, Gerbrant, Dysepsion, GSlicer, Mandarax, TAKASUGI Shinji, FreplySpang, Edison,
Sj, Sjakkalle, Koavf, Strait, Mo-Al, Matt Deres, Maurog, Sango123, Titoxd, RobertG, Latka, AJR, Andy85719, Gurch, KFP, Jersey
Devil, DVdm, Cornellrockey, Roboto de Ajvol, YurikBot, Mnewmanqc, Lighterside, GLaDOS, Stephenb, Wimt, NawlinWiki, Grafen,
Ptcamn, Twin Bird, RazorICE, Nutiketaiel, Cleared as led, Nick, Brandon, AdiJapan, Zirland, Maunus, Tigershrike, 21655, Closedmouth, Miguelmrm~enwiki, E Wing, Leeannedy, Crazyquesadilla, Katieh5584, Junglecat, DVD R W, ChemGardener, Sarah, SmackBot,
Lavintzin, MattieTK, YellowMonkey, KnowledgeOfSelf, Hydrogen Iodide, Zerida, Bomac, SJD914, Canthusus, Wakuran, HalfShadow,
The Rhymesmith, Gilliam, Ohnoitsjamie, Bluebot, LinguistAtLarge, Persian Poet Gal, Miquonranger03, MalafayaBot, SchftyThree,
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9.2

Images

Acid420d, Legendaryauthor, David34Goldi66 and Anonymous: 809

9.2

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CC BY 2.0 Contributors: Flickr: Happy Valentines Day Original artist: Paul
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based on original logo tossed together by Brion Vibber

9.3

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