WORD, SENTENCES AND

DICTIONARIES

2nd Meeting
 Word, Sentences, & Dictionaries
• Word (kata): yaitu morfem atau kombinasi
morfem sebagai satuan terkecil yang dapat
diujarkan sebagai bentuk yang bebas; satuan
bahasa yang dapat berdiri sendiri.
• Morpheme (morfem): yaitu satuan bahasa
terkecil yang maknanya secara relatif stabil
dan yang tidak dapat dibagi atas bagian
bermakna yang lebih kecil; misalnya = ter-, di-,
pensil, dsb adalah merupakan morfem.
 Word functions
1). Words as meaningful building-blocks of
language
Words: as the basic units of language
When a baby begins to speak, his/her mother
will say:”My baby has said his/her first word,
not sentence (sentences come later).
So, learning to talk in everyday childhood seems
to be a matter of putting words together, not
of taking sentences apart (terpisah)
• Words as the building-blocks of language
mean that we often use single words outside
the context of any actual or reconstruct
(merekonstruksi) sentence. For examples:
1). Warning shouts: “Fire!”
2). Conventional commands: ‘Lights!’, ‘Camera!’,
‘Action!’
3). Items on shopping lists: ‘carrots’, ‘cheese’,
‘eggs’
• Outside words can be sorted (disortir) and
classified in various ways:
1). A comprehensive classification of English
words according to meaning is a thesaurus
(kamus/ensiklopedi), such as
“Roget’s Thesaurus”.
2). Conventional classification refers to
‘dictionary’, in which words are listed
according to their spelling in alphabetical
order.
• English spelling is so erratic (tak beraturan/tak
menentu), so there are some reasons for looking
up a word in an English dictionary:
1). To check how to spell it
2). To check what it means
3). Alphabetically listed of words with a definition
of what it means
4). The information about grammar (the word class
or part of speech that the word belongs to) and
its pronunciation
• Example: the word “MONTH” in Oxford
dictionary
Month noun: any of twelve portions into which
the year is divided
So, word that is as unit of language isn’t just a
building-block out of phrases and sentences
formed, but also in the meaning that is
unpredictable and must be listed in
dictionaries.
2). Words as types and words as tokens (tanda)
How many words are there in the following
sentence?
“Mary goes to Edinburgh next week, and she
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
intends going to Washington next month.”
9 10 11 12 13 14
The words to & next are repeated, so the sentence above
has twelve words. This process is called as token and
type.
3& 11, 5 & 13= are distinct tokens of a single/one type.
It seems like saying two performances of the same tune,
or two copies of the same book.
• Token: is an instance of unit, as distinct from
the unit that is instanced.
e.g., the word ‘fluffy’ has 6 tokens of the letter
‘f’ and one each of ‘l’, ‘u’, and ‘y’, so we have 6
tokens
• Types: any set of languages seen as sharing, to
a greater or lesser degree, some structural
characteristics or set of characteristics.
From the word ‘fluffy’ above, we have 4 types
(‘f’, ‘l’, ‘u’, and ‘y’)
3). Words with predictable meanings
For present purposes, what matters is to be aware that
not every word can be listed in a dictionary, even in
the fullest dictionary imaginable.
Onomatopoeic words: are some words whose sound
seems to reflect their meaning directly.
Example: words for animal cries
Bow-wow, miaow, cheep, cock-a-doodle-do
Onomatopoeic words aren’t the same in all languages.
Examples:
A cock-crow in german is kikeriki
dog’s bark in French is ouah ouah (pronunced ‘wah
wah’)
4). Non-words with unpredictable meaning
Non-words such as idioms
Idioms are various in length, structure, and function.
Examples:
a. Take a shine to= become attracted to (mulai suka/tertarik
dengan)
b. Raise Cain= create a disturbance (protes keras/membabi
buta)
c. Have a chip on one’s shoulder= be resentful
(senang bertengkar)
d. Kick the bucket= die
e. White elephant= unwanted object
f. Dark horse: competitor whose strength is unknown
g. Aunt Sally= target of mockery (target ejekan/hinaan)
• Examples of sentences:
a. The interrogation took a long time because the
suspect kept introducing irrelevant arguments.
b.The interrogation took a long time because the
suspect kept introducing red herrings.
A learner of English will assume that in sentence
(b), the suspect pulls a fish from his pocket, but
native speaker has already known that ‘red
herrings’ mean ‘irrelevant arguments’.
So, both sentences above have similar meaning.