THE WORD AS THE UNIT OF MORPHOLOGY Lecture

THE WORD AS THE UNIT OF MORPHOLOGY Lecture 3

LECTURE OUTLINE The complexity of the phenomenon. Different approaches taken. The specific features of the word as the unit of language. The word and the word form.

THE WORD IS THE CENTRAL UNIT OF LANGUAGE, ISN’T IT? The Bible: ‘In the beginning was the Word’; God gave Adam the power to name all things. Any mother of a child started talking: “Tommy (or Sally) has said his (her) first word! Words name things, sentences communicate ideas. The word is difficult to define, ambiguity discourages linguists.

DEFINING THE WORD A word is characterized by different, often contradictory traits depending on theoretical background and descriptive context; different perspectives – different definition.

DEFINING THE WORD (a) phonetic-phonological level: words are the smallest segments of sound that can be theoretically isolated by word accent and boundary markers like pauses, clicks, and the like, and which are further isolated on a (b) orthographic-graphemic level by blank spaces in writing or print;

DEFINING THE WORD (c) on the morphological level, words are characterized as the basic elements of grammatical paradigms and are distinguished from the morphologically characterized word forms, cf. write vs writes, wrote, written; they are structurally stable and cannot be divided, and can be described as well by specific rules of word formation;

DEFINING THE WORD (d) on the lexical-semantic level, words are the smallest, relatively independent carriers of meaning that are codified in the lexicon; (e) words can be described syntactically as the smallest permutable and substitutable units of a sentence.

THREE MAIN DIRECTIONS The word as a semantic unit, the unit of meaning. The word is a marked phonological unit. The words as an indivisible unit.

DEFINING THE WORD SEMANTIC APPROACH The word is a unit of a particular meaning with a particular complex of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. Criminal and lawyer vs. criminal lawyer; Foot (part of a leg, part of the mountain); Running in the morning is great vs. I go for a run every morning.

DEFINING THE WORD PHONOLOGICAL CRITERION Compare: that stuff that’s tough a nice cake an ice cake grey day Grade A On hearing these words (without proper context) the meaning cannot be distinguished.

DEFINING THE WORD AS AN INDIVISIBLE UNIT Bloomfield a ‘minimum free form’, that can occur in isolation. a, the do not occur in isolation!

PROVIDING THE LISTS OF FEATURES The word possesses: uninterruptebility (a chatterbox vs. a new blue box); looseness in reference to the place in a sequence (Away he went vs. he went away); a bilateral entity (content side and expression side).

PROVIDING THE LISTS OF FEATURES the minimal unit of language which possesses relevant positional independence); the smallest unit which can fulfills certain syntactic functions; the biggest unit of morphology.

PROVIDING THE LISTS OF FEATURES a meaningful unit differentiating word-groups at the upper level and integrating morphemes at the lower level; the main expressive unit of language, which ensure though-forming function of language; the basic nominative unit of language (the naming function of language is realized); a level unit, which belongs to the upper stage of the morphological level / to the lexemic level; a bilateral entity (content/ expression).

THE WORD VS. THE WORD FORM language vs. speech dichotomy The words of a language being used in speech are represented by a number of word forms. The word form is a linguistic unit which carries grammatical information identified through contrast with other forms of the same word. The whole set of grammatical forms of a word constitutes its paradigm. Write (writes, is writing, have written).

THE WORD FORM The concrete realization of the word as a lexical and grammatical unity in speech. The word form (contrasted with the word) is only characterized with the grammatical meaning, fixed (reflected) in specific formal markers. The grammatical meaning can be expressed in one graphic unit or by adding other units as well: synthetic (walked, gave it to me) and analytic (is walking, saw me).