What is the usage of a word

See alsoEdit

Hey, there! Welcome to this video on word usage.

Word usage is important when writing or speaking because word usage is what helps us to clearly articulate points with meanings and forms that are appropriate for the context and structure of a sentence. Understanding words and how to use them will greatly improve your ability to be an effective writer.

Here are three things to consider when deciding what words to use in your writing:

1. Does this word actually make sense in the context?
2. Who is your audience?
3. Are you being clear?

1. Choose Words that Make Sense

You must know what the word you are trying to use actually means.

For example:

The fish galloped through the water.

The word gallop is a poor word choice. The fish may have been going fast, but the word gallop is reserved for the quickest speed of a four-legged animal and mainly just refers to a horse.
A more appropriate word to use might be “the fish swam through the water,” or, if you really want your audience to be able to better envision the speed of the fish, you might say “the fish darted through the water,” or perhaps add an adjective like quickly in front of swam. “The fish quickly swam through the water.” There are several words out there you can use that would be appropriate, but there are also several wrong ones, so be sure to choose words that make sense in the context.

Another way we can use words that don’t make sense is by misusing words that sound the same, but, depending on spelling, have different meanings.

For example, their, there, and they’re all sound the exact same but mean different things.

Their shows possession of something and is generally always followed by a noun.

We went to their home for dinner.

Their insinuates ownership of the home. I wouldn’t use their when talking about the proximity of someone: “She’s over their.” The correct word is “she is over there.”

Their, there, and they’re can be used in several different ways. It can be used as an adverb, a pronoun that introduces a noun, an adjective, or a noun referring to a place.
The word they’re is a contraction of they are, and, generally, is followed by a verb, as in “they’re coming with us.”

2. Know Your Audience

Understanding who your audience is is very important as a writer. For instance, if you are writing to second-graders vs. writing to the president of the United States, those two letters will be very different. At least they should be. When writing to second-graders, you want to stay away from more complex words that they don’t yet understand, and when writing to the president, you want to write in a manner that is professional and respectful. Age difference and authority aren’t the only distinctions to make about your audience; cultural differences may also apply. Sometimes words or phrases can have different connotations depending on the culture.

Connotation

Connotation refers to the societal undertones, cultural implications, or emotions tied to certain words or phrases.

Let’s look at some examples:

In this city, 49% of people are mooching off of the government.

In this sentence, the word mooching has a negative connotation, suggesting that the people are selfishly taking advantage of the government.

In this city, 49% of people are on welfare.

In this sentence, you have simply stated an objective fact, making the connotation neutral.

In this city, 49%of people are in need of financial assistance.

In this sentence, the word need suggests that the people have done all they can, and it is still not enough, making the connotation positive.

Each of these sentences suggests very different things because of the word use. So be careful and considerate in the way that you write. You’re writing may suggest something that you did not intend for it to, so give thought to how words might be perceived by your audience when writing.

3. Write with Clarity

When you write with clarity, this makes your writing easy to follow and easy to understand. If you just try to embellish your writing by throwing really big words in places to try and show mastery, then you risk confusing your audience. Clarity is always the answer. Clarity is mastery. If you can write in a way that is clear, simple, and effective, then you have succeeded.

Here is what I’m talking about.

Our core competencies include, but are not limited to ideating holistic and innovative business plans that, in effect, will invoke a world-class paradigm shift.

This is too much, or should I say “this is extraordinarily beyond what is desired.”

It is not a bad thing, and it can be useful to use larger words, but when it is overdone, your writing can become ineffective, confusing, and it can lose the attention of your audience.

We can rewrite the sentence, to make it clear, direct, and effective without all the jargon.

We specialize in developing, and improving business plans to help you see growth.

I’ve made it short and direct, and I’ve said all the same things in fewer words.

The more you write, the more comfortable, and confident you will be in your ability to choose appropriate wording.

I hope this video was helpful!

See you next time!

In traditional grammar, word is the basic unit of language.A word refers to a speech sound, or a mixture of two or more speech sounds in both written and verbal form of language. A word works as a symbol to represent/refer to something/someone in language to communicate a specific meaning.

What is word and its example?

The definition of a word is a letter or group of letters that has meaning when spoken or written. An example of a word is dog.An example of words are the seventeen sets of letters that are written to form this sentence.

What is word and its types?

There are eight types of words that are often referred to as ‘word classes’ or ‘parts of speech’ and are commonly distinguished in English: nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.These are the different types of words in the English language.

What is word linguistics?

In linguistics, a word of a spoken language can be defined as the smallest sequence of phonemes that can be uttered in isolation with objective or practical meaning.In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a “word” may be learned as part of learning the writing system.

What is the meaning of word?

1 : a sound or combination of sounds that has meaning and is spoken by a human being. 2 : a written or printed letter or letters standing for a spoken word. 3 : a brief remark or conversation I’d like a word with you.

What are words called?

All words belong to categories called word classes (or parts of speech) according to the part they play in a sentence. The main word classes in English are listed below. Noun. Verb. Adjective.

What is word in language?

A word is a speech sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or a combination of morphemes. The branch of linguistics that studies word structures is called morphology.

A word class is a group of words that have the same basic behaviour, for example nouns, adjectives, or verbs.

Why do we define words?

The definition of definition is “a statement expressing the essential nature of something.” At least that’s one way Webster defines the word.Because definitions enable us to have a common understanding of a word or subject; they allow us to all be on the same page when discussing or reading about an issue.

Why do we say word?

‘Word’ in slang is a word one would use to indicate acknowledgement, approval, recognition or affirmation, of something somebody else just said.

What is morpheme and word?

Word vs Morpheme
A morpheme is usually considered as the smallest element of a word or else a grammar element, whereas a word is a complete meaningful element of language.

What is word Slideshare?

•“A word’ is a free morpheme or a combination of morphemes that together form a basic segment of speech” .

Is word a noun or verb?

word used as a noun:
A distinct unit of language (sounds in speech or written letters) with a particular meaning, composed of one or more morphemes, and also of one or more phonemes that determine its sound pattern. A distinct unit of language which is approved by some authority.

What are the parts of a word?

The parts of a word are called morphemes. These include suffixes, prefixes and root words. Take the word ‘microbiology,’ for example.

What is word Wikipedia?

A word is something spoken by the mouth, that can be pronounced. In alphabetic writing, it is a collection of letters used together to communicate a meaning. These can also usually be pronounced.Some words have different pronunciation, for example, ‘wind’ (the noun) and ‘wind’ (the verb) are pronounced differently.

What type of word is there?

The word “there” have multiple functions. In verbal and written English, the word can be used as an adverb, a pronoun, a noun, an interjection, or an adjective. This word is classified as an adverb if it is used to modify a verb in the sentence.

What is word boundaries?

A word boundary is a zero-width test between two characters. To pass the test, there must be a word character on one side, and a non-word character on the other side. It does not matter which side each character appears on, but there must be one of each.

What is called sentence?

A sentence is a set of words that are put together to mean something. A sentence is the basic unit of language which expresses a complete thought. It does this by following the grammatical basic rules of syntax.A complete sentence has at least a subject and a main verb to state (declare) a complete thought.

Is your name a word?

Yes, names are words. Specifically, they are proper nouns: they refer to specific people, places, or things. “John” is a proper noun; “ground” is a common noun. But both are words.

What are the 4 main word classes?

There are four major word classes: verb, noun, adjective, adverb.

What is word class in syntax?

In English grammar, a word class is a set of words that display the same formal properties, especially their inflections and distribution.It is also variously called grammatical category, lexical category, and syntactic category (although these terms are not wholly or universally synonymous).

According to traditional grammar, a word is defined as, “the basic unit of language”. The word is usually a speech sound or mixture of sounds which is represented in speaking and writing.

Few examples of words are fan, cat, building, scooter, kite, gun, jug, pen, dog, chair, tree, football, sky, etc.

You can also define it as, “a letter or group/set of letters which has some meaning”. So, therefore the words are classified according to their meaning and action.

It works as a symbol to represent/refer to something/someone in the language.

The group of words makes a sentence. These sentences contain different types of functions (of the words) in it.

The structure (formation) of words can be studied with Morphology which is usually a branch (part) of linguistics.

The meaning of words can be studied with Lexical semantics which is also a branch (part) of linguistics.

Also Read: What is a Sentence in English Grammar? | Best Guide for 2021

The word can be used in many ways. Few of them are mentioned below.

1. Noun (rabbit, ring, pencil, US, etc)
2. Pronoun (he, she, it, we, they, etc)
3. Adjective (big, small, fast, slow, etc)
4. Verb (jumping, singing, dancing, etc)
5. Adverb (slowly, fastly, smoothly, etc)
6. Preposition (in, on, into, for, under, etc)
7. Conjunction (and, or, but, etc)
8. Subject (in the sentences)
9. Verb and many more!

Now, let us understand the basic rules of the words.

Rules/Conditions for word

There are some set of rules (criteria) in the English Language which describes the basic necessity of becoming a proper word.

Rule 1: Every word should have some potential pause in between the speech and space should be given in between while writing.

For example, consider the two words like “football” and “match” which are two different words. So, if you want to use them in a sentence, you need to give a pause in between the words for pronouncing.

It cannot be like “Iwanttowatchafootballmatch” which is very difficult to read (without spaces).

But, if you give pause between the words while reading like, “I”, “want”, “to”, “watch”, “a”, “football”, “match”.

Example Sentence: I want to watch a football match.

We can observe that the above sentence can be read more conveniently and it is the only correct way to read, speak and write.

• Incorrect: Iwanttowatchafootballmatch.
• Correct: I want to watch a football match.

So, always remember that pauses and spaces should be there in between the words.

Rule 2: Every word in English grammar must contain at least one root word.

The root word is a basic word which has meaning in it. But if we further break down the words, then it can’t be a word anymore and it also doesn’t have any meaning in it.

So, let us consider the above example which is “football”. If we break this word further, (such as “foot” + “ball”), we can observe that it has some meaning (even after breaking down).

Now if we further break down the above two words (“foot” + “ball”) like “fo” + “ot” and “ba” + “ll”, then we can observe that the words which are divided have no meaning to it.

So, always you need to remember that the word should have atleast one root word.

Rule 3: Every word you want to use should have some meaning.

Yes, you heard it right!

We know that there are many words in the English Language. If you have any doubt or don’t know the meaning of it, then you can check in the dictionary.

But there are also words which are not defined in the English Language. Many words don’t have any meaning.

So, you need to use only the words which have some meaning in it.

For example, consider the words “Nuculer” and “lakkanah” are not defined in English Language and doesn’t have any meaning.

Always remember that not every word in the language have some meaning to it.

Also Read: 12 Rules of Grammar | (Grammar Basic Rules with examples)

More examples of Word

Quiz Time! (Test your knowledge here)

Summary: (What is a word?)

• Generally, the word is the basic and smallest unit in the language.
• It is categorised based on its meaning.
• Morphology is the study of Words structure (formation) and Lexical semantics is the study of meanings of the words. These both belong to a branch of Linguistics.
• A word should have at least one root and meaning to it.

Also Read: What is Grammar? | (Grammar definition, types & examples) | Best Guide 2021

If you are interested to learn more, then you can refer wikipedia from here.

I hope that you understood the topic “What is a word?”. If you still have any doubts, then comment down below and we will respond as soon as possible. Thank You.

Usage refers to the conventional ways in which words or phrases are used, spoken, or written in a speech community.

There is no official institution (akin to the 500-year-old Académie française, for example) that functions as an authority on how the English language should be used. There are, however, numerous publications, groups, and individuals (style guides, language mavens, and the like) that have attempted to codify (and sometimes dictate) rules of usage.

Etymology
From Latin, usus  «to use

Observations

• «This usage stuff is not straightforward and easy. If ever someone tells you that the rules of English grammar are simple and logical and you should just learn them and obey them, walk away, because you’re getting advice from a fool.» (Geoffrey K. Pullum, «Does It Really Matter If It Dangles?» Language Log, Nov. 20, 2010)
• «The thoughtful, nondichotomous position on language depends on a simple insight: Rules of proper usage are tacit conventions. Conventions are unstated agreements within a community to abide by a single way of doing things—not because there is any inherent advantage to the choice, but because there is an advantage to everyone making the same choice. Standardized weights and measures, electrical voltages and cables, computer file formats, the Gregorian calendar, and paper currency are familiar examples.» (Steven Pinker, «False Fronts in the Language Wars.» Slate, May 31, 2012)

The Difference Between Grammar and Usage

«In this book, grammar refers to the manner in which the language functions, the ways that the blocks of speech and writing are put together. Usage refers to using specific words in a manner that will be thought of as either acceptable or unacceptable. The question of whether or not to split an infinitive is a consideration of grammar; the question of whether one should use literally in a nonliteral sense is one of usage.» (Ammon Shea, Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation. Perigee, 2014)

Arbiters of Usage

• «The present-day scholarly concept of usage as a social consensus based on the practices of the educated middle class has emerged only within the last century. For many people, however, the views and aims of the 17th-18c fixers of the language continue to hold true: they consider that there ought to be a single authority capable of providing authoritative guidance about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ usage. For them, the model remains that of the Greek and Latin, and they have welcomed arbiters of usage such as Henry Fowler who have based their prescriptions on this model. In spite of this … no nation in which English is the main language has yet set up an official institution to monitor and make rules about usage. New words, and new senses and uses of words, are not sanctioned or rejected by the authority of any single body: they arise through regular use and, once established, are recorded in dictionaries and grammars. This means that, with the classical model of grammar in rapid decline, the users of English collectively set the standards and priorities that underlie all usage.» (Robert Allen, «Usage.» The Oxford Companion to the English Language, ed. T. McArthur. Oxford University Press, 1992)
• «Most of the little manuals which pretend to regulate our use of our own language and to declare what is and what is not good English are grotesque in their ignorance; and the best of them are of small value, because they are prepared on the assumption that the English language is dead, like the Latin, and that, like Latin again, its usage is fixed finally. Of course, this assumption is as far as possible from the fact. The English language is alive now—very much alive. And because it is alive it is in a constant state of growth. It is developing daily according to its needs. It is casting aside words and usages that are no longer satisfactory; it is adding new terms as new things are brought forward; and it is making new usages, as convenience suggests, short-cuts across lots, and to the neglect of the five-barred gates rigidly set up by our ancestors.» (Brander Matthews, Parts of Speech: Essays on English, 1901)

Usage and Corpus Linguistics

Linguists and Usage

«As a field of study, usage doesn’t hold much interest for modern linguists, who are drifting more and more toward qualitative psychology and theory. Their leading theorist, Noam Chomsky of MIT, has acknowledged, with no apparent regret, the pedagogical irrelevance of modern linguistics: ‘I am, frankly, rather skeptical about the significance, for the teaching of languages, of such insights and understanding as have been attained in linguistics and psychology’ … If you want to learn how to use the English language skillfully and gracefully, books on linguistics won’t help you at all.» (Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 2009)

Correctness

«In the past, unproven ideas about ‘the Standard’ have often been used to forward certain social interests at the expense of others. Knowing this, we do not describe the misuse of the conventions of punctuation in some students’ writing as ‘a crime against civilization,’ although we do point out the mistakes. What interests us far more is that these apprentice writers have interesting ideas to convey, and manage to support their arguments well. They should be encouraged to turn to the task of writing seriously and enthusiastically rather than be discouraged because they cannot punctuate a restrictive clause correctly. But when they ask, ‘Does spelling count?’ we tell them that in writing, as in life, everything counts. For academic writers, as for writers in a wide variety of fields (business, journalism, education, etc.), correctness in both content and expression is vital. . . . Language standardization may have been used as a tool of social oppression, but it has also been the vehicle of broad collaboration and communication. We are right to treat usage both warily and seriously.» (Margery Fee and Janice McAlpine, Guide to Canadian English Usage, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2007)
 

«Usage is trendy, arbitrary, and above all, constantly changing, like all other fashions—in clothing, music, or automobiles. Grammar is the rationale of a language; usage is the etiquette.»​ (I. S. Fraser and L. M. Hodson, «Twenty-One Kicks at the Grammar Horse.» The English Journal, Dec. 1978)
 

E.B. White on Usage as a «Matter of Ear»

Pronunciation: YOO-sij

Word is a unit of language that serves as a principal carrier of meaning, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation. One may define a word as the blocks from which sentences are made. Words consist of one or more morphemes that can be of independent use or consist of two or three such units combined under some connection. Words are usually divided into writing by spaces and in many languages. They are differentiated phonologically, as by accent.

Idioms beginning with Words:

• word for word

• word of honour

• word of mouth

• words fail me

• words of one syllable,

• words stick in one’s throat

• words to that effect

• word to the wise

Types of a Word

Word is a speech sound or sequence of speech sounds that typically symbolize and express a message without being divisible into smaller units that can be used separately.

Word is the whole range of linguistic forms generated by combining a single basis with different inflectional elements without altering the part of speech elements.

• Any part of a written or printed expression that normally occurs between spaces or between a space and a punctuation mark.

• The act of speaking or talking verbally. A short comment or conversation

• I just want to have a chat with you.

• A number of bytes that are processed as a unit and convey a quantity of contact and computer work information

• To form phrases, we combine words. Typically, a term serves the same purpose as a word from some other class of terms.

What makes a Word Real Word?

In English, the word has a broad variety of meanings and uses. Yet one of the pieces of word-related knowledge most commonly searched for is not something that can be included in its meaning. Instead, what makes a word a real word is some variant of the question?

Vocabulary is one of English’s most prolific fields of change and variation; new terms are constantly being invented to name or characterize new technologies or developments or to better classify aspects of our rapidly changing culture. Time, resources and personnel constraints would make it impossible for any dictionary to capture a completely comprehensive account of all the terms in the language, no matter how big. Most general English dictionaries are intended to contain only terms that fulfil certain usage requirements in large areas and over long periods (for more information about how words are selected for entry in the dictionary).

Classification of Words

Words are grouped in English into parts of speech. The functional adjective and functional adverb are functional derivations. 

Noun

A noun is an identifying word:

Eg: An individual (man, female, engineer, friend)

Verb

What a person or thing does or what happens is represented by a verb. 

Eg: A case,  An action

Adjective

An adjective is a term that identifies a noun, offering additional details about it. 

Eg: A thrilling adventure

Adverb

An adverb is a word used to give a verb, adjective or other adverb details. They can make stronger or weaker the meaning of a noun, adjective, or other adverbs, and sometimes appear between the subject and its verb.

Eg: She almost lost everything.

Pronoun

In place of a noun that is already recognized or has already been mentioned, pronouns are used. To stop repeating the noun, this is always done. 

Eg: Since she was tired, Laura left early.

Preposition

A preposition is a concept like after, in to, on, and with. Prepositions are normally used in front of nouns or pronouns and illustrate the connection in a sentence between the noun or pronoun and other words.

Conjunction

A conjunction is a term such as and because, but for, if or, and when A conjunction (also called a connective). Conjunctions are used to connect words, clauses, and sentences.

Determiner

A determiner is a phrase that introduces a noun, such as a/an, the any, this, others, or many (as in a dog, the dog, this dog, those dogs, each dog, many dogs).

Exclamation

A word or expression that expresses strong emotions, such as surprise, pleasure, or rage, is an exclamation (also called an interjection). Exclamations sometimes stand on their own.

A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value. Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes. Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses, and sentences. A word consisting of two or more stems joined together form a compound. A word combined with another word or part of a word form a portmanteau.

Etymology

English ‘ is directly from Old English «word», and has cognates in all branches of Germanic (Old High German «wort», Old Norse «orð», Gothic «waurd»), deriving from Proto-Germanic «*wurđa», continuing a virtual PIE «PIE|*wr̥dhom«. Cognates outside Germanic include Baltic (Old Prussian «wīrds» «word», and with different ablaut Lithuanian » var̃das» «name», Latvian «vàrds» «word, name») and Latin ‘. The PIE stem «PIE|*werdh-» is also found in Greek ερθει (φθεγγεται «speaks, utters» Hes. ). The PIE root is «PIE|*ŭer-, ŭrē-» «say, speak» (also found in Greek ειρω, ρητωρ). [Jacob Grimm, «Deutsches Wörterbuch»]

The original meaning of «word» is «utterance, speech, verbal expression». [OED, sub I. 1-11.] Until Early Modern English, it could more specifically refer to a name or title. [OED, sub II. 12 b. (a)]

The technical meaning of «an element of speech» first arises in discussion of grammar (particularly Latin grammar), as in the prologue to Wyclif’s Bible (ca. 1400)::»This word «autem», either «vero», mai stonde for «forsothe», either for «but».» [OED meaning II. 12 a.]

Definitions

Depending on the language, words can be difficult to identify or delimit. Dictionaries take upon themselves the task of categorizing a language’s lexicon into lemmas. These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a «word» in the opinion of the authors.

Word boundaries

In spoken language, the distinction of individual words is usually given by rhythm or accent, but short words are often run together. See clitic for phonologically dependent words. Spoken French has some of the features of a polysynthetic language: «il y est allé» («He went there») is pronounced /IPA|i.ljɛ.ta.le/. As the majority of the world’s languages are not written, the scientific determination of word boundaries becomes important.

There are five ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed:;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.;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 «I and my family 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 infixes, which are put inside a word. Similarly, some have separable affixes; in the German sentence «Ich komme gut zu Hause an,» the noun «ankommen» is separated.;Minimal free forms:This concept was proposed by Leonard Bloomfield. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. 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»).;Phonetic boundaries:Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word, a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish): the vowels within a given word share the same «quality», so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. However, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.;Semantic units:Much like the above mentioned minimal free forms, this method breaks down a sentence into its smallest semantic units. However, language often contains words that have little semantic value (and often play a more grammatical role), or semantic units that are compound words.

;A further criterion. Pragmatics. As Plag suggests, the idea of a lexical item being considered a word should also adjust to pragmatic criteria. The word «hello, for example, does not exist outside of the realm of greetings being difficult to assign a meaning out of it. This is a little more complex if we consider «how do you do?»: is it a word, a phrase, or an idiom? In practice, linguists apply a mixture of all these methods to determine the word boundaries of any given sentence. Even with the careful application of these methods, the exact definition of a word is often still very elusive.

There are some words that seem very general but may truly have a technical definition, such as the word «soon,» usually meaning within a week.

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 space marks) are common in modern orthography of languages using alphabetic scripts,but these are (excepting isolated precedents) a modern development (see also history of writing).

In English orthography, words may contain spaces if they are compounds or proper nouns such as «ice cream» or «air raid shelter».

Vietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alphabet, delimits monosyllabic morphemes, not words. Conversely, synthetic languages often combine many lexical morphemes into single words, making it difficult to boil them down to the traditional sense of words found more easily in analytic languages; this is especially difficult for polysynthetic languages such as Inuktitut and Ubykh, where entire sentences may consist of single such words.

Logographic scripts use single signs (characters) to express a word. Most «de facto» existing scripts are however partly logographic, and combine logographic with phonetic signs. The most widespreadlogographic script in modern use is the Chinese script. While the Chinese script has some true logographs, the largest class of characters used in modern Chinese (some 90%) are so-called pictophonetic compounds ( _zh. 形声字, _pn. Xíngshēngzì). Characters of this sort are composed of two parts: a pictograph, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and a phonetic part, which is derived from a character pronounced in the same way as the word the new character represents. In this sense, the character for most Chinese words consists of a determiner and a syllabogram, similar to the approach used by cuneiform script and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

There is a tendency informed by orthography to identify a single Chinese character as corresponding to a single word in the Chinese language, parallel to the tendency to identify the letters between two space marks as a single word in the English language. In both cases, this leads to the identification of compound members as individual words, while e.g. in German orthography, compound members are not separated by space marks and the tendency is thus to identify the entire compound as a single word. Compare e.g. English «capital city» with German «Hauptstadt» and Chinese 首都 (lit. ): all three are equivalent compounds, in the English case consisting of «two words» separated by a space mark, in the German case written as a «single word» without space mark, and in the Chinese case consisting of two logographic characters.

Morphology

In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, «love») may have a number of different forms (for example, «loves», «loving», and «loved»). However, these are not usually considered to be different words, but different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes.In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are
*the root
*optional suffixes
*a desinence.Thus, the Proto-Indo-European «PIE|*wr̥dhom» would be analysed as consisting of
#»PIE|*wr̥-«, the zero grade of the root «PIE|*wer-»
#a root-extension «PIE|*-dh-» (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root «PIE|*wr̥dh-«
#The thematic suffix «PIE|*-o-«
#the neuter gender nominative or accusative singular desinence «PIE|*-m«.

Classes

Grammar classifies a language’s lexicon into several groups of words. The basic bipartite division possible for virtually every natural language is that of nouns vs. verbs.

The classification 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, Panini introduced a similar fundamental classification into a nominal (nāma, suP) and a verbal (ākhyāta, tiN) class, based on the set of desinences taken by the word.

References

*Bauer, L. (1983) English Word Formation. Cambridge. CUP.
*Brown, Keith R. (Ed.) (2005) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.). Elsevier. 14 vols.
*Crystal, D. (1995) The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP, 1995.
*Plag, Ingo.(2003) Word formation in English. CUP

ee also

*Grammar
*Utterance
*Morphology
*Lexeme
*Lexicon
*Lexis (linguistics)
*Lexical item

External links

* [http://www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/essay_-_what_is_a_word.pdf What Is a Word?] — a working paper by Larry Trask, Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Sussex.