Despite the
central status of the word in the language system and the fact that
speakers have no difficulty in identifying words in speech it is very
difficult to give a satisfactory definition
of
the word. Many attempts have been made to this effect but still there
is no satisfying and universally accepted word definition. This
difficulty is conditioned by word’s complexity, as word is
characterized by many aspects and properties, such as phonological,
morphological, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic ones.
The
attempts to define word proceeded either from one particular
criterion or their combinations. Definitions proceeding from a
phonological
criterion
were offered by Ch. Hocket [Hocket 1978: 166] and P.S. Kuznetsov
[Кузнецов
1964: 7] who claimed that word is any segment of a sentence (Hocket)
or a sequence of sounds (Kuznetsov) which can be separated by pauses
of any length. Such definitions point out at the outer form of the
word, the possibility to single it out between the pauses in actual
speech, but do not disclose its inner faculties, the word’s content
– its meaning.
Purely
semantic
criteria
of
word definition cannot be considered sufficient as well. For instance
St. Ullmann’s definition is based on a semantic criterion: “Words
are meaningful segments of connected discourse”. [Ullmann 1959:
30]. Not only words are meaningful units but also morphemes and
prosodic components of discourse: pauses, intonation, etc. Word
cannot be defined as a unit of the language expressing a particular
concept or notion, although word is related to concept which will be
pointed out later (chapter 2). Besides, concepts are expressed not
only by words but also word combinations, phrases and sentences.
Concept is a category of cognition and it is impossible to establish
a one-to-one correspondence between word and concept.
A.H.Gardiner
based his definition on the semantic-phonological approach: “A word
is an articulate sound-system in its aspect of denoting something
which is spoken about” [quoted from Arnold 1973: 26]. The word has
been syntactically defined as: “A word is the minimum sentence”
by H.Sweet and much later by L.Bloomfield as “a minimum free form”
[Bloomfield 1933: 187].
There were
attempts to combine the semantic, phonological and grammatical
criteria: The definitions by the Czech linguist B. Trnk “Word is a
minimum unit of meaning realized by a definite sequence of phonemes
and capable of mobility within a sentence” [1964: 201] and the
eminent French linguist A.Meillet “A word is defined by the
association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds
capable of a particular grammatical employment” [1926: 30] serve
as examples. Despite the fact that the above definitions embrace
various aspects of the word, they were objects of criticism because
(1) not every word is capable of positional mobility, for instance,
articles, prepositions, particles cannot move freely within a
sentence; (2) the definitions do not distinguish between a word and a
word combination. As I.V.Arnold puts it “not only child,
but a
pretty child as
well are combinations of a particular meaning with a particular group
of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment” [1973:
26].
The word
definitions offered by Soviet/Russian linguists are based on the
theory of signs and modern semantic approaches (see ch.2). For
instance, the definition offered by O.S.Akhmanova runs as folliows:
“Word is the smallest unit of the language functioning within the
sentence, which directly corresponds to the object of thought
(referent) and is a generalized reverberation of a certain ‘slice’,
‘piece’ of objective reality – and by immediately referring to
it names the thing meant”.
In English
and other analytical languages there exist the so-called analytical
forms of certain parts of speech, such as verbs, e.g. have
finished, didn’t go, is reading, etc.,
comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives: more
interesting, most sincerely.
Such words possess certain structural separateness.
Summing
up our review of different definitions we come to the conclusion that
they are bound to be strongly dependent upon the line of approach,
the aim the scholar has in view. For a comprehensive word theory a
description seems more appropriate than a definition.
All
that was said about the word can be summed up as follows. The word is
a linguistic sign. It represents a group of sounds possessing a
meaning, susceptible to grammatical employment and characterized by
formal and semantic unity.
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Lexicon Valley
A version of this post originally appeared in the Week.
It’s the most frequent word in the English language, accounting for around four percent of all the words we write or speak. It’s everywhere, all the time, so clearly it must be doing something important. Words have meaning. That’s fundamental, isn’t it? So what does “the,” a word that seems to be supporting a significant portion of the entire weight of our language, mean? It must mean something, right?
We can say, roughly, that “the” means the word it is attached to refers to a specific, individual object. When I say “I have the apple,” I mean a certain apple, not just any old apple, or apples in general.
But, of course, it’s not quite that easy. Sometimes “the” doesn’t indicate a specific object, but a whole class of objects. When you say you know how to play “the piano” or that exercise is good for “the heart,” there is no specific piano or heart you have in mind. “The pen is mightier than the sword” isn’t about specific pens or swords — or even about specific instances of their metaphorical counterparts, acts of writing and acts of aggression.
“The” does not seem like a difficult word, but it’s very hard to explain to someone who isn’t a native speaker. Why do we say, “I love the ballet,” but not “I love the cable TV”? Why do we say, “I have the flu,” but not “I have the headache”? Why do we say, “winter is the coldest season,” and not “winter is coldest season”? For speakers of Russian, Korean, or any language that doesn’t have a “the,” these are important questions.
The only satisfactory answers are found, not in an explanatory definition, but in lists of situations where “the” is used. Such a list is what you find, in fact, if you look up “the” in the dictionary, something native speakers almost never do. Why would they? It’s not “anthropomorphism” or “jejune” or one of those words people need dictionaries for. But dictionary-makers are tasked with defining all the words people use, not just the glamorous ones, and sometimes the simplest words turn out to be the hardest ones to define. The entry for “the” on Merriam-Webster.com lists 23 places where it can go, among them “before the plural form of a numeral that is a multiple of ten to denote a particular decade of a century or of a person’s life ” and “before the name of a commodity or any familiar appurtenance of daily life to indicate reference to the individual thing, part, or supply thought of as at hand.” These uses are related to each other in a loose and complex way, but it’s impossible to pull out the single definitive meaning that underlies them all. You simply have to list them. And that list is the meaning.
The OED lists 50 entries for “the,” some of which are only historical relics. It was once correct to play “the chess,” to learn “the dressmaking” and “the mathematics,” and to read “the French,” all for “the posterity.” The “the” dropped out of those situations. The fact that it doesn’t go before those words anymore is also part of its meaning.
So the meaning of “the” is the combination of the situations where it is appropriate and the situations where it is not appropriate. This makes it quite different from straightforwardly definable words like “octahedron” (“a three-dimensional figure having eight plane faces”), but not much different from “different” or “see” or “now” or any of the everyday words we use all the time. We like to think of words as little containers of meaning that we pack and unpack as we communicate, but they are not containers so much as pointers. They point us toward a body of experience and knowledge, to conversations we have had and things we have read, to places in sentences where we have and haven’t seen them. Words get their meanings from what we do with them. Especially the word we use the most.
More from the Week:
Car-a-mel or Car-mel? 3 reasons for syllabically ambiguous words
11 sexting acronyms from the 1930’s
Now you can Rickroll your friends (or enemies) in Klingon
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Language
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Lexicon Valley
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“It’s the most frequent word in the English language, accounting for around four percent of all the words we write or speak. It’s everywhere, all the time, so clearly it must be doing something important. Words have meaning. That’s fundamental, isn’t it? So what does “the,” a word that seems to be supporting a significant portion of the entire weight of our language, mean? It must mean something, right?”
Why Is the Word the So Difficult to Define? – Article by Arika Okrent over at Slate
We recently had an email about the text on one part of our website, where this question was asked – “Should it be language is the building blocks or language is the building block?” It’s a good question to lead into this post. It’d be a bit strange to say building block as not much gets constructed with one block, but can you say lexis are the true building blocks? The temptation is to replace lexis with words, but then this panders to the idea of a word as clear, distinct entity matched with a clear distinct meaning unaffected by other words or grammar around it. According to Hanks (see below), this is more or less the original position of Chomsky. It allows for infinite creativity as these single words are slipped into syntactic slots, but runs into problems when we see how words are actually used.
Of course, words can be used on their own. Help!, God and You all work on their own and strings of single words such as ‘want see film ages’ can be used to create messages even without formal syntax. That’s what often happens when we start using a language, whether mother tongue or second language. However, in the language that more fluent speakers produce, what we mean by a word is often pretty difficult to define, not just in terms of meaning, but also in terms of its boundaries.
Units of meaning
For example, phrasal verbs contain two or three types (the technical term for a single word), but we don’t process “pick up” or ‘look forward to’ as types with separate meanings. If we see phrasal verbs as having a single meaning, then we might also see an idiom like “lay your cards on the table” as being equivalent to one meaning. Alison Wray has argued that there are many more formulaic phrases that may be less obviously idiomatic such as “when I was a kid” which are processed in a similar way. For the purposes of recall, these phrases are conceived of as single units of meaning (Wray) in the speaker’s mind and in the way the listener processes what they hear. Interestingly, one sign that Wray suggests identifies these formulaic phrases is that they are said more quickly than non-formulaic combinations. The phonologist Richard Cauldwell shows how a ‘word’ within this kind of formulaic phrase can be compressed to single sounds or may even disappear altogether. We might conclude that this doesn’t matter because what we process in terms of meaning is the whole utterance.
Collocation
We then have the effect of collocation on the meaning of words. In his brilliant new book Norms and Exploitations, the lexicographer Patrick Hanks illustrates the subtle changes in meaning of words such as fire or file when new collocates are applied to them. So raging fire and roaring fire imply different kinds of fire – one out of control and usually consuming a whole building, the other one deliberately constructed in a fireplace to warm a domestic space. At the same time, though, fire implies a different kind of raging and roaring to raging lunatic and roaring crowd. Filing a medical report, a news report or a flight log all involve quite different acts, despite all fitting a ‘file a document’ pattern. We will return to his ideas of norms and exploitations at a later date, but for the moment it’s sufficient to emphasise again that meanings – particularly all the meanings of many single words – are difficult to define and as a principle we should be looking beyond single words in terms of our teaching
Applications
Still, based on our first principle that words are more important than grammar, let’s not say “never teach a single word”. Let’s say instead that we should
- See the single word and the definition as only a first step – e.g. revise single words by looking at collocations and patterns
- Notice longer units of meaning and not just traditional phrasal verbs and idioms
- Provide and elicit more collocations and examples
- If you are starting from a collocation or phrase, think about the collocations and usage of that collocation / phrase.
- Provide more examples of how combined words sound at speed (Cauldwell)
Links and references
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/contactsandpeople/profiles/wray-alison.html – Allison Wray’s Profile page
http://lextutor.ca/cv/wray.htm – Tom Cobb’s review of Wray – including Wray’s doubts on how applicable her ideas are to L2 learning.
http://www.speechinaction.org/ – Richard Cauldwell’s site
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/lexical-analysis-0 – Patrick Hanks’s book
https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472030299-intro.pdf – Intro to Folse’s Vocabulary Myths which covers similar ground to this post – but more fully and better!
