3.3 Defining Words

Warm-up exercise:

Count the number of words in the sentence below and enter you answer here:

• Tom's math professor is a do-it-yourself kinda guy.

Watch this YouTube video created by the Virtual Linguistics Campus on the complexities involved in defining words. (optional)

General definitions:

• In spoken language, a word is defined as the smallest sequence of phonemes that can be uttered in isolation with objective or practical meaning (Wikipedia).

• In written language, a word represents a single distinct meaningful element, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.

Definitions of words from five perspectives:

1. In spoken language, words have one main stress; longer words have primary and secondary stresses (phonological perspective)

   • ? function words: of, in, the, and

   • ? clitics: I'll, she's, can't

2. In written language, words are a combination of letters divided by blank spaces. (orthographic perspective)

   • ? do-it-yourself, kinda

3. Words are units into which no intervening material can be inserted. (integrity perspective)

   • ? abso-bloody-lutely; fantas-bloody-tic

4. Words are units that describe a unified idea, a semantic concept. (semantic perspective)

   • ? Chinese ‘gu ma’/father’s sisters + ‘yi ma’ (mother’s sisters) = aunts (English)

5. Words are the building blocks of sentences. They have a syntactic category. (syntactic perspective)

   • ? by and large