Word Definition

DEFINITION: indicates most essential characteristic features of the notion expressed by the term under discussion distinguishing it from other notions (the word from the morpheme and the word group).

DESCRIPTION: aims at enumerating all the essential features of a notion.

The word is the basic unit of the lg. It unites meaning and form, is composed of one or more morphemes, each consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation.

Morphemes are also meaningful units but cannot be used independently, only as parts of words, but words can be used as complete utterances (Look! Listen!)

Words can be formed with the help of derivational affixes: work > worker.

Words fulfill different grammatical functions with the help of functional affixes (work, works, worked) or analytically with the help of auxiliaries (I am working now).

Words are syntactically organized But their freedom of entering into syntactical constructions is limited by different factors and constraints (They saw me. They looked at me attentively).

Word Definition

A universal signal that can substitute any other signal from the environment in evoking a response in a human organism In linguistics the word is defined Syntactically, Semantically, Phonologically and By combining various approaches.

Syntactically:“A minimum free form ” (in isolation forms which occur as sentences)

Syntactic and semantic aspects:

‘A word is one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated ‘meaning’ into which the sentence resolves itself. It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning’…(the essence of indivisibility: a lion and alive)

two criteria: ‘positional mobility and uninterruptability’ (the- boy-s-walk-ed-slow-ly-down-the-hill) – ‘One of the characteristics of the word is that it tends to be internally stable (in terms of the order of the component morphemes) but positionally mobile (permutable with other words in the same sentence)

Semantic treatment:

A connected discourse will fall into a certain number of meaningful segments which are ultimately composed of meaningful units. These meaningful units are called words’

Semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria:

The association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment

The basic unit of language. It directly corresponds to the object of thought (referent) which is a generalized reverberation of a certain “slice”, “piece” of objective reality – and by immediately referring to it names the thing meant

As Interpersonal units of Language, as signs of the system of a language above all to construct sentences

A sequence of graphemes which can occur between space, or the representation of such a sequence on morphemic level

A speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, successible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and semantic unity

I.V. Arnold ‘A word is the smallest significant unit of a given lg. capable of functioning alone and characterized by positional mobility within a sentence, morphological uninterruptability and semantic integrity.

These definitions create the basis of opposition btw: The word and the phrase, The word and the phoneme, The word and the morpheme.

The common feature: they are all units of the lg.

The weak point of the definitions: no indication of the relationship btw. Lg. and thought.

The word is a fundamental unit of lg.

It is a dialectal unity of form and content.

Content (meaning) reflects human notions, concepts are fixed in the meaning of words, reflecting the reality by the content of words.

F. de Saussure A word is a linguistic sign ‘signifiant’ (signifier). It refers to ‘signifie’ (that which is signified)

Referential approach: semantic triangle, triangle of signification, Frege’s semiotic triangle, O. and R.’s basic triangle

Word meaning – a certain reflection in our mind of objects, phenomena or relations that makes part of the linguistic sign.

ESSENTIAL WORD CHARACTERISTICS:

STRUCTURAL: Phonetic Structure, Morphological Structure, Grammatical Structure, Syntactic Structure

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14