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particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment."1
This definition does not permit us to distinguish words from phrases because not only child, but a pretty child as well are combinations of a particular group of sounds with a particular meaning capable of a particular grammatical employment.
We can, nevertheless, accept this formula with some modifications, adding that a word is the smallest significant unit of a given language capable of functioning alone and characterised by positional mobility within a sentence, morphological uninterruptability and semantic integrity.2 All these criteria are necessary because they permit us to create a basis for the oppositions between the word and the phrase, the word and the phoneme, and the word and the morpheme: their common feature is that they are all units of the language, their difference lies in the fact that the phoneme is not significant, and a morpheme cannot be used as a complete utterance.
Another reason for this supplement is the widespread scepticism concerning the subject. It has even become a debatable point whether a word is a linguistic unit and not an arbitrary segment of speech. This opinion is put forth by S. Potter, who writes that “unlike a phoneme or a syllable, a word is not a linguistic unit at all."3 He calls it a conventional and arbitrary segment of utterance, and finally adopts the already mentioned definition of L. Bloomfield. This position is, however, as we have already mentioned, untenable, and in fact S. Potter himself makes ample use of the word as a unit in his linguistic analysis.
The weak point of all the above definitions is that they do not establish the relationship between language and thought, which is formulated if we treat the word as a dialectical unity of form and content, in which the form is the spoken or written expression which calls up a specific meaning, whereas the content is the meaning rendering the emotion or the concept in the mind of the speaker which he intends to convey to his listener.
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, therefore, a description seems more appropriate than a definition.
The problem of creating a word theory based upon the materialistic understanding of the relationship between word and thought on the one hand, and language and society, on the other, has been one of the most discussed for many years. The efforts of many eminent scholars such as V.V. Vinogradov, A. I. Smirnitsky, O.S. Akhmanova, M.D. Stepanova, A.A. Ufimtseva — to name but a few, resulted in throwing light
1 Meillet A. Linguistique historique et linguistique generate. Paris, 1926. Vol. I. P. 30.
2 It might be objected that such words as articles, conjunctions and a few other words never occur as sentences, but they are not numerous and could be collected into a list of exceptions.
3 See: Potter S. Modern Linguistics. London, 1957. P. 78.
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on this problem and achieved a clear presentation of the word as a basic unit of the language. The main points may now be summarised.
The word is the fundamental unit of language. It is a dialectical unity of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may reflect human notions, and in this sense may be considered as the form of their existence. Concepts fixed in the meaning of words are formed as generalised and approximately correct reflections of reality, therefore in signifying them words reflect reality in their content.
The acoustic aspect of the word serves to name objects of reality, not to reflect them. In this sense the word may be regarded as a sign. This sign, however, is not arbitrary but motivated by the whole process of its development. That is to say, when a word first comes into existence it is built out of the elements already available in the language and according to the existing patterns.
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