Lecture No 1 Word as a basic language unit. Different approaches to the definition of the word. Word meaning as a linguistic phenomenon

Different approaches to the definition of the word.

From this viewpoint the definition of every basic unit is a very hard task. The definition of a word is one of the most difficult in Linguistics because it has many different aspects. It has a sound form, because

1. 
   It is a certain arrangement of phonemes;
   
2. 
   It has its morphological structure, it is a certain arrangement of morphemes;
   
3. 
   When used in actual speech it may occur in different word forms, different syntactic functions.
   

So being the central element of any language system word is simultaneously a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit.

A few examples will suffice to show that any definition is conditioned by the aims and interests of the author.

Thomas Hobbes [ 1588-1679]- one of the great English philosophers revealed a materialistic approach to the problem of nomination. The great Russian physiologist I. Pavlov [1849-1936] examined the word in connection with his studies of the second signal system.

Within the scope of Linguistics, the word has been defined syntactically, semantically, phonologically as it said above.

H. Sweet and much later L. Bloomfield defined the definition of the word syntactically characterizing it as “the minimum sentence” [H. Sweet] and as a “minimum free form” [L. Bloomfield]

E. Sapir takes into consideration the syntactic and semantic aspects when he calls the word “one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolating “meaning”, into which the sentence resolves itself.

A pure semantic treatment will be found in S. Ulmann’s explanation: with him connected, If analyzed from the semantic viewpoint “will fall into a certain number of meaningful segments which are ultimately composed of meaningful units. These meaningful units are called words”.

Semantic phonological approach may be illustrated by Gardiner’s definition: “A word is an articulate sound- symbol in its aspect of denoting something which is spoken about.”

Summing up our review of different definitions we came to the conclusion that 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.

So, “word is the fundamental unit of a language. It is dialectical unity of form and content”.

The word is always in the focus of semantic analysis as the most comprehensive language unit. When we talk about meaning, we refer to its bearer as meaning is an ideal, mental entity which we can not see or touch. The bearer of the meaning is a sign - which is a material and immaterial entity at the same time.

Signs can be of different nature - words, drawings, signals, etc. The science which studies signs is called Semiotics. The first linguist who pointed out that the notion of a sign reflects the basic features of the human language was Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist (1857-1913), who defined the human language as ‘a system of signs’.

Lexical units or the units of a vocabulary are two- facet elements possessing form and meaning.

The basic unit forming the bulk of the vocabulary is the word, other units are morphemes that is parts of words and set expressions. Words are central elements of language system, they are the biggest units of morphology and the smallest of syntax, they embody the main structural properties and functions of the language.

Morphemes can not be divided into smaller meaningful units and are functioning in speech only as constituent parts of words.

Set expressions are word groups consisting of 2 or more words whose combination is integrated. So that they are introduced in speech.

A word which can have several grammatical forms but is united by lexical meaning is called a lexeme - thus, the forms book, books, book's and books' make the paradigm of the lexeme ‘word’.

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