English Words

A Linguistic Introduction

Heidi Harley

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780631230328
  9780631230311
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119485674
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

English Words is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the study of English words from a theoretically informed linguistic perspective.

• accessibly written to give students a command of basic theory, skills in analyzing English words, and the foundation needed for more advanced study in linguistic theory or lexicology
• covers basic introductory material and investigates the structure of English vocabulary
• introduces students to the technical study of words from relevant areas of linguistics: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics and psycholinguistics

1
What Is a Word?

/ˈwʌt ɪz ə ˈwərd/

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In this chapter, we look at the intuitive notion of what a word is and see that there are several perspectives on wordhood. A word has different properties depending on whether you’re looking at it phonologically, morphologically, syntactically or semantically. Essentially, we end up with two different notions of word: a listeme – a sound–meaning correspondence – and a phonological word, a sound unit on which the spacing conventions of written English are based. Finally, we distinguish between necessary and conventional aspects of wordhood.

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1.1 Explaining Word in Words

Stop. Before reading any further, get out a sheet of paper and a pencil (or fire up a word processor, or just introspect), and try to compose a definition of the word word.

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Exercise 1.1 Compose a definition of word.

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Throughout this text, there will occasionally be exercises inserted in the middle of discussion. You should stop and try to answer them before reading on. Answers to the exercises are often given in the text immediately below; you’ll be able to compare the response you came up with to the discussion in the text, and think about any differences between the answer in the text and your own answer.

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Here’s one possible first try:

Definition 1

word: a sequence of letters that we write consecutively, with no spaces.

How does that definition compare with your own? Yours is probably better. One thing that is obviously wrong with this one is that it depends crucially on the conventions of writing. Languages have words before they’re written down. Let’s try again, trying to eliminate the reference to writing:

Definition 2

word: a sequence of sounds that we pronounce consecutively, with no pauses.

Hang on a minute – when we’re talking, there’s not usually any pauses between words. (Try listening for a moment to someone talking. Is there a pause before and after every word? Where are the pauses?) We do know, though, that it is at least possible to put pauses between words when talking. Imagine you are speaking to someone for whom English is a second language, and who is hard of hearing besides. To give them the best chance of understanding you, you . . . would . . . probably . . . talk . . . rather . . . like . . . this, inserting big spaces between words. (People talk like this when dictating, as well.) You certainly wouldn’t insert spaces inside them. No one would say “y . . . ou . . . wou . . . ld . . . pro . . . b . . . abl . . . y . . .” etc. Maybe we can use the possibility of spaces in our definition:

Definition 3

word: a sequence of sounds which can be pronounced on its own, with pauses on either side.

Hang on again! A word is not just any old sequence of sounds that can be pronounced on its own. According to that definition, spimble or intafulation or pag are words, and so are raise your arm or how are you (you can pronounce them with space on either side, can’t you?). The former, however, are sequences of sounds that don’t have any meaning associated with them, and the latter are sequences of sounds that have too much meaning associated with them. Intuitively, the former are not words, and the latter are groups of words.

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To help make the text clearer, when we’re discussing the linguistic properties of some word, the word will appear in italics. This indicates that the word is just being mentioned – that is, being discussed – rather than being actually used. This mention/use distinction is hard to keep track of when it’s not indicated by some distinguishing feature, such as italics.

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It seems fairly clear that we have to include meaning in our definition. The sounds that make up, for instance, the word word have a certain meaning in combination that they don’t have by themselves, or when they appear in other words (like water or murder). So the w sound in word doesn’t mean anything by itself, nor does the -ord sequence, but together, they have a meaning, even if it’s a meaning that’s hard to pin down. So for our final try, let’s look at the relevant definition in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which is listed as definition number 12a in their entry for the word word:

Definition 4 (final)

word: A combination of vocal sounds, or one such sound, used in a language to express an idea (e.g. to denote a thing, attribute, or relation), and constituting an ultimate minimal element of speech having a meaning as such; a vocable.

This is probably fairly close ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• THE LANGUAGE LIBRARY
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• IPA Transcription Key
• 1 What Is a Word?
• 2 Sound and Fury: English Phonology
• 3 Phonological Words: Calling All Scrabble Players!
• 4 Where Do Words Come From?
• 5 Pre- and Suf-fix-es: Engl-ish Morph-o-log-y
• 6 Morphological Idiosyncrasies
• 7 Lexical Semantics: The Structure of Meaning, the Meaning of Structure
• 8 Children Learning Words
• 9 Accidents of History: English in Flux
• Glossary
• Works Consulted
• Index
• End User License Agreement