What is a word?

The Structure of Language

A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound, meaning and
Language is a system of symbols and rules that is used for meaningful communication.
syntactic function.
A system of communication has to meet certain criteria in order to be considered a
When a baby begins to speak, the way the excited mother reports what has
language:
happened is: ‘Sally (or Tommy) has said her (or his) first word!’ We would be surprised
A language uses symbols, which are sounds, gestures, or written characters that
at a mother who described little Tommy’s or Sally’s first utterance as a sentence.
represent objects, actions, events, and ideas. Symbols enable people to refer to objects
Sentences come later, we are inclined to feel, when words are strung together
that are in another place or events that occurred at a different time.
meaningfully. That is not to say that a sentence must always consist of more than one
A language is meaningful and therefore can be understood by other users of that
word. One-word commands such as ‘Go!’ or ‘Sit!’, although they crop up relatively
language.
seldom in everyday conversation or reading, are not in any way odd or un-English.
A language is generative, which means that the symbols of a language can be combined
Nevertheless, learning to talk in early childhood seems to be a matter of putting words
to produce an infinite number of messages.
together, not of taking sentences apart.
A language has rules that govern how symbols can be arranged. These rules allow
There is a clear sense, then, in which words seem to be the building blocks of
people to understand messages in that language even if they have never encountered
language. Even as adults, there are quite a few circumstances in which we use single
those messages before.
words outside the context of any actual or reconstructable sentence. Here are some
examples:
Phonemes
 warning shouts, such as ‘Fire!’
Phonemes are the smallest distinguishable units in a language. In the English language,
 conventional commands, such as ‘Lights!’, Camera!’, ‘Action!’
many consonants, such as t, p, and m, correspond to single phonemes, while other
 items on shopping lists, such as ‘carrots’, ‘cheese’, ‘eggs’.
consonants, such as c and g, can correspond to more than one phoneme. Vowels
It is clear also that words on their own, outside sentences can be sorted and
typically correspond to more than one phoneme. For example, o corresponds to different
classified in various ways. A comprehensive classification of English words according to
phonemes depending on whether it is pronounced as in bone or woman. Some phonemes
meaning is a thesaurus, such as Roget’s Thesaurus. But the kind of conventional
correspond to combinations of consonants, such as ch, sh, and th.
classification that we are likely to refer to most often is a dictionary, in which words are
listed according to their spelling in alphabetical order.
Morphemes
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in a language. In the English language,
The Building Blocks of Language
only a few single letters, such as I and a, are morphemes. Morphemes are usually whole
Language is organized hierarchically, from phonemes to morphemes to phrases and
words or meaningful parts of words, such as prefixes, suffixes, and word stems.
sentences that communicate meaning.
Example: The word “disliked” has three morphemes: “dis,” “lik,” and “ed.”

1 2
Syntax Words as types and words as tokens
Syntax is a system of rules that governs how words can be meaningfully arranged to How many words are there in the following sentence?
form phrases and sentences. Mary goes to Sorake Beach next week, and she intends going to Teluk Dalam next
Example: One rule of syntax is that an article such as “the” must come before a noun, not after: month..
“Read the book,” not “Read book the.” Christoph likes Asni and Asni likes Christoph.

Two distinguish between these two interpretations; we will define two new terms,
Language Development in Children
“token” and “type.” A word token is an individual occurrence of a word in a concrete
Children develop language in a set sequence of stages, although sometimes particular
context. A word type is a “dictionary entry” for a word. A word type is somewhat
skills develop at slightly different ages:
abstract; it’s what we’re talking about when we say that we know the meaning of the
Three-month-old infants can distinguish between the phonemes from any language. At
word deprecate, or when we say that the words barf and vomit are synonyms . On the
around six months, infants begin babbling, or producing sounds that resemble many
other hand, a word token is something which exists in time and space token is an
different languages. As time goes on, these sounds begin to resemble more closely the
individual occurrence of a sentence; but a sentence type is an abstract sentence, without
words of the languages the infant hears. At about thirteen months, children begin to
context. If someone repeats a sentence twice, they have uttered two sentence tokens, but
produce simple single words. By about twenty-four months, children begin to combine
only one sentence type. When the kind of token or type is obvious from context, we will
two or three words to make short sentences. At this stage, their speech is usually
simply use the terms token and type.
telegraphic. Telegraphic speech, like telegrams, contains no articles or prepositions. By
We can use this new terminology to express the two interpretations for our task
about age three years, children can usually use tenses and plurals. Children’s language
unambiguously:
abilities continue to grow throughout the school-age years. They become able to
1. Count the number of word tokens that appear in a document.
recognize ambiguity and sarcasm in language and to use metaphors and puns. These
2. Count the number of word types that appear in a document.
abilities arise from metalinguistic awareness, or the capacity to think about how
language is used.

Ambiguous Language
Language may sometimes be used correctly but still have an unclear meaning or multiple
meanings. In these cases, language is ambiguous - it can be understood in several ways.
Avoid biting dogs is an example of an ambiguous sentence. A person might interpret it
as Keep out of the way of biting dogs or don’t bite dogs.

Language can be divided up into pieces at a variety of different grain sizes, ranging from
sounds up to utterances and even to documents.

3 4