Introduction to word-structure

• “The assumption that languages contain

words is taken for granted by most people.
Even illiterate speakers know that there are
words in their language (Katamba, 1993:17)”.
• However, it is not always easy to agree on
what units are to be treated as words,
especially in English. For instance, is alright
considered one unit or two as in all right?

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 Introduction to word-structure
• “A discussion may arise around this as to
whether alright be the correct way of
writing all right. But, by and large, people
can easily recognise a word of their
language when they see or hear one. And
normally their judgements as to what is
or is not a word do coincide” (Katamba,
1993:17).
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 Introduction to word-structure
• Furthermore, to say that languages
contain words is simple. But words reveal
that they are not so easy to describe
because what we mean by words is not
always clear (Katamba, ibid).
• This introduction leads us to study the
concept of word. So, what is a word?

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 What is a word?
• Difficulties in classifying the nature of the word
are largely due to the fact that the term ‘word’
is used in a variety of senses which usually are
not clearly distinguished.
• What would you do if you were reading a novel
and you found the ‘word’ pockled for the first
time in this context?
• ‘Anna went to the pub for a pint and then
pockled off’.
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 What is a word?
• You would probably look up that unfamiliar word in a
dictionary.
• Would you look it up under pockled?
• Of course you would not look it up under pockled, but
under pockle. This is because you know that pockled is not
going to be listed in the dictionary. You also know that the
words pockling and pockles will exist, though nobody has
told you. Furthermore, you know that pockling, and
pockle, pockles and pockled are all in a sense different
manifestations of the ‘same’ abstract vocabulary item
(Katamba, ibid).
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 What is a word?
• In other words, the abstract vocabulary item is
referred to as lexeme. The forms pockling,
pockle, pockles and pockled are different
realisations (or manifestations or
representations) of the lexeme POCKLE
(lexeme will be written in capital letters). That
is, they are lexical items or syntactic words of
the lexeme POCKLE.

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 What is a word?
• According to Di Sciullo and Williams (1987),
quoted by Katamba (1993:17;), “they all share
a core meaning although they are spelled and
pronounced differently.
• Lexemes are the vocabulary items that are
listed in the dictionary”.
• Therefore, for most people ‘word’ is a single
piece of meaning’.

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 What is a word?
• Looking at that definition, we may conclude that in
one sense it is correct to say that ‘word’ is a single
piece of meaning.
• But, this definition suffers when we analyse it in the
scope of translation – that is another sense which may
lead us to ask what kind of ‘word’ we refer to.
• That’s because there is a lack of correspondence
between words from different languages. For instance,
the words cycle repair outfit correspond to one in
German, fahrradreparaturwerkzeuge.
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 What is a word?
• Or the six words he used to live in Rome are
translated by two in Latin, Romae habitat. Even
in English, a word such as walked includes at
least two pieces of meaning, ‘walk’ and ‘past
tense’ (Poole, 1999).
• Now, is it correct to say that ‘word’ is a single
piece of meaning?
• we should say yes with hesitation for the
reasons presented above.
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 What is a word?
• Which definition would be satisfactory?
• The best-known definition is proposed by the American
linguist Leonard Bloomfield who defines ‘word’ as a minimum
free form, that is, the smallest form that can occur by itself.
• This definition is not satisfactory as well, because when we
say a minimum free form we mean that words occur
themselves because of the term “free”.
• However, we know that they do not occur themselves in
spoken speech. E.g. In questions ‘who did that?’, ‘what’s
that?’, often require more than one ‘word’ – John did; a book.
(Katamba, 1993:18).

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 What is a word?
• Can we, in the light of this analysis, say that
‘word’ is a minimum free form’?
• We would say yes with reservations. Why?
• which definition is likely to be satisfactory?
• This problem can be solved only when we
decide what kind of ‘word’ we are talking
about.

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 What is a word?
• As we said before, it is important to distinguish
between lexical items and syntactic words or
word-forms.
• For example, if by ‘word’ we mean lexical item,
then the sound sequence /flaɪ/ ‘fly’ represents
two words, since most dictionaries have separate
entries for fly (noun) and fly (verb): that is,
• fly (noun): an insect with two wings; fly (verb):
to move through the air in a controlled manner.
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 What is a word?
• This is perhaps the most basic and most abstract use
of the word ‘word’.
• However, both of these lexical items have various
syntactic forms or word-forms associated with them.
E.g. the insect could occur as fly (singular) or flies
(plural), and the verb could occur as fly, flying, flies,
flew, flown. Or, fly (N) is a lexical item and its syntactic
words or word-forms (its different manifestations) are
fly and flies; fly (V), lexical item with fly, flying, flies,
flew, flown as its syntactic words or word-forms.

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 What is a word?
• Thus, we can refer to see, sees, seeing, saw and seen as
five different words.
• In this sense, three different occurrences of any one of
these word-forms would count as three words.
• We can also say that the word-form see has three
letters and the word-form seeing has six.
• If we continued counting the number of words in a
passage, we would perfectly count see, sees, seeing,
saw and seen as five different word-forms belonging to
the same lexeme.
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 Exercise
• Which words, below, belong to the
same lexeme?
• see catches taller boy catching sees
• sleeps woman catch saw tallest
sleeping
• boys sleep seen tall jumped caught
• Seeing jump women slept jumps jumping

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 Answer
• The physical word-forms are realisations of the lexeme
• See, sees, seeing, saw, seen SEE
• Sleeps, sleeping, slept SLEEP
• Catch, catches, catching, caught CATCH

And
• The physical word-forms are realisations of the lexeme
• Jump, jumps, jumped, jumping JUMP
• Tall, taller, tallest TALL
• Boy, boys BOY
• Woman, women WOMAN
• (taken from Katamba, 1993:18)

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 The grammatical word
• It has been mentioned that the term
‘word’ does not only refer to the abstract
vocabulary item with a common core of
meaning, the lexeme. Rather, the term
‘word’ refers to a particular physical
realisation of a lexeme in speech or
writing, i.e. a particular word-form.

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 The grammatical word
• Now we are going to look at the ‘word’ as a
representation of a lexeme that is associated
with certain morpho-syntactic properties (i.e.
partly morphological and partly syntactic
properties) such as noun, adjective, verb,
tense, gender, number, etc.
• The word used in this sense is called the
grammatical word.

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 The grammatical word
• Pay attention to the exercise below which can help
you understand this concept – read it carefully.
• The word cut can be regarded as representing two
distinct grammatical words.
• why cut should be regarded as representing two
distinct grammatical words in the following
example, despite having the same physical form?
• Usually I cut the bread on the table.
• Yesterday I cut the bread in the sink.
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 The grammatical word
• Think of what the verbal lexeme CUT can represent.
• Katamba (1993:19) “the same word-form cut,
belonging to the verbal lexeme CUT, can represent
two different grammatical words. In sentence (a),
cut represents the grammatical word cut [verb,
present, non 3rd person], i.e. the present tense, non
3rd person form of the verbal lexeme CUT. But in (b)
it represents the grammatical word cut [verb, past],
which realises the past tense of CUT”.

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 The grammatical word
• Apart from the two grammatical words realised by the
word-form cut which we have mentioned above, there is a
third one which you can observe in Jane has a cut on her
finger.
• This grammatical word is cut [noun, singular]. It belongs to
a separate lexeme CUT, the noun.
• Obviously, CUT, the noun, is related in meaning to CUT, the
verb.
• However, CUT, the noun, is a separate lexeme from CUT,
the verb, because it belongs to a different word-class
(Katamba, 1993:19).
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 The grammatical word
• Summing up, a grammatical word is a
representation of a lexeme that is
associated with certain morphological
-syntactic properties. For example, sees is
a realisation of the verbal lexeme SEE
[verb, present, third person], i.e. the
present tense, third person form of the
verb SEE.
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 Exercise
• Show why hit should be regarded as
representing two distinct grammatical words
in the following:
(a) Usually I hit the jackpot.
(b) Last summer I hit the jackpot.

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 Answer
• The same word-form hit, belonging to the
verbal lexeme HIT, can represent two different
grammatical words. In (a), hit represents the
grammatical word hit [verb, present, non 3rd
person], the present tense, non 3rd person
form of the verbal lexeme HIT. In (b), it
represents the grammatical word hit [verb,
past], which realises the past tense of HIT.

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