Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of symbols and typographical conventions
- Part 1 Setting the scene
- Part 2 Lexical meaning
- 2 Words as meaningful units
- 3 Defining the meaning of words
- 4 The structural approach
- Part 3 Sentence-meaning
- Part 4 Utterance-meaning
- Suggestions for further reading
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Words as meaningful units
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of symbols and typographical conventions
- Part 1 Setting the scene
- Part 2 Lexical meaning
- 2 Words as meaningful units
- 3 Defining the meaning of words
- 4 The structural approach
- Part 3 Sentence-meaning
- Part 4 Utterance-meaning
- Suggestions for further reading
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
As we saw in the preceding chapter, it is generally agreed that the words, phrases and sentences of natural languages have meaning, that sentences are composed of words (and phrases), and that the meaning of a sentence is the product of the words (and phrases) of which it is composed.
But what is a word? And do all natural languages, in fact, have words? These questions are not as easy to answer as they might appear to be at first sight. One reason is that the term ‘word’ is ambiguous, both in everyday usage and also as it is employed technically by linguists. Words may be considered purely as forms, whether spoken or written, or, alternatively, as composite expressions, which combine form and meaning. To complicate matters further, the term ‘form’ is employed in several different, though related, senses in linguistics. One of my principal aims in this chapter is to sort out these different senses of ‘word’ and ‘form’ and to establish notational and terminological conventions for avoiding ambiguity and confusion.
Another reason why it is not as easy to say whether something is or is not a word as non-linguists might think – or to say whether all natural languages have words – is that several different criteria come into play in the definition of words, both as forms and as expressions, and these criteria are often in conflict.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Linguistic SemanticsAn Introduction, pp. 46 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995