4 ms·

My personal definition of “word” is “a unit of semantic meaning”. Don’t ask me to define that. Are numbers words? Are abbreviations words? Can a words contain

by nkrisc 2y ago

My personal definition of “word” is “a unit of semantic meaning”. Don’t ask me to define that. Are numbers words? Are abbreviations words? Can a words contain other words? Can the same sentence have a different number of words when spoken versus written? Yes to all, and more.

RiverCrochet 2y ago
Well, a good example is "ice cream" - I've seen it described as a "compound word without a hyphen" - which is fair because while ice cream has ice and cream as things that are used to make it, "ice cream" is definitely something distinct that is not trivially decomposable from the individual words. A good definition of "a unit of semantic meaning" might be "fulfills a 'part of speech' in a sentence" - but even that is hard in English. For example: "I set the table up" - up modifies set to create the "phrasal verb" set up, and isn't related to its typical meaning of position. But remove that little word and the whole meaning of the sentence drastically changes. I've seen "up" in this instance described as an adverb, which tends to be the "throwaway stat" for words that don't fit any of the other traditional parts of speech.
- nkrisc 2y ago
  Those are all very good examples. Another I like is contractions. If say “can not” but it sounds like “can’t”, how many words is that? I might say that “not” does not have any semantic meaning in isolation, as its only use is to negate the meaning of some other word, so perhaps “can not” and “can’t” are both just one word. Perhaps such graphemes and phonemes aren’t actually words. Another interesting question is whether words are truly a product of language (the natural skill) or writing (the synthetic technology). Did “words” exist before writing?
mananaysiempre 2y ago
> Are numbers words? Are abbreviations words? Not the interesting part, I think. Is the English un- a word? Before you reflexively say no, consider that it has a specific meaning even though it never appears on its own and never receives word stress. Is the French je a word? Before you reflexively say yes, consider that it never appears on its own and never receives word stress even though it has a specific meaning. Is the Latin que a word? (The Q in SPQR, “senatus populusque Romanus”, although perhaps it’d be more authentic to write “SENATVSPOPVLVSQVEROMANVS”.) It has a well-defined meaning: “and”. It goes after whatever word you’d put “and” before; not syntactic constituent, word. It counts as a part of that word for the purposes of stress, so POpulus but popuLUSque.
- TacticalCoder 2y ago
  > Is the French je a word? Before you reflexively say yes, consider that it never appears on its own and never receives word stress even though it has a specific meaning. And? That doesn't change what the word "word" mean. Even in french, where "word" is "mot". There's no rule saying that a word has to be able to appear on its own to be named a "word". More specifically "je" is defined, by linguists, in french, as a "mot grammatical". https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot_grammatical https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot_grammatical Maybe what you're after is the difference between a "mot grammatical" and a "mot lexical"? But both are "mots" (words).

by nkrisc 2y ago

RiverCrochet 2y ago

Well, a good example is "ice cream" - I've seen it described as a "compound word without a hyphen" - which is fair because while ice cream has ice and cream as things that are used to make it, "ice cream" is definitely something distinct that is not trivially decomposable from the individual words. A good definition of "a unit of semantic meaning" might be "fulfills a 'part of speech' in a sentence" - but even that is hard in English. For example: "I set the table up" - up modifies set to create the "phrasal verb" set up, and isn't related to its typical meaning of position. But remove that little word and the whole meaning of the sentence drastically changes. I've seen "up" in this instance described as an adverb, which tends to be the "throwaway stat" for words that don't fit any of the other traditional parts of speech.

nkrisc 2y ago
Those are all very good examples. Another I like is contractions. If say “can not” but it sounds like “can’t”, how many words is that? I might say that “not” does not have any semantic meaning in isolation, as its only use is to negate the meaning of some other word, so perhaps “can not” and “can’t” are both just one word. Perhaps such graphemes and phonemes aren’t actually words. Another interesting question is whether words are truly a product of language (the natural skill) or writing (the synthetic technology). Did “words” exist before writing?

mananaysiempre 2y ago

> Are numbers words? Are abbreviations words? Not the interesting part, I think. Is the English un- a word? Before you reflexively say no, consider that it has a specific meaning even though it never appears on its own and never receives word stress. Is the French je a word? Before you reflexively say yes, consider that it never appears on its own and never receives word stress even though it has a specific meaning. Is the Latin que a word? (The Q in SPQR, “senatus populusque Romanus”, although perhaps it’d be more authentic to write “SENATVSPOPVLVSQVEROMANVS”.) It has a well-defined meaning: “and”. It goes after whatever word you’d put “and” before; not syntactic constituent, word. It counts as a part of that word for the purposes of stress, so POpulus but popuLUSque.

TacticalCoder 2y ago
> Is the French je a word? Before you reflexively say yes, consider that it never appears on its own and never receives word stress even though it has a specific meaning. And? That doesn't change what the word "word" mean. Even in french, where "word" is "mot". There's no rule saying that a word has to be able to appear on its own to be named a "word". More specifically "je" is defined, by linguists, in french, as a "mot grammatical". https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot_grammatical https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot_grammatical Maybe what you're after is the difference between a "mot grammatical" and a "mot lexical"? But both are "mots" (words).