What is a word?
By: Wang Yujiang
What is a word? As you read this question, you know at least four English words, however you might not know what a
word is exactly, even if you asked linguists or checked dictionaries. The
following is the definition of a word from my Webster’s Dictionary: “A word is a meaningful unit of a language,
consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation.”
Unfortunately the definition is self-contradictory. If a word is one or more
spoken sounds,
you could not read it. If a word you can read, it is not
one or more spoken sounds. Only when you read a
word aloud, you utter one or more
spoken sounds,
which is not a word.
Linguistically a word is a letter or several letters between the spaces or punctuations
in a
sentence. A word is the smallest unit in a sentence.
No comments:
Post a Comment