Word
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Word (disambiguation).
A word is the smallest free form (an item that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content) in a language, in contrast to a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g. so, very), but a single morpheme may not be able to exist as a free form (e.g. the English plural morpheme -s).
Typically, a word will include a root or stem, and it may also include one or more affixes. Words can be combined to create other units of language, such as phrases, clauses, and/or sentences. A word consisting of two stems joined together form a compound.
Word may refer to a spoken word or a written word, or sometimes, the abstract concept behind either. Spoken words are made up of phonemes, and written words of graphemes.
Semantics (from Greek sēmantiká, neuter plural of sēmantikós)[1][2] is the study of meaning. It typically focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata.
ReplyDeletePragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics.[1] It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge (e.g. grammar, lexicon etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and so on.[2] In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance.[1] The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. So an utterance describing pragmatic function is described as metapragmatic. Pragmatic awareness is regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of language learning, and comes only through experience.
ReplyDeleteLanguage may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics.
ReplyDeleteIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest component of a word, or other linguistic unit, that has semantic meaning. The term is used as part of the branch of linguistics known as morphology (linguistics). A morpheme is composed by phoneme(s) (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound) in spoken language, and by grapheme(s) (the smallest units of written language) in written language.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of word and morpheme are different, a morpheme may or may not stand alone. One or several morphemes compose a word. A morpheme is free if it can stand alone (ex: "one", "cake"), or bound if it is used exclusively alongside a free morpheme (ex: "im" in impossible). Its actual phonetic representation is the morph, with the different morphs ("in-", "im-") representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.
English example:
The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes: "un-", a bound morpheme; "break", a free morpheme; and "-able", a bound morpheme. "un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both "un-" and "-able" are affixes.
The morpheme plural-s has the morph "-s", /s/, in cats (/kæts/), but "-es", /ɨz/, in dishes (/dɪʃɨz/), and even the voiced "-s", /z/, in dogs (/dɒɡz/). "-s". These are allomorphs.
Whether or not a word is divided on all available morphemes is debatable. Some morphologists decompose the words completely as it was formed etymologically, others only decompose what there is evidence to decompose in the modern use of the word.
The word "governmental" has either three morphemes: "govern," a free morpheme: "ment", a bound morpheme; and "-al", a bound morpheme. Or depending on which syntactic framework it has two morphemes: "government" and "-al."
The word "predict" has either two morphemes: "pre-" a bound morpheme", and "dict" a bound morpheme, or one morpheme: "predict" a free morpheme.