{"id":1002,"date":"2014-09-08T08:56:50","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T07:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2014-09-05T06:59:59","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T05:59:59","slug":"word-processing-what-is-a-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=1002","title":{"rendered":"Word processing (what is a word?)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The question might seem easy. <\/p>\n

The Economist 4-9-2014<\/p>\n

One answer is that the list of all words in a language can be found in a dictionary. A second, commonsense definition, might be that everything that appears between spaces on a written page (such as this one) is a word. A third idea might be that words are the unsplittable building blocks of a language.<\/p>\n

It might then seem surprising that for linguists\u2014the academics who ponder what language is for a living\u2014the definition of a word is not at all clear. It would surprise the average reader that many linguists do not much care for the idea of \u201cwords\u201d as such. All three commonsense definitions above are so flawed as to be unusable.<\/p>\n

To take the first, not all our words\u2014by a very long shot\u2014are found in \u201cthe dictionary\u201d. There is, first, no Dictionary. There are only many dictionaries for the English language, put out by private publishers. Their flawed, human lexicographers ponder daily what to include and what to exclude. (Huge numbers of specialised words don’t make the cut.) This was the subject of a recent\u00a0Economist<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>explainer article<\/a>, responding to those nonplussed that Oxford Dictionaries had recently included \u201cside boob\u201d and \u201cneckbeard\u201d in their online dictionaries. The idea that lexicographers can, by the power invested in them by Oxford University Press or Merriam-Webster, allow a string of letters to \u201cbecome a word\u201d elicits a wry laugh from real lexicographers. They no more determine what words are than chemists get to choose what the elements are. They find and describe words, but do not permit them into being.<\/p>\n

The second notion is that words are delineated by spaces on the printed page in proper languages. But what about \u201cside boob\u201d, above? One word or two? Oxford Dictionaries included it as a new word, not a new phrase. This makes sense because sometimes new \u201cwords\u201d are created from old elements. Whether writers write them with a space (\u201cside boob\u201d) or not (\u201cneckbeard\u201d) is immaterial. For \u201cword\u201d status, it matters whether the new creation is truly something new. Remember school chemistry: a mixture is when two substances mingle but retain their chemical properties. A compound is when the properties change as a result of the mixture. By analogy, a \u201cdark room\u201d is a mixture; a \u201cdarkroom\u201d is a compound. A \u201cblack board\u201d must be black, but a \u201cblackboard\u201d may be green, as Steven Pinker has written.<\/p>\n

A neat feature of English helps disentangle mere phrases from new compounds. We know that two words have become a compound\u2014something new\u2014when the stress shifts to the first bit of the compound. Consider \u201cblackboard\u201d and \u201cdarkroom\u201d above, or the difference between \u201clog in\u201d\u2014There\u2019s a log in the shed\u2014<\/em>and\u00a0\u201clogin\u201d\u2014Have you forgotten your<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>log<\/em><\/strong>in again?<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>The clear first-syllable stress shows that English-speakers have begun considering\u00a0login<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>a compound. The orthographic change\u2014whether there\u2019s a space on either side\u2014is what economists might call a trailing indicator. New coinages might first be written as two separate words; as the combination persists, it might be hyphenated. If it survives long enough, it will probably end up being written closed up. Your columnist discovered this as a university student poring over dusty decades\u2019 worth of an old reference publication. It was called the\u00a0Statistical Year Book<\/em>, then\u00a0Year-Book<\/em>, then\u00a0Yearbook.<\/em><\/p>\n

Surely there must be something unsplittable and basic to the language, though, might come the response. Of course a language\u2019s sounds are even more basic than the words. But what about a basic unit of meaning? Is that a word? No, because even many indubitable \u201cwords\u201d in the common understanding can be split into meaningful hunks.\u00a0Unsuitable<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>has three meaningful units,\u00a0un-, -suit- and \u2013able.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Each can be used in other combinations. (Un<\/strong><\/em>ease<\/em>,\u00a0That<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>suits<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>the mood, play<\/em>able\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>old records<\/em>). No one would argue that \u201cunsuitable\u201d is \u201cnot a word\u201d. So our \u201cbasic unit of meaning\u201d must be smaller in grain than the word. And indeed, linguists call the smallest unit of meaning a \u201cmorpheme\u201d. Some morphemes are words (like \u201csuit\u201d). But some are not (like \u201cun-\u201c). Dictionaries might include common compounds like\u00a0unsuitable<\/em>, but they will also omit many obvious but unnecessary entries like\u00a0sharklike<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0smokable.<\/em><\/p>\n

All this adds up to a curious fact. While amateur language-lovers are often word-lovers, learning and treasuring oddities like\u00a0antediluvian<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0triskaidekaphobia<\/em>, linguists think both bigger and smaller than \u201cwords\u201d. To the linguists, fussing over words is like developing an interest in individual chemical elements: \u201cI\u2019m fascinated by boron.\u201d In the material world, what really matters is how elements are built (the stuff of subatomic physics) and how they work together (the stuff of chemistry). So it is with language. Commonsense though it may seem to many, \u201cword\u201d is not an interesting unit, if you\u2019re interested in the system rather than its pieces. Morphemes interact to make words (their study is called morphology). Words interact to make phrases and clauses and sentences (the process of which is called syntax). Those in turn transmit meaning (semantics). In language as in so many other things, the whole really is not just greater, but far more fun, than the sum of the parts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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