E.M. Mednicova

A. Meillet

Slow-ly- the- boy-s- walk-ed- up-the-hill

The- boy-s-walk-ed-slow-ly-up-the-hill

‘One of the characteristics of the word is that it tends to be internally stable (in terms of the order of the component morphemes) but positionally mobile, (permutable with other words in the same sentence)

Semantic treatment:

Stephen Ullmann’s

«A connected discourse will fall into a certain number of meaningful segments which are ultimately composed of meaningful units. These meaningful units are called words»

Semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria:

The association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment (objections: child but a pretty child – no difference ).

The semantic-phonological approach:

Gardiner:

An articulate sound – symbol in its aspect of denoting smth which is spoken about

The basic unit of language.It directly corresponds to the object of thought (referent) which is a generalized reverberation of a certain “slice”, “piece” of objective reality – and by immediately referring to it names the thing meant

Ladislave Zgusta: Words are treated

As Interpersonal units of Language, as signs of the system of a language above all to construct sentences

Antrushina

Afanasieva

Morosova A speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, successible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and semantic unity

Collins Cobuild

Is a single unit of language that can be represented in writing or speech

Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD)

– A sound/combination of sounds which expresses a meaning and forms an independent unit of grammar or vocabulary of a language

American Heritage Dictionary (1985):”a sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes”.

Collins English Dictionary (1986):

“One of the units of speech or string that native speakers of a language usually regard as the smallest isolated meaningful element of the language, although linguists would analyze these further into morphemes”.

Chambers English Dictionary (1988):

“A unit of spoken language: a written sign representing such an utterance”.

I.V. Arnold:

‘A word is the smallest significant unit of a given lg. capable of functioning alone and characterized by

· positional mobility within a sentence

· morphological uninterruptability

· semantic integrity.

These definitions create the basis of opposition btw.

· The word and the phrase,

· The word and the phoneme,

· The word and the morpheme.

The common feature: they are all units of the lg.

The weak point of the definitions: no indication of the relationship btw. Lg. and thought.

The word is a fundamental unit of lg.

It is a dialectal unity of form and content.

Content (meaning) reflects human notions, concepts are fixed in the meaning of words, reflecting the reality by the content of words.

F. de Saussure

A word is a linguistic sign ‘signifiant’ (signifier).

It refers to ‘signifie’ (that which is signified)

	Sign		Signifie
			Thing

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