The
Word in Different Languages
a. What
is a word
Word is the smallest unit which
we would expect to possess individual meaning is the word. The word is the
smallest unit of languages that can be used by itself. For our present purposes,
we can define the written word with more precision as any sequence of letters
with an orthographic space on either side.
Many of us think of the word as
the basic meaningful element in a language. Meaning can be carried by units
smaller than the word. More often, however, it is carried by units much more
complex than the single word and by various structures and linguistic devices.
b. Is
there a one-to-one relationship between
word and meaning ?
Elements
of meaning which are represented by several orthographic words in one language,
say English, may be represented by one orthographic word in another , and vice
versa. For intance, tennis player is written as one word in Turkish : tenisci ; if it
is cheap as one word in Japanese : yasukattara ; but the verb type is rendered
by three words in Spanish : pasar a
maquina. This suggests that there is no one-to-one correspondence between
orthographic words and elements of meaning within or across languages.
