ABOUT-WORDS-L Archives

Archiver > ABOUT-WORDS > 2002-08 > 1030739601-01


From: L oki <>
Subject: Re: WORD (was: A grand feeling!)
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:33:21 EDT
References: <4.2.2.20020829092412.00a35760@pop3.norton.antivirus>


On Thu, 29 Aug 2002 09:44:02 -0400 Lee Quinn <>
writes:
...
>someone asked a wonderful question: what is a "word"?
>I thought I would say that a word is the basic unit of any language
>that can be pronounced. Even if you don't know what it means, that
>only means YOU do not know. "Dethy" is a word, where "zyxezq"
>probably not.
>What do YOU think? Remember the language limitations of my readers.

I think the BASIC unit is the letter. From them, we make sylables, and
only from them do we make words. A couple words are only one letter, and
many are only one syllable, but it's as important to recognize them as it
is to recognize that a cake is made of eggs and flour and shortening, and
that each of those are made up of even more basic elements. (And
physisists can analyse elements into electrons and protons, or linguists
analyze letters into phenomes, but in both cases we're going beyond the
limits of rationality. There are "alphabets" that go down only to the
syllable level {hiragana, kana, hiroglyphs}, so that distinction is
important.)

A word is a meaningful unit, as bounded by spaces. Z is a word. I can
talk about the letter z. Zyxezq can be a word. (I think I once read a
sci-fi story with an alien by that name.) The "xez" IN zyxezq was not a
word before I took it out. Or, if you reject zyxezq as a word, then dethy
must also be rejected, because (at least to me) it has no meaning; I've
never heard of it before. "Whadayawant" is a single word. "I want
MONEY" is 7 words. Spaces are the only dependable determinant.

~Owen













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