Word

A word is an independent linguistic unit. In the language it has, as opposed to a sound or a syllable, an independent meaning.

A generally accepted definition does not exist. A definition is regarded as "difficult". The term word is ambiguous and depends on the examination point of view, of the respective interesting linguistic level and the related theories. Whether word in linguistics a useful category is any, is controversial. So put Ferdinand de Saussure the term word completely back and spoke of the characters. In the semantics word is spoken by the lexeme prefer instead of vague expression.

The word is mostly conceptually separated from the phoneme, morpheme, word group and the set. However, a single word can actually form a sentence and the word of a single morpheme and that consist of a single phoneme.

  • Example: Oh.

The boundaries between the compound word and the word group appear blurred.

  • For example, he translated a book - it sets over a river
  • 6.1 Written words
  • 6.2 Spoken words

Plural

For " word", there are two plural forms.

  • Words refers to the shape or the grammatical unit " word".
  • Words related to the content, for example, for standing in the context of meaning words of a famous dictum (see slogan, proverb). See also: Talking medicine.

According to a Grammatikerregel words the plural of word is when it comes to the appearance of several individual it ( The directory contains 100,000 words). From words one speaks in the use of words in fixed contexts ( words of thanks, greetings, i W. ) or common expressions ( honest words, empty words ), with the use of quotations from the literature ( The words are enough changed ..., Goethe, Faust I ) both in rather casual slang ( as haste nor words) as in " fine language" as an expression of " the chosen mode of expression " ( in well-chosen words he raised ... ).

This distinction, which was introduced by the linguist Georg Justus Schottelius in the 17th century, is now often ignored.

Word referred to as collective, also a significant, short statement ( A word of wisdom, word of power ) or an oral conversation ( she mastered Esperanto spoken and written ), especially if they form a solid form, are not possible in the trays (as in saying ). This in turn consist of several grammatical words. The plural words is necessary in this case. Words of wisdom is thus an oxymoron.

Furthermore, the word as Singularetantum - can be made of the case no plural - a doctrine (eg, the word of God ) or a promise (eg break his word ).

Formation

Words belong to the oldest abstracting symbolic forms of humanity. Whether not, for example, pictures are older, is an empirically difficult answerable question (see primitive society ). Preceded them in any case proven experience repetitions of concrete actions. Whether certain Urwörter (Ur -phrases? ) Can take is debatable, although the comparative linguistics is working to provide the proof. Accompanied first established words, probably very concrete by performing gestures and facial expressions character, then allowed more and more abstracted words - for example, could be from " a handful ", " within earshot " or " first", "tags " or "Mamma "then, even more abstractly categorical words relating to" " develop ," " lead dancer space " or " time " and definable " subjects. Conclusions that are based on language acquisition in the ontogeny of the individual infant and be concluded from the first talk in the phylogeny of mankind, are not mandatory, although helpful.

Characterization

Native speakers often believe to have her voice feeling an intuitive understanding of what constitutes a word in their language; but linguistics thus finds it difficult to find universal criteria to delimit words. Depending on the viewing angle several criteria are possible that are combined or supplemented with each other depending on the theoretical background and research interests. The term " word" may phonetic- phonological, graphematic, morphologically, syntactically or lexically - semantically understood each Misc:

Survey

Discussion of preliminary tests

Segmentation by vacancies

Orthographic classification criteria are often rejected. This is done from within the linguistic and from a linguistic comparative reasons:

  • For the rejection of an orthographic criterion of demarcation is the fact that the separateness case is partly optional. Example: to cause or due.
  • Separable words should be construed as a word. Example: Call - ( I ) call you.
  • According to the old spelling wrote a walk go, go for a walk now. You can write according to the new spelling both walking people walking people walking and walking. Walking and walking appear as one word.
  • It is unclear how hyphen and Apostrophschreibungen to be counted.
  • The language comparison also shows that word boundaries are conventional. So the Turkish expression is alabilecjim for I will be able to buy.
  • Nor is it convincing that, for example, washing a word of English expression washing machine as consisting of two words is considered.
  • There are also not verschriftlicht all language and not all written languages ​​work with letters.
  • Some languages ​​or writing systems have no spaces between words, like something Thai or Chinese.

Ultimately, the written language " an interpretation of the spoken language " and is the orthographic word definition " tautological, for in the Conventions is the preconception of what a word is and where its borders are already gone ."

Segmentation by pauses

The word as a phonetic unit ( phonological word) is indeed less than the word as a graphic unit criticized ( orthographic word), but will ultimately according to criticism: the definition seems circular, because the unity of the word by not by pauses, but (if any) breaks the unity of the word are related.

  • Breaks can also be set between syllables without them this would be words. Example: wi -ki- pe - di -a is a word, even if you put a pause between each syllable.
  • One usually does in most languages ​​in the real talk no pause between all words.
  • In particular, in polysynthetic languages, the detection of pauses between words can be extremely difficult, so that one uses other Kritereien better, as the emphasis.

Classification

In the grammar words (for example, noun, adjective, verb ..) differed according to parts of speech and tested for word order, inflection, tonality ( in tone languages ​​such as Mandarin Chinese ) et cetera.

There are different approaches to divide words according to parts of speech. It uses syntactic, morphological and functional criteria. In essence, the present classification already goes back to ancient times ( Dionysius Thrax ). Details: see part of speech.

Construction

Words consist of morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful units in language system, in inflected languages ​​from ordinary and Flexionsmorphem ( house it ). In an insulating language as in the classical Chinese or Vietnamese, however, there is no inflection.

Types of words

Written words

Written words are represented with letters, characters or symbols in many languages ​​and separated by a space before the word or punctuation mark from one another. In classical Chinese each character corresponds to a word, a morpheme and a syllable.

The font used in a language is pure convention and mostly developed historically on. When changing a font from one language to another, not more closely related language, there are signs for sounds that do not exist in the new language, and on the other hand sounds, for which there are no characters. Then the font characters left for other sounds or extra characters usually is adjusted by characters are not used, be used introduced combinations of characters or symbols are modified by diacritical characters are introduced. The writing direction is dependent on the writing rules and based on the fact that a direction has historically enforced.

Spoken words

Spoken words are made of syllables that in turn consist of one or more phonemes ( sounds ). In some languages, meaning-differentiating sounds added ( Mandarin, Hausa, Vietnamese ), they are called tone languages ​​(see also the intonation German interjections such as " hm" ). In languages ​​like German accent each word has a major accent body. In the spoken language is present and potentially after the word a short break.

Vocabulary

A large part of the German vocabulary consists of words that come from other languages ​​, so-called foreign and loan words. The proportion of borrowings at the vocabulary differs significantly in different languages. So almost 75 % non Germanic origin were counted in English at around 80,000 words. In a German etymological dictionary over 30% of borrowings were identified among almost 17,000 words.

With the 207 most common words in the vocabulary of a German native speaker can already be 50% of an almost arbitrary text display. Of these, the most common words of one syllable. The longer the word, the lower its frequency. This observation can be done in almost all languages. The underlying principle is called Zipfsches law or Huffman coding.

The word has been found in many German proverbs input. Wanders German proverbs dictionary lists almost 1000 proverbs word, apart from a little word, dictionary, caviller, little word, word play and word penalty.

Others

It has become a sport become of it, to remember in a given time as many words. The world record for fifteen minutes is 214 words. To accomplish such feats of memory, grab the memory athletes back to different mnemonics.

As the longest known protein, titin has according to the rules of the IUPAC also the longest systematic name of a chemical compound. In this generic name is the succession of the amino acids named in the correct order, that is, in the primary structure of the protein. The systematic name of titin begins with " methionyl ... " and ends with " ... isoleucine ." It is controversial whether such generic names are regular words. Smite them the words, so is the systematic name of titin, the longest existing word and indeed in any language. The reading of the generic name takes more than 3 hours, the word consists of 189 819 letters.

As the longest German word actually used without hyphens is considered " asset allocation transfer of competence Regulation " ( VZOZÜV ) with 56 letters.

Religion

The Gospel of John begins with a deep prologue in the form of a strophic song ( 1:1-18 EU) over the word. The famous first sentence reads: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. " Even in the scriptures of other religions, the word is of outstanding importance.

Seal

Famous Gottfried Benn's poem zweistrophiges.

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