1.

THE NOTION OF WORD

2. THE WORD MEANING
3. POLYSEMY
4. HOMONYMY
5. MULTIWORD LEXEMES
- Difficulties in definition of word
- The word defined
- Characteristics of words
- Ambiguity in the notion of word
Morphology – the study of the structure of words
Lexicology – the study of the stock ofwords (lexis,
lexicon) in a given language.
Word is of central importance to lexicology
In morphology, the word is not sufficient in the analysis,
because there are smaller units.
What do we mean by the term word in lexicology?
Not easy to define word.Why?
Speech is a continuous stream of sound without a clear
division into units, but it can be analysed into meanngful
elements which recur and combine according torules.
In writing, such an analysis is expressed through the division
into words andsentences.
The essence of grammatical units is that they aremeaningful
and combine with each other in systematic ways. We may
distinguish a hierarchy of units:
A sentence consists of clauses, a clause consists of one or
more phrases, a phrase consists of one or more words, a
word of one or more morphemes, a morphemeconsists of
one or more phonemes.
The term word is used to designate an intermediate
structure smaller than a whole phrase and yet larger
than a single sound segment.
It can be defined depending on whether we focus on its
representation, the thought which it expresses, or
purely formal criteria.
However, although it may be difficult to define word,
even nonliterate speakers can divide the speech chain
into words.
 This definition relies mainly on writing traditions that
separate by spaces sequences of letters or characters.
These separations do not always correspond to
functional realities.
In speech these pauses do not exist. Speech is a
phonetic continuum and breaks are done only between
some larger syntactic units, such as phrases or clauses.
E.g. School, household, in, fall out, waste paper basket,
forget-me-not, runner-up.
Value of these spaces?
Consequently, a definition based on writing traditions
alone cannot be entirely satisfactory.
The second type of definition considers the indivisible unit of
thought as the most essential criterion. The main problem
faced by this view is the delimitation which offers us three
possible alternatives:
A) the word as represented in writing represents a thought
unit or a psychological unit, e.g. table, house, courage, faith,
intelligence, tall, short, sleep,eat…
B) The word forms one block but includes two unitsof
thought: e.g. farmer, rethink,spoonful.
C) The psychological unit exceeds the limit of the
graphological unit and spreads over several words, whichis
then a more complex unit: e.g. all of a sudden, as usual,
coconut.
By L. Bloomfield, who suggested a formal definition of word.
He contrasted it with other significant units, the morpheme
or minimal meaningful unit, and the syntagma or structure,
consisting potentially of more thanone word.

For Bloomfield, a minimal form is morpheme. A form which

may occur alone is free, and the one which cannot occur
alone is bound: Fbook, man ; B -ing,-er.

Word is a minimal free form, which can occur in isolation

and have meaning but which cannot be analysed into
elements which can all occur alone and also havemeaning.
The word is an uninterruptible unit of structure consisting
of one or more morphemes andwhich typically occurs in
the structure of phrases.

The morphemes are the ultimate grammatical

constituents, the minimal meaningful units oflanguage.
 Another difficulty when treating words is the term word
itself, which may be used in a number ofdifferent ways:
1. It may refer to the word form, the physical unit or concrete
realisation, either the orthographical word (the written
form) or the phonological word (the uttered or transcribed
form).
2. It may refer to the lexeme, which is rather like a dictionary
entry. A lexeme includes all inflected formes of a word. It is
an abstraction and is indicated by smallcapitals:
e.g. WALK– walk, walks, walked,walking
RUN – run, runs, ran,running
SING – sing, sings, sang, sung, singing.
- The word is considered as an uninterruptible
unit of structure consisting of one or more
morphemes and which typically occurs in the
structure of phrases.
e.g. read, reads, read, reading are separate
words grammatically
- Lexical words : nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs
+ have independent meanings and be
meaningful even in isolation or in series
+ have thousands of member
+ add new items very often
+ form open classes
- Grammatical words: prepositions, articles,
conjunctions, …
+ not suggest any identifiable meaning
+ have few members
+ rarely add new items
+ from closed classes/sets
- The word is uninterruptible unit = internal
stability, i.e. additional elements never come
within the word but at the beginning or at the
end.
- The word may consist one or more
morphemes.
- The word occurs typically in the structure of
phrases, i.e. morpheme ͢ word ͢ phrase͢͢
clause͢ sentence͢ ….
- The word should belong to a specific word
class or part of speech.
- First, the word is an uninterruptible unit.
- When elements are added to a word to
modify its meaning, they are never included
within that word. They respect the internal
stability of the word and are added either at
the beginning as prefixes of the word or at the
end as suffixes. For example, the prefix un- and
the suffix –able may be added to the words
aware and drink and give unaware and drinkable
respectively.
Note, however, that an affix may also occur not at the
beginning or at the end, but sumultaneously with the
word; we then speak of asuprafix.
Compare for example the words 'export (noun) and
ex'port (verb); they differ only in the position of the
primary stress represented by the symbol(').
The stress pattern may be referred to as a suprafix. The
word to which affixes are added and which carries the
basic meaning of the resulting complex word is known
as 'the stem',which may consist of one or more
morphemes. The label 'root' is used to refer to a stem
consisting of a single morpheme.
Secondly, the word may consist of one ormore
morphemes.
When it consists of one morpheme only, then it cannot
be broken down intosmaller meaningful units, e.g. dog,
hand, man, out, work.
These are called 'simple' words, which are typically
'minimum free forms', in the sense that they may stand
by themselves and yet act as minimally complete
utterances, e.g. in answer to aquestion.
When words consist of more than one morpheme,they
may be either complex or compound.
Complex words may be broken down into one freeform
and one or more bound forms: e.g. dog-s, happi-ly,
quick-er, work-ing, whereas compound words consist of
more than one free form: e.g. birth+day, black+bird,
candle+stick, coat+hanger.
We also need to mention cases which incorporate the
characteristics of both complex and compoundwords:
e.g. gentle-man-ly consists of the compound word
gentle+man and the suffix -ly; wind+shield+wipe-er
consists of the compound word wind+shieldand the
complex word wip-er.
Finally, it is also an important characteristic of each
word that it should belong to a specific word class or
part of speech.
Where the same form appears in more than one class,
as frequently happens in English, we regard the various
occurences as separate words (for example, smoke
(verb) as distinct from smoke (noun)).
It may even be suggested that a word is definedby two
factors: its semantic 'nucleus' and the class to which it
belongs.
the different morphosyntactic words are representedby
different word forms (take, took,taken).
But in
I put the garbage out every week. (PUT + present)
I put the garbage out yesterday. (PUT + past)
I have put the garbage out already. (PUT + past participle)

the different morphosyntacticwords are represented by the

same word form (put).
We shall now come back to the distinction oftenmade
between lexical (content), function words and inserts.
In most general terms, lexical words are nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs. They have fairly independent
meanings and may be meaningful even in isolation or in
a series. They are the main carriers of meaning in a
text.
For example, bottle has an independent meaning; and
so does the series boy, break, bottle, stone.
They are the words that remain in the information-
dense language of telegrams, lecture notes, headlines,
etc.
The English vocabulary has thousands of lexical words, and new
items can always be added to the list.
Function words bind the text together. They often have a wide
range of meanings and serve two main roles: indicating
relationships between lexical words or larger units, or indicating
the way in which a lexical word or larger unit is to be interpreted.
Function words are elements like prepositions,
determiners,pronouns, numerals, auxiliaries, adverbial particles,
coordinators, subordinators, wh-words, the negator not,
existential there, the infinitive marker to...
Such classes contain relatively few members and the addition of
new members is rather rare. They constitute closed classes or
closed sets.
However, although prepositions may be classed as
grammatical/function words, they are not completely
empty of semantic content.
The sentence «The book is on the table» has quite a
different meaning when on is replaced by under,near,
off, etc.
Similarly, the co-ordinators and, or, and but arenot
mutually interchangeable, because they are not
synonymous.
 Inserts are a relatively newly recognized category of word. They do
not form an integral part of a syntactic structure, but are inserted
rather freely in the text.
They are often marked off by intonation, pauses, or bypunctuation
marks in writing.
They characteristically carry emotional and interactional meanings
and are especially frequent in spokentexts.
E.g. Hm hm, very good. (CONV)

Cheers man. (CONV)

Yeah, I will. Bye.(CONV)

Biber et al. (1999)

 Word classes have fuzzy borderlines:
Homonymy – a single form belongs to more than one wordclass.
E.g. right – can be a lexical word (noun, verb, adjective, or adverb), or
a function word (preposition or subordinator).
A number of forms can belong tomore than one function word class,
e.g. To (preposition and infinitive marker), for (preposition and
subordinator), etc.
Other examples:
Before – adverb, preposition, subordinator
Round – Noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition
Weekly – noun, adjective, adverb
Early – adjective, adverb
(Biber et al. 1999)
Sources of ambiguity
- The generic character of the word
- The multiplicity of aspects in every word
- The lack of clear-cut boundaries in the non-
linguistic world
- The lack of familiarity with the referent of the
words
- The linguistic sign
- The word as a linguistic sign
- Denotation and reference
- Denotation and sense
- Denotation and connotation
- A linguistic sign is a mental unit consisting 2
faces: a concept and an acoustic image
- When dealing with words, we can focus either
on the form or on the meaning
- Since the word is a linguistic sign, a
discussion of word meaning focuses on the
relationship between the two faces of the
sign, the acoustic image or signifier on the
one hand and concept, or signified on the
other hand.
- Here we have to describe several terms that
are usually associated with word meaning.
- These terms are denotation, reference, sense
and connotation.
- Here we have to recall the term lexeme,
considered an abstract linguistic unit with
different variants.
- So, denotation of a lexeme can be defined as
the relationship that holds between that
lexeme and persons, things, places,
properties...External to the language system.
- As opposed to denotation , the relationship of
reference holds between an expression and what
that expression stands for on particular
occasions of its utterance Reference depends on
particular occasions of its utterance. Reference
depends on concrete utterance, not on abstract
sentences. Thus, reference is never applicable to
single word forms and it is never applicable to
single lexemes.
- Therefore, denotative meaning is the meaning
which we usually find as a dictionary definition.
- We have already defined denotation. Sense, on
the other hand, can be defined as a relationship
between the words or expressions of a single
language. Sense is a relationship which is internal
to the language system. Both individual lexemes
and larger expressions have sense However the
sense of an expression is a function of the have
sense. However, the sense of an expression is a
function of the sense of the lexemes it contains
and their occurrences in a particular grammatical
construction.
- The sense of the word table will vary in the
following sentences: Don’t put your feet on the
table! And It was finalized under the table
- According to binary distinction between
denotation and connotation, denotative meaning
refers to the relationship between a linguistic
sign and its denotatum or referent.
- However, connotations constitute additional
properties of lexemes, e.g. poetic, slang, baby
language, biblical, casual formal humorous legal
literary rhetorical casual, formal, humorous,
legal, literary, rhetorical...
- Denotation and connotation are both important
in order to determine word meaning in a given
context.
Polysemy refers to the situation where the same word
has two or more different meanings. For instance, the
noun board is said to be polysemous because it may
mean:
- 1. a long thin piece of cut wood;
- 2. a flat surface with patterns, used for playing game
on;
- 3. a flat piece of hard material used for putting food
on;
- 4. a flat piece of hard material fastened to the wall in
a public place to pin notices on;
- 5. the cost of meals;
- 6. a committee or association, as of company
directors or government officials...
Similarly, the word flight is defined in at least
the following ways:
1. the act of flying;
2. the distance covered or course followed by
a flying object;
3. a trip by plane,
4. the aircraft making the journey,
5. a group of birds or aircrafts flying together...
- In most cases, only one of the meanings of a
polysemous word will fit into a given context,
but occasionally ambiguity may also arise.
- Since one meaning cannot always be
delimited and distinguished from another, it is
not easy to say without hesitation whether two
meanings are the same or different
Consequently we cannot determine exactly how
the same or different. Consequently, we cannot
determine exactly how many meanings a
polysemous word has.
- When we refer to the difficulty in recognizing
polysemy, we are dealing with the
relationship between polysemy (one word
with several meanings) and homonymy
(several words with the same spelling and/or
pronunciation).
- As a final observation, it must be said that
polysemy is an essential condition for the
efficiency of the language. Consequently,
polysemy must be considered an invaluable
factor of economy and flexibility in language.
- Homonymy refers to a situation where we have
two or more words with the same shape.
Although they have the same shape, homonyms
are considered to be distinct lexemes, mainly
because they have unrelated meanings and
different etymologies.
- In addition to the difference in meaning,
homonyms may also be kept apart by syntactic
differences. For example, when homonyms
belong to different word classes, as in the case of
tender, which has different lexemes as adjective,
verb and noun, each homonym has not only a
distinct meaning, but also a different
grammatical function.
- Because of the sameness of shape, there is a
danger of homonymous conflict or clashes in the
sense that two homonyms with totally different
meanings may both make sense in the same
utterance: e.g.
- The route was very long.
- The root was very long.
- However, there are at least two different
safeguards against any possibility of confusion:
the difference in word class and the difference in
spelling, besides the difference in overall
context.
 The lexeme
 Multiword verbs
 Idioms
 A lexeme = a lexical item is a unit of lexical
meaning which exists regardless of any
inflectional endings it may have or the
number of words it mat contains.
 A lexeme may consist of one word, e.g. big,
boy… or more than one words, e.g. away
from, brother-in-law, cut down on…
 The headword of preposition or adverbs may
often consist of only one form.
 In other cases, the headword often consists
the base form and derived form
e.g. speak
- base form: speak
- derived forms: speaks, spoke, speaking,
spoken
Since the lexeme is abstract, it is conventional to choose one
of the inflected forms to represent it, such as infinitive of the
verb or the singular of the noun. The same word form may in
fact represent different lexemes:
a. A homonym is a single orthographic and phonological
word standing for two lexemes, as bear is either the verb or
the noun.
b. A homograph is a single orthographic word (but separate
phonological words) standing for two lexemes, as leadis
either the noun /lεd/ or the verb /li:d/.
c. A homophone is a single phonological word (but separate
orthographical words) standing for two lexemes, as /mi:t/ is
either the noun meat or the verb meet.
 The same lexeme might also have quite distinct word forms,
as in the case of the definite article the, represented by /ð /
or /ð /, or the indefinite article a/an, represented by /e /,
/ /, / n/, or / n/.
3. Finally, word may also refer to a morphosyntactic word (or
grammatical word). A morphosyntactic word consists of a
lexeme and associated grammatical meaning. For example,
in:
I take the garbage outevery week. (TAKE+ present)
I took the garbage outyesterday. (TAKE+ past)
I have taken the garbage out already. (TAKE + past participle)
 Multiword verb = verb + particles (one or
two)
 3 multiword verbs
- Phrasal verbs
- Prepositional verbs
- Phrasal-prepositional verbs
 Criteria to classify:
- The notion of transitivity and the relative
position of direct object
- The number of particles after the main verb
+ Prepositional verbs
- Are always transitive, e.g. call for, look at…
- The object can not occur between verb and
particle
+ Phrasal verbs
- Can be transitive (bring up)or intransitive
(give in)
- The object can occur between the verb and
particle (bring them up)
+ phrasal – prepositional verbs
- Constitute a bridge between phrasal verbs
and prepositional verbs
- Are transitive verbs
- Always have two particles after the verbs, e.g.
check up on, get away with…
+ Meaning:
- Preserve the meaning of the verb and the particle
- Be treated as an idiomatic expression (especially
phrasal-prepositional verbs)
+ Object position
- With most transitive phrasal verbs, the particle
can either precede or follow the direct object,
e.g. switch on the light = switch the light on
- Particle cannot precede personal pronouns, e.g.
switch it on (switch on it is unacceptable)
- The particle tends to precede the object if the O
is long or should receive end-focus.
+ Can be treated as collocations
+ Can be considered type of multiword lexeme
+ Definition: a phrase whose meaning cannot
be predicted from individual meanings of the
morphemes it comprises
+ Can be recognized as frozen metaphor
2 types: full idioms and partial idioms
 In partial idioms one of the word has its usual
meaning the other has a meaning that is
peculiar to the particular sequence, e.g. red
hair.
 White in white coffee, white wine and white
people is idiomatic depends on whether or
not we defined the terms as , with a lightest
of the colors normally associated with the
entity
2 characteristics:
- Ambiguity (literal and idiomatic meaning)
- Syntactic: restricted syntactic properties
e.g. John kicked the bucket.
- literally: The bucket was kicked – Ok
- Idiomatically: The bucket was kicked - not
Ok
e.g. look forward to meeting
Look cannot be replaced by see/watch