THE HISTORY OF ATLANTIS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

A History of Atlantis must differ from all other histories, for the fundamental reason that it
seeks to record the chronicles of a country the soil of which is no longer available for
examination to the archaeologist. If, through some cataclysm of nature, the Italian
peninsula had been submerged in the green waters of the Mediterranean at a period
subsequent to the fall of Rome, we would still have been in possession of much
documentary evidence concerning the growth and ascent of the Roman Empire. At the
same time, the soil upon which that empire flourished, the ponderable remains of its
civilisation and its architecture, would have been for ever lost to us save as regards their
colonial manifestations. We should, in a great measure, have been forced to glean our
ideas of Latin pre-eminence from those institutions which it founded in other lands, and
from those traditions of it which remained at the era of its disappearance among the
unlettered nations surrounding it.

But great as would be the difficulties attending such an enterprise, these would, indeed, be
negligible when compared with the task of groping through the mists of the ages in quest of
the outlines of chronicle and event which tell of a civilisation plunged into the…

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 WHY STUDY WORDS?

1.2

Imagine a life without words! Trappist monks opt for it. But most of us would not give up
words for anything. Every day we utter thousands and thousands of words. Communicating
our joys, fears, opinions, fantasies, wishes, requests, demands, feelings—and the
occasional threat or insult—is a very important aspect of being human. The air is always
thick with our verbal emissions. There are so many things we want to tell the world. Some
of them are important, some of them are not. But we talk anyway—even when we know
that what we are saying is totally unimportant. We love chitchat and find silent encounters
awkward, or even oppressive. A life without words would be a horrendous privation.
It Is a cliché to say that words and language are probably humankind’s most valuable single
possession. It is language that sets us apart from our biologically close relatives, the great
primates. (It would imagine that many a chimp or gorilla would give an arm and a leg for a
few words—but we will probably never know because they cannot tell us.) Yet, surprisingly,
most of us take words (and more generally language) for granted. We cannot discuss words
with anything like the competence with which we can discuss fashion, films or football.

We should not take words for granted. They are too important. This book is intended to
make explicit some of the things that we know subconsciously about words. It is a linguistic
introduction to the nature and structure of English words. It addresses the question ‘what
sorts of things do people need to know about English words in order to use them in
speech?’ It is intended to increase the degree of sophistication with which you think about
words. It is designed to give you a theoretical grasp of English word-formation, the sources
of English vocabulary and the ways in which we store and retrieve words from the mind.

I hope a desirable side effect of working through English Words will be the enrichment of
your vocabulary. This book will help to increase, in a very practical way, your awareness of
the relationship between words. You will be equipped with the tools you need to work out
the meanings of unfamiliar words and to see in a new light the underlying structural
patterns in many familiar words which you have not previously stopped to think about
analytically.

For the student of language, words are a very rewarding object of study. An understanding
of the nature of words provides us with a key that opens the door to an understanding of
important aspects of the nature of language in general. Words give us a panoramic view of
the entire field of linguistics because they impinge on every aspect of language structure.
This book stresses the ramifications of the fact that words are complex and multi-faceted
entities whose structure and use interacts with the other modules of the grammar.

[1.2]

a. We put all the big ______ on the table.

b. We put all the big splets on the table.

The study of word-formation and word-structure is called MORPHOLOGY. Morphological
theory provides a general theory of word-structure in all the languages of the world. Its task
is to characterise the kinds of things that speakers need to know about the structure of the
words of their language in order to be able to use them to produce and to understand
speech.

We will see that in order to use language, speakers need to have two types of
morphological knowledge. First, they need to be able to analyse existing words (e.g. they
must be able to tell that frogs contains frog plus -s for plural). Usually, if we know the
meanings of the elements that a word contains, it is possible to determine the meaning of
the entire word once we have worked out how the various elements relate to each other.
For instance, if we examine a word like nutcracker we find that it is made up of two words,
namely the noun nut and the noun cracker. Furthermore, we see that the latter word,
cracker, is divisible into the verb crack and another meaningful element -er (roughly
meaning ‘an instrument used to do X’), which, however, is not a word in its own right.
Numerous other words are formed using this pattern of combining words (and smaller
meaningful elements) as seen in [1.3]:

[1.3]

[tea]Noun – [strain-er]Noun

[lawn]Noun – [mow-er]Noun

[can]Noun – [open-er]Noun

Given the frame [[______]Noun – [______er]] Noun, we can fill in different words with the
appropriate properties and get another compound word (i.e. a word containing at least two
words). Try this frame out yourself. Find two more similar examples of compound words
formed using this pattern.

Second, speakers need to be able to work out the meanings of novel words constructed
using the word-building elements and standard word-construction rules of the language.
Probably we all know and use more words than are listed in dictionaries. We can construct
and analyse the structure and meaning of old words as well as new ones. So, although
many words must be listed in the dictionary and memorised, listing every word in the
dictionary is not necessary. If a word is formed following general principles, it may be more
efficient to reconstitute it from its constituent elements as the need arises rather than
permanently commit it to memory. When people make up new words using existing words
and wordforming elements, we understand them with ease—providing we know what the
elements they use to form those words mean and providing the word-forming rules that
they employ are familiar. This ability is one of the things explored in morphological
investigations.

In an average week, we are likely to encounter a couple of unfamiliar words. We might

reach for a dictionary and look them up. Some of them may be listed but others might be
too new or ephemeral to have found their way into any dictionary. In such an event, we rely
on our morphological knowledge to tease out their meanings. If you heard someone
describe their partner as ‘a great list maker and a ticker-off’, you would instantly know what
sort of person the partner was—although you almost certainly have never encountered the
word ticker-off before. And it is certainly not listed in any dictionary. The -er ending here
has…

3.2

Childish hopeless sooner mended elephants re-boil unsafe ex-wife

You would have to give a different answer. You would need to tell your interrogator, who by
now would be getting increasingly bewildered, that the words in [3.2] can be divided into
smaller units of meaning as shown in [3.3]:

3.3

Child-ish hope-less soon-er mend-ed elephant-s re-boil un-safe ex-wife

The part of the word that is not italicised can function as an independent word in the
grammar. Indeed, each of the nonitalicised chunks is a word (i.e. vocabulary item) that is
listed as such in the dictionary. By contrast, the italicised bits, though meaningful (and their
meanings can be indicated as shown in [3.4]), cannot function on their own in the grammar.
3.4

Morpheme Meaning Example

-ish ‘having the (objectionable) qualities of’ child-ish = ‘having the qualities of a child’

-less ‘without X’ hopeless = ‘without hope’

-er ‘more X’ sooner = ‘more soon’

-ed ‘past’ mended = ‘mend in the past’

-s ‘plural’ elephants = ‘more than one elephant’

Re ‘again’ re-boil = ‘boil again’

Un ‘not X’ unsafe = ‘not safe’

Ex ‘former’ ex-wife = ‘former wife’

What we have done to the words in [3.4] can be done to thousands of other words in
English. They can be decomposed into smaller units of meaning (e.g. re- ‘again’) or
grammatical function (e.g. -ed ‘past’).

The term MORPHEME Is used to refer to the smallest unit that has meaning or serves a
grammatical function in a language. Morphemes are the atoms with which words are built.
It is not possible to find sub-morphemic units that are themselves meaningful or have a
grammatical function. Thus, given -less or un-, it would make no sense to try to assign
some identifiable meaning to any part of these forms. Of course, it is possible to isolate the
individual sounds [l-ə-s] or [ʌ-n], but those sounds in themselves do not mean anything.

We have now established that words are made up of morphemes. But how do we recognise
a morpheme when we see one? Our definition of the morpheme as the smallest unit of
meaning (or grammatical function) will be the guiding principle. Any chunk of a word with a
particular meaning will be said to represent a morpheme. That is how we proceeded in [3.3]
and [3.4] above.

Morphemes tend to have a fairly stable meaning which they bring to any word in which they
appear. If we take re- and un-, for instance, they mean ‘again’ and ‘not’ respectively—not
just in the words we have listed above, but also in thousands of other words. Usually
morphemes are used again and again to form different words. Thus re- meaning ‘re-do
whatever the verb means’ can be attached before most verbs to yield a new word with a
predictable meaning (e.g. re-run, re-take, re-build etc.). In like manner, un- meaning ‘not X’
(where X stands for whatever the adjective means) can be attached to various adjectives
(e.g. un-real, un-clean, un-happy etc.) to yield a new word with a predictable negative
meaning.

It could be a bat with which you play cricket or a small, flying mammal. This is a case of
LEXICAL AMBIGUITY. We have in this sentence a word-form that represents more than one
lexeme with a meaning that is quite plausible. It is not possible to determine the right
interpretation of the sentence without looking at the wider context in which it appears.

We have established that the relationship between a word-form and the meaning that it
represents is a complex one. This is exploited not only in literature and word-play as we
saw above but also in the language of advertising. For instance, a recent British Gas
newspaper advertisement for gas heating said:

[2.15]

You will warm to our credit. It’s free.

This advertisement exploits the lexical ambiguity that is due to the fact that warm (to) can
mean ‘become enthusiastic’ or ‘experience a rise in temperature’. Next time you look at an
advertisement, see whether it exploits any of the relationships between lexemes and word-
forms that we have examined.
2.2.3 Grammatical words

Finally, let us consider the word from a grammatical perspective. Words play a key role in
syntax. So, some of their properties are assigned taking into account syntactic factors.
Often words are required to have certain properties if they serve certain syntactic
purposes. Thus, although in [2.16a] we have the same sense of the same lexeme (play)
realised by the same word-form (played), we know that this word does at least two quite
different grammatical jobs in the sentence of which it is a part.

[2.16]

a. She played the flute.

She has played the flute.

b. She took the flute.

She has taken the flute.

If you compare the sentences in [2.16] above, you will see that in [2.16a] the verb play is
realised by the word-form played regardless of whether it simply indicates that the action
happened in the past as in the first example or that an action was (recently) completed as
in the second example. Contrast this with the situation in [2.16b] where these two
grammatical meanings are signalled by two different forms. Took indicates that the action
happened in the past while taken (after has/had) indicates that the action is complete. In
She played the flute and She took the flute the words played and took are described
grammatically as the ‘past tense forms of the verbs play and take’. By contrast, in She has
played the flute and She has taken the flute we describe played and taken as the ‘past
participle’ of play and take.

Linguists use the term SYNCRETISM to describe situations such as that exemplified by
played where the same word-form of a lexeme is used to realise two (or more) distinct
grammatical words that are represented separately in the grammatical representations of
words belonging to some other comparable lexemes. The phenomenon of syncretism is
one good reason for distinguishing between word-forms and grammatical words. It enables
us to show that words belonging to the same lexeme and having the same form in speech
and writing can still differ.

A further example should make the ideas of grammatical words and syncretism even
clearer. Consider the verbs in the following sentences:

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2.2 WORDS ARE LIKE LIQUORICE ALLSORTS

When we talk of words we do not always mean exactly the same thing. Like liquorice
allsorts, words come in all sorts of varieties. We will start our discussions by distinguishing
the different senses in which we use the term ‘word’.

2.2.1 Word-forms

Let us use the term WORD-FORM to describe the physical form which realises or
represents a word in speech or writing. Consider the words in the following extract from T.S.
Eliot’s poem:

➢ [2.1]

Half-past one,

The street-lamp sputtered,

The street-lamp muttered,

The street-lamp said, ‘Regard that woman

Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door

Which opens on her like a grin…’

(Rhapsody on a Windy Night, Eliot 1963)

In written English, words are easy to recognize. They are preceded by a space and followed
by a space. Using this criterion, we can say that there are thirty-one words (i.e. word-forms)
in the extract from ‘Rhapsody’. We will call word-forms like these which we find in writing
ORTHOGRAPHIC WORDS. If you look again at the extract, you might wonder if some of the
hyphenated orthographic words are ‘really’ individual words. Many people would
hyphenate half-past as Eliot does but not street-lamp. They would write street lamp as two
separate words, with a space between them. What would you do?

The use of hyphens to indicate that something is a complex word containing more than one
word-like unit is variable, largely depending on how transparent the compound nature of a
word is. Shakespeare wrote today as to-day and tomorrow as to-morrow:

➢ [2.2]

To-morrow, Caesar,

I shall be furnished to inform you rightly…

(Antony and Cleopatra I, iv)

The distinction between word-forms and vocabulary items is important. Very often, when
we talk about words what we have in mind is not word-forms, but something more
abstract—what we will refer to here as LEXEMES (i.e., vocabulary items). Anyone compiling
a dictionary lists words in this sense.
Even though the word-forms in each of the columns in [2.8] below are different, we do not
find each one of them given a separate entry in an English dictionary. The first word in each
column is listed under a heading of its own. The rest may be mentioned under that heading,
if they do not follow a regular pattern of the language—e.g. write, written (past participle),
wrote (past tense). But if they do follow the general pattern (e.g. washes, washing, washed;
smile, smiling, smiled) they will be left out of the dictionary altogether.

➢ [2.8]

| WASH | TAKE | BRING | WRITE |

|----------|----------|-----------|-----------|

| wash | take | bring | write |

| washes | takes | brings | writes |

| washing | taking | bringing | writing |

| washed | took | brought | wrote |

| .washed | taken | brought | written |

In [2.8] each lexeme (i.e. vocabulary item) that would be entered in a dictionary is shown in
capital letters and all the different word-forms belonging to it are shown in lower-case
letters.

The examples In [2.8] are all verbs. But of course, lexemes can be nouns; adjectives or
adverbs as well. In [2.9] you will find examples from these other word classes.

➢ [2.9]

| Noun | Adjective | Adverb |

|------------|-----------|--------|

| MATCH | KIND | SOON |

| match | kind | soon |

| matches | kinder | sooner |

| GOOSE | BAD | WELL |

| goose | bad | well |

| geese | worse | better |

In [2.9] we have three pairs of lexemes: the nouns match and goose; the adjectives kind
and bad; and adverbs soon and well. In each case the word-forms belonging to each
lexeme in [2.9a] follow a general pattern for words of their type and need not be listed in the
dictionary. But all the ones in [2.9b] are irregular and must be listed in the dictionary.

[2.12]

Why does the pony cough?

Because he’s a little hoarse.

(Young and Young 1981:57)

The joke is a pun on /hɔ:s/, the pronunciation of the two lexemes represented in writing by
horse and hoarse. Other examples of homophones include:

Tail ~ tale,
Sail ~ sale,

Weather ~ whether,

See ~ sea,

Read ~ reed,

Reel ~ real,

Seen ~ scene,

Need ~ knead.

Conversely, it is also possible to have several closely related meanings that are realized by
the same word-form. The name for this is POLYSEMY. Often you find several senses listed
under a single heading in a dictionary. For instance, under the entry for the noun force, the
OED lists over ten senses. I have reproduced the first six below:

➢ [2.13]

1. Physical strength.

2. Strength, impetus, violence, or intensity of effect.

 3. Power or might; especially military power.

4. A body of armed men, an army; troops.

5. Physical strength exerted on an object; violence or coercion.

6. Mental or moral strength; power of effective action.

The line that separates polysemy from homonymy is somewhat blurred. For example, in
[2.13], it is not entirely clear that the sixth sense of force is sufficiently removed from the
other meanings to merit an entry of its own. Mental or moral strength shows a somewhat
weaker relationship.

In the OED, there is a separate entry for the lexeme force, the verb. It is considered a
different lexeme because it has a different meaning and belongs to a different word-class
(verb vs. noun).

In real-life communication, the lack of a one-to-one match between lexemes and word-
forms does not necessarily cause ambiguity. But sometimes, homonymy like in the case of
bat can cause confusion:
 ➢ [2.14]

I saw a bat under the tree.

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➢ WORDS ARE LIKE LIQUORICE ALLSORTS

When we talk of words we do not always mean exactly the same thing. Like liquorice
allsorts, words come in all sorts of varieties. We will start our discussions by distinguishing
the different senses in which we use the term ‘word’.

➢ Word-forms

Let us use the term WORD-FORM to describe the physical form which realises or
represents a word in speech or writing. Consider the words in the following extract from T.S.
Eliot’s poem:

Half-past one,

The street-lamp sputtered,

The street-lamp muttered,

The street-lamp said, ‘Regard that woman

Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door

Which opens on her like a grin…

(Rhapsody on a windy night in Eliot 1963)

 ➢ In written English, words are easy to recognise. They are preceded by a space and
followed by a space… [continues]

➢ The distinction between word-forms and vocabulary items is important. Very often,
when we talk about words what we have in mind is not word-forms, but something
more abstract—what we refer to here as LEXEMES (i.e. vocabulary items)…

➢ Examples of verbs:

WASH TAKE BRING WRITE

Wash take bring write

Washes takes brings writes

Washing taking bringing writing

Washed took brought wrote

…washed taken brought written

 ➢ Other word classes:

Noun Adjective Adverb

MATCH KIND SOON

Match kind soon

Matches kinder sooner

GOOSE BAD WELL

Goose bad well

Geese worse better

➢ By contrast, word-forms may have the same pronunciation but different spellings
and meanings. Such forms are called HOMOPHONES.

➢ Example:
Why does the pony cough?

Because he’s a little hoarse.

(Young and Young 1981:57)

➢ Other examples:

Tail ~ tale, sail ~ sale, weather ~ whether, see ~ sea, read ~ reed, reel ~ real, seen ~ scene,
need ~ knead

➢ POLYSEMY is when several closely related meanings are realized by the same word-
form.

Example: force has over ten meanings in the OED, including:

1. Physical strength

2. Strength, impetus, violence, intensity

3. Power or might

4. A body of armed men

 5. Physical strength exerted on an object

6. Mental or moral strength

➢ In real-life communication, context usually resolves ambiguity. But sometimes, it

doesn’t:

I saw a bat under the tree. — [homonymy: bat (animal) vs. bat (sports)]

WHAT IS A WORD?

Fair: fair (adjective) beautiful, attractive

Fair skin, holiday

By contrast, word-forms may have the same pronunciation but different spellings and
meanings. Such forms are called HOMOPHONES. See this example from a joke book:

(2.12)

Why does the pony cough?

Because he’s a little hoarse.

(Young and Young 1981:57)

The joke is a pun on /hɔːs/, the pronunciation of the two lexemes represented in writing by
horse and hoarse. Other examples of homophones include tail ~ tale, sail ~ sale, weather ~
whether, see ~ sea, read ~ reed, reel ~ real, seen ~ scene, need ~ knead.

Conversely, it is also possible to have several closely related meanings that are realised by
the same word-form. The name for this is POLYSEMY. Often you find several senses listed
under a single heading in a dictionary. For instance, under the entry for the noun force, the
OED lists over ten senses. I have reproduced the first six below:

(2.13)

1. Physical strength. Rarely in pl. (= Fr. Forces — 1818.)

2. Strength, impetus, violence, or intensity of effect. ME.

3. Power or might; esp. military power. ME.

b. In early use, the strength (of a defensive work etc.). Subseq., the fighting strength of a
ship. 1877.

4. A body of armed men, an army. In pl. the troops or soldiers composing the fighting
strength of a kingdom or a commander. ME.

b. A body of police: often absol. The force = policemen collectively. 1851.

5. Physical strength or power exerted on an object; esp. violence or physical coercion. ME.

7. Mental or moral strength. Now only: power of effective action, or of overcoming

resistance. ME.

The line that separates polysemy from homonymy is somewhat blurred because it is not
altogether clear how far meanings need to diverge before we should treat words
representing them as belonging to distinct lexemes…

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➢ Such as PHONOLOGY, the study of how sounds are used to represent words in
speech, SYNTAX, the study of sentence structure, and SEMANTICS, the study of
meaning in language.

In order to use even a very simple word, such as frog, we need to access various types of
information from the word-store which we all carry around with us in the MENTAL LEXICON
or DICTIONARY that is tucked away in the mind. We need to know:

[1.1] (i) its shape, i.e. its PHONOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION /frɒg/ which enables us to
pronounce it, and its ORTHOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION frog, if we are literate and know
how to spell it (see the Key to symbols used on page xix);
(ii) its grammatical properties, e.g. it is a noun and it is countable—so you can have one
frog and two frogs;

(iii) its meaning.

But words tend not to wear their meaning on their sleeve. Normally, there is nothing about
the form of words that would enable anyone to work out their meaning. Thus, the fact that
frog refers to one of these must simply be listed in the lexicon and committed to memory
by brute force. For the relationship between a LINGUISTIC SIGN like this word and its
meaning is ARBITRARY. Other languages use different words to refer to this small tailless
amphibian. In French it is called (la) grenouille. In Malay they call it katak and in Swahili
chura. None of these words is more suited than the others to the job of referring to this
small reptile.

And of course, within a particular language, any particular pronunciation can be associated
with any meaning. So long as speakers accept that sound-meaning association, they have
a kosher word. For instance, convenience originally meant ‘suitability’ or
‘commodiousness’ but in the middle of the nineteenth century a new meaning of ‘toilet’
was assigned to it and people began to talk of ‘a public convenience’. In the early 1960s the
word acquired the additional new meaning of ‘easy to use, designed for hassle-free use’ as
in convenience food.

➢ We are the masters. Words are our servants. We can make them mean whatever we
want them to mean. Humpty Dumpty had all this worked out. The only thing missing
from his analysis is the social dimension. Any arbitrary meaning assigned to a word
needs to be accepted by the speech community which uses the language.
Obviously, language would not be much use as a means of communication if each
 individual language user assigned a private meaning to each word which other users
of the language did not recognise. Apart from that, it is instructive to listen in on the
lesson on the nature of language that Humpty Dumpty gave to Alice (see overleaf).

Let us now consider one further example. All competent speakers of English know that you
can add -s to a noun to indicate that it refers to more than one entity. So you say cat when
referring to one and cats if there is more than one. If you encountered in the blank in [1.2a]
an unfamiliar word like splet (which I have just made up), you would automatically know
from the context that it must have the plural form splets in this position since it is specified
as plural by [1a]. Further, you would know that the plural must be splets (rather than
spleten by analogy to children or spleti by analogy to stimuli). You know that the majority of
nouns form their plural by adding the regular plural suffix or ending -s. You always add -s
unless express instructions are given to do otherwise. There is no need to memorise
separately the plural form of most nouns. All we need is to know the rule that says ‘add -s
for plural’. So, without any hesitation, you suffix -s to obtain the plural form splets in [1.2b].

➢ The meaning of ‘someone who does whatever the verb means’. Given the verb tick
off, a ticker-off must be a person who ticks off. Similarly, if you know what
established words like handful, cupful and spoonful mean, you are also able to
figure out the meanings of novel words like fountain-penful (as in a fountain-penful
of ink) or hovercraftful (as in hovercraftful after hovercraftful of English shoppers
returned from Calais loaded down with cigarettes, cheese and plonk). Virtually any
noun denoting a container can have -ful added to it in order to indicate that it is ‘full
of something’.

To take another example, a number of words ending in -ist, many of which have come into
use in recent years, refer to people who discriminate against, or hold negative views about,
certain less powerful subgroups in society, e.g. racist, sexist. Anyone who knows what
racist and sexist mean, given the right context should have no difficulty in understanding
that the nature of discrimination perpetrated by people who are described using the novel
words ageist, sizist and speechist. Ageism is discrimination on grounds of (old) age — for
instance, denying employment to people over the age of 60; sizism is discrimination
(usually against fat people) on grounds of size and speechism is discrimination against
people with speech impediments like stuttering.

Did you notice how I exploited your tacit knowledge of the fact that words ending in -ist and
-ism complement each other? You were able to understand ageism, sizism and speechism
because you know that the noun denoting a belief or a discriminatory movement is
normally a noun ending in -ism. This is important. It shows that you know that certain word-
forming bits go together—and others do not. I suspect that you would reject putative words
like *†agement, †sizement and †speechment. (An asterisk is used conventionally to
indicate that a form is disallowed.) In word-formation there is a case of anything goes.

Morphological theory provides a general theory of word formation applicable to any

language but, as mentioned earlier, this book focuses on word-formation in English. Its
objective is to provide a description of English words designed to make explicit the various
things speakers know, albeit in an unconscious manner, about English words. The
emphasis will be on the description of English words rather than the elaboration of
morphological theory. So, data and facts about English words are brought to the fore and
the theoretical and methodological issues are kept in the background for the most part. The
use of formal notation has also been kept to a minimum in order to keep the account
simple.

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Chapter 2: What is a word?

2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.2 Often we find it very difficult to give a clear and systematic account of everyday
things, ideas, actions and events that surround us. We just take them for granted.
We rarely need to state in an accurate and articulate manner what they are really
 like. For instance, we all know what a game is. Yet, as the philosopher Wittgenstein
showed, we find it very difficult to state explicitly what the simple word game
means.

The same Is true of the term word. We use words all the time. We intuitively know what the
words in our language are. Nevertheless most of us would be hard pushed to explain to
anyone what kind of object a word is. If a couple of Martian explorers (with a rudimentary
understanding of English) came off their space-ship and stopped you in the street to
enquire what earthlings meant by the term WORD what would you tell them? I suspect you
might be somewhat vague and evasive. Although you know very well what words are, you
might find it difficult to express explicitly and succinctly what it is that you know about
them.

The purpose of this chapter is to try to find an answer to the question: what is a word? It is
not only Martian explorers curious about the way earthlings live who might want to know
what words are. We too have an interest in understanding words because they play such an
important role in our lives. As we saw in the last chapter, it is impossible to imagine human
society without language. And equally, it is impossible to imagine a human language that
has no words of any kind. It is impossible to understand the nature of language without
gaining some understanding of the nature of words. So, in this chapter we will clarify what
we mean when we use the term ‘word’. This clarification is essential if our investigations are
to make any headway for, as you will see presently, we mean quite a few very different
things when we talk of words.

A standard definition of the word is found in a paper written in 1926 by the American
linguist Leonard Bloomfield, one of the greatest linguists of the twentieth century.
According to Bloomfield, ‘a minimum free form is a word’. By this he meant that the word is
the smallest meaningful linguistic unit that can be used on its own. It is a form that cannot
be divided into any smaller units that can be used independently to convey meaning. For
example child is a word. We cannot divide it up into smaller units that can convey meaning
when they stand alone.

Contrast this with the word childish which can be analysed into child- and -ish. While the
child bit of childish is meaningful when used on its own (and hence is a word), the same is
not true of -ish. Although according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) -ish means
something like ‘having the (objectionable) qualities of’ (as in mannish, womanish, devilish,
sheepish, apish etc.), there is no way we can use it on its own.

ENGLISH WORDS

Such as PHONOLOGY, the study of how sounds are used to represent words in speech,
SYNTAX, the study of sentence structure, and SEMANTICS, the study of meaning in
language.

In order to use even a very simple word, such as frog, we need to access various types of
information from the word-store which we all carry around with us in the MENTAL LEXICON
or DICTIONARY that is tucked away in the mind. We need to know:

[1.1]

(i) its shape, i.e. its PHONOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION /frɒg/ which enables us to
pronounce it, and its ORTHOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION frog, if we are literate and know
how to spell it (see the Key to symbols used on page xix);

(ii) its grammatical properties, e.g. it is a noun and it is countable—so you can have one
frog and two frogs;

(iii) its meaning.

But words tend not to wear their meaning on their sleeve. Normally, there is nothing about
the form of words that would enable anyone to work out their meaning. Thus, the fact that
frog refers to one of these simply has to be listed in the lexicon and committed to memory
by brute force. For the relationship between a LINGUISTIC SIGN like this word and its
meaning is ARBITRARY. Other languages use different words to refer to this small tailless
amphibian. In French it is called (la) grenouille. In Malay they call it katak and in Swahili
chura. None of these words is more suited than the others to the job of referring to this
small reptile.

And of course, within a particular language, any particular pronunciation can be associated
with any meaning. So long as speakers accept that sound-meaning association, they have
a kosher word. For instance, convenience originally meant ‘suitability’ or
‘commodiousness’ but in the middle of the nineteenth century a new meaning of ‘toilet’
was assigned to it and people began to talk of ‘a public convenience’. In the early 1960s the
word acquired the additional new meaning of ‘easy to use, designed for hassle-free use’ as
in convenience food.

We are the masters. Words are our servants. We can make them mean whatever we want
them to mean. Humpty Dumpty had all this worked out. The only thing missing from his
analysis is the social dimension. Any arbitrary meaning assigned to a word needs to be
accepted by the speech community which uses the language. Obviously, language would
not be much use as a means of communication if each individual language user assigned a
private meaning to each word which other users of the language did not recognise. Apart
from that, it is instructive to listen in on the lesson on the nature of language that Humpty
Dumpty gave to Alice (see overleaf).

Let us now consider one further example. All competent speakers of English know that you
can add -s to a noun to indicate that it refers to more than one entity. So, you say cat when
referring to one and cats if there is more than one. If you encountered in the blank in [1.2a]
an unfamiliar word like splet (which I have just made up), you would automatically know
from the context that it must have the plural form splets in this position since it is specified
as plural by all. Further, you would know that the plural must be splets (rather than spleten
by analogy to children or spleti by analogy to stimuli). You know that the majority of nouns
form their plural by adding the regular plural suffix or ending -s. You always add -s unless
express instructions are given to do otherwise. There is no need to memorise separately the
plural form of most nouns. All we need is to know the rule that says ‘add -s for plural’. So,
without any hesitation, you suffix -s to obtain the plural form splets in [1.2b]:

It could be a bat with which you play cricket or a small, flying mammal. This is a case of
LEXICAL AMBIGUITY. We have in this sentence a word-form that represents more than one
lexeme with a meaning that is quite plausible. It is not possible to determine the right
interpretation of the sentence without looking at the wider context in which it appears.

We have established that the relationship between a word-form and the meaning that it
represents is a complex one. This is exploited not only in literature and word-play as we
saw above but also in the language of advertising. For instance, a recent British Gas
newspaper advertisement for gas heating said:

[2.15]

You will warm to our credit. It’s free.

This advertisement exploits the lexical ambiguity that is due to the fact that warm (to) can
mean ‘become enthusiastic’ or ‘experience a rise in temperature’. Next time you look at an
advertisement, see whether it exploits any of the relationships between lexemes and word-
forms that we have examined.

2.2.3 Grammatical words

Finally, let us consider the word from a grammatical perspective. Words play a key role in
syntax. So, some of their properties are assigned taking into account syntactic factors.
Often words are required to have certain properties if they serve certain syntactic
purposes. Thus, although in [2.16a] we have the same sense of the same lexeme (play)
realised by the same word-form (played), we know that this word does at least two quite
different grammatical jobs in the sentence of which it is a part:

[2.16]

a. She played the flute.

She has played the flute.

b. She took the flute.

She has taken the flute.

If you compare the sentences in [2.16] above, you will see that in [2.16a] the verb play is
realised by the word-form played regardless of whether it simply indicates that the action
happened in the past as in the first example or that an action was (recently) completed as
in the second example. Contrast this with the situation in [2.16b] where these two
grammatical meanings are signalled by two different forms. Took indicates that the action
happened in the past while taken (after has/had) indicates that the action is complete. In
She played the flute and She took the flute the words played and took are described
grammatically as the ‘past tense forms of the verbs play and take’. By contrast, in She has
played the flute and She has taken the flute we describe played and taken as the ‘past
participle’ of play and take.

Linguists use the term SYNCRETISM to describe situations such as that exemplified by
played where the same word-form of a lexeme is used to realise two (or more) distinct
grammatical words that are represented separately in the grammatical representations of
words belonging to some other comparable lexemes. The phenomenon of syncretism is
one good reason for distinguishing between word-forms and grammatical words. It enables
us to show that words belonging to the same lexeme and having the same form in speech
and writing can still differ.

A further example should make the ideas of grammatical words and syncretism even
clearer. Consider the verbs in the following sentences:

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND

Words by using sounds in a non-imitative way. There is an overriding tendency for the
relationship between sounds and meanings to be arbitrary. Normally there is no reason
why a particular morpheme is realised by any particular sounds. The choice of the
allomorph or allomorphs that represent a particular morpheme is arbitrary.

Obviously, as everyone knows, all languages do not have the same words. Since virtually
any arbitrary match of sound and meaning can produce a word, it is not surprising that
words vary greatly in their structure across languages. But this does not mean that chaos
reigns. The ways in which morphs are used to form words is regulated by general principles.
So, the amount of crosslinguistic variation in word-formation falls within certain broad
parameters. It is as if there is a menu of blueprints for word-formation from which all
languages make their selections:

[3.14]

(i) ISOLATING (or analytic) languages

(ii) AGGLUTINATING languages

(iii) INFLECTING (or synthetic) languages

(iv) POLYSYNTHETIC languages

No language makes all its choices from just one part of the menu. To varying degrees all
languages make mixed choices. The ideal of this menu is to indicate the predominant
word-formation tendencies, if they exist. In the subsections below we shall consider in turn
examples of the different morphological types.

3.6.1 Tiny words (isolating languages)

In an archetypical isolating language the word is virtually indistinguishable from the

morpheme, for every word contains just one morpheme. Every morpheme is a free
morpheme. There are no bound morphemes. Vietnamese comes close to this ideal:

[3.15]

Vietnamese

a. Tôi á đã qua bóng và hắn á đã tôi

I kick past class. Ball and he punch past me

 ‘I kicked the ball and he punched me.’

b. Chúng tôi mua đã gạo

Pl. I buy past rice

‘We bought the rice.’

Typically, the words are short and contain just one morpheme each. Almost every concept
is expressed by a separate word. Look again, for example, at the treatment of past tense in
verbs (e.g. punched, bought) and the plurality of we (plural plus first person).

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND

…that allomorphs are forms that are phonologically distinguishable which, none the less,
are not functionally distinct. In other words, although they are physically distinct morphs
with different pronunciations, allomorphs do share the same function in the language.

An analogy might help to clarify this point. Let us compare allomorphs to workers who
share the same job. Imagine a jobshare situation where Mrs Jones teaches maths to form
2DY on Monday afternoons, Mr Kato on Thursday mornings and Ms Smith on Tuesdays and
Fridays. Obviously, these teachers are different individuals. But they all share the role of
‘maths teacher’ for the class and each teacher only performs that role on particular days.
Likewise, all allomorphs share the same function but one allomorph cannot occupy a
position that is already occupied by another allomorph of the same morpheme. To
summarise, we say that allomorphs of a morpheme are in complementary distribution.
This means that they cannot substitute for each other. Hence, we cannot replace one
allomorph of a morpheme by another allomorph of that morpheme and change meaning.

For our next example of allomorphs we will turn to the plural morpheme. The idea of ‘more
than one’ is expressed by the plural morpheme using a variety of allomorphs including the
following:

[3.8]
Singular Plural

a. Rad-ius radi-i

Cactus cact-i

b. Dat-um dat-a

Strat-um strat-a

c. Analys-is analys-es

Ax-is ax-es

d. Skirt skirt-s

Road road-s

Branch branch-es

Going by the orthography, we can identify the allomorphs -I, -a, -es and -s. The last is by far
the commonest; see section (7.3).

Try and say the batch of words in [3.8d] aloud. You will observe that the pronunciation of
the plural allomorph in these words is variable. It is [s] in skirts, [z] in roads and [ɪz] (or for
some speakers [əz]) in branches. What is interesting about these words is that the
selection of the allomorph that represents the plural is determined by the last sound in the
noun to which the plural morpheme is appended. We will return to this in more depth in
section (5.2).

We have already seen, that because allomorphs cannot substitute for each other, we never
have two sentences with different meanings which solely differ in that one sentence has
allomorph X in a slot where another sentence has allomorph Y. Compare the two
sentences in [3.9]:
[3.9]

a. They have two cats

[ðeɪ hæv tuː kæts]

* [ˣ ðeɪ hæv tuː kæt-z]*

b. They have two dogs

[ðeɪ hæv tuː dɒgz]

* [ˣ ðeɪ hæv tuː dɒg-s]*