<div dir="ltr">Dear Ian,<div><br></div><div>In the Zenzontepec Chatino language of Mexico, the form <i>ītsáʔ</i> refers to 'word', '(hi)story', 'advice', 'problem', 'issue', and perhaps also 'customs, traditions.' That 'word' is in some way the primary sense is evidenced by the fact that when an inalienably possessed noun, <i>x-ītsáʔ</i>, is derived from it, that form means 'language'. The many cognates sharing the primary meaning 'word' in other Zapotecan languages also suggest that this is an ancient and perhaps original meaning. Speakers seem to more or less agree on where to add spaces between "words", but more work on that is needed to be sure.</div><div><br></div><div>Eric </div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 12:02 AM Seino van Breugel <<a href="mailto:seinobreugel@gmail.com">seinobreugel@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:13pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Dear All,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:13pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:13pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The Atong language of Northeast India has no indigenous word
for ‘word’, but uses a loanword from one of the surrounding Indic language, <i>kata
~ khata ~ katha ~ khatha </i>(the variation in aspiration being a good indicator of
its being a loan). This word is also used with the meaning ‘story’, i.e. ‘someone’s
words’, or ‘words of something’. The question arises, what does a speaker use
the notion of ‘word’ for in life. Atongs come into contact with several
different languages in their daily lives. When talking to me about the
differences in vocabulary between Atong and these languages, they never used
the word <i>katha</i>. They just said that something like “they say X, in Atong
it is Y” or some other expressions. The word <i>katha</i> with the meaning ‘word’
only came up during translation sessions, when I sat down with my translator to
translate the Atong texts I had collected into English. An interesting
observation I found while doing fieldwork is that the friend who transcribed my
recorded texts seems to have had an intuitive and quite consistent notion of what
a written word should look like on paper, which turned out to be, with a few,
also consistent exceptions, the phonological word. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:13pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:13pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Regards,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:13pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:13pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Seino</p><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">__________________</div><div dir="ltr">Dr. Seino van Breugel</div><div dir="ltr"><a href="https://independent.academia.edu/SeinovanBreugel" target="_blank">https://independent.academia.edu/SeinovanBreugel</a><br></div><div dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHfiZwqyWC7HfZUAQ1RH1ew" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHfiZwqyWC7HfZUAQ1RH1ew</a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 5:41 AM David Nash <<a href="mailto:david.nash@anu.edu.au" target="_blank">david.nash@anu.edu.au</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div>Further on this, as you suggest Ian,
care has to be taken as to whether the 'word for “word”' is
polysemous, or ranges more widely than we might expect. Even
English 'word' does in some contexts (as in "I took him at his
word.") Another relevant reference:<br>
<blockquote>Goddard, Cliff. 2011. The lexical semantics of
language (with special reference to words). <i>Language
Sciences</i> 33.1, 40-57.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.03.003" target="_blank">http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.03.003</a><br>
</blockquote>
David<br>
<br>
<br>
On 26/11/21 20:17, JOO, Ian [Student] wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div name="messageBodySection">
<div dir="auto"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Dear
Martin,</span><br>
<br>
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Thanks for citing
this chapter.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">I did some quick
search to see if it’s true that “only some” languages have a
word for “word”.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">For example, in the
World Loanword Database, it seems that most of the 41 sample
languages have a word for “word”, and more than half of them
have a native word for it.</span><br>
<a href="https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwold.clld.org%2Fmeaning%2F18-26%232%2F32.2%2F-4.8&data=04%7C01%7Cdavid.nash%40anu.edu.au%7C0358502990c943f7416408d9b0bdac2b%7Ce37d725cab5c46249ae5f0533e486437%7C0%7C0%7C637735152318739129%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=r1JnumGj7Vd4vqWdbSjqozgFE35C10g2a%2FLBc0mJ6W4%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">https://wold.clld.org/meaning/18-26#2/32.2/-4.8</a><br>
Also in the CLICS3 database, many languages seem to have one
or more “word”-words, although I can’t be sure if they are
native or not.<br>
<a href="https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fclics.clld.org%2Fparameters%2F1599&data=04%7C01%7Cdavid.nash%40anu.edu.au%7C0358502990c943f7416408d9b0bdac2b%7Ce37d725cab5c46249ae5f0533e486437%7C0%7C0%7C637735152318749083%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=uOeSkU9wVP5THDZ%2FXHoiij%2FhHjWJB17MPdH5W9rrOyU%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">https://clics.clld.org/parameters/1599</a><br>
On the other hand, my native language, Korean, doesn’t have a
monomorphemic “word”-word. The common words for “word”, tan-e
and nath-mal, are both compounds (‘piece-speech’), and I
suspect them to be fairly recently coined or borrowed.<br>
But the real question would be whether all these words for
“word” designate roughly the same concept.<br>
In many languages, the word for “word” seems to be co-lexified
with “speech” (such as Latin <em>verbum</em> or Japanese <em>koto-ba</em>).<br>
The question would be, when one asks a speaker of a given
language to divide a sentence into words, would the number of
words be consistent throughout different speakers?<br>
It would be an interesting experiment. I’d be happy to be
informed of any previous study who conducted such an
experiment.</div>
</div>
<div name="messageSignatureSection"><br>
Regards,
<div dir="auto">Ian</div>
</div>
<div name="messageReplySection">On 26 Nov 2021, 2:56 PM +0800,
Martin Haspelmath <a href="mailto:martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de" target="_blank"><martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de></a>, wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" style="border-left:thin solid grey;margin:5px;padding-left:10px">
I felt that Dixon & Aikhenvald's (2002) introductory
chapter was very interesting:<br>
<br>
<div style="line-height:1.35;margin-left:2em">
<div>Dixon, R. M. W & Aikhenvald,
Alexandra Y. 2002. Word: A typological framework. In
Dixon, R. M.W & Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (eds.),
<i>Word: A cross-linguistic typology</i>, 1–41. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.</div>
<span title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=Word%3A%20A%20typological%20framework&rft.place=Cambridge&rft.publisher=Cambridge%20University%20Press&rft.aufirst=R.%20M.%20W&rft.aulast=Dixon&rft.au=R.%20M.%20W%20Dixon&rft.au=Alexandra%20Y%20Aikhenvald&rft.au=R.%20M.W%20Dixon&rft.au=Alexandra%20Y%20Aikhenvald&rft.date=2002&rft.pages=1%20%E2%80%93%2041&rft.spage=1%20&rft.epage=%2041"></span></div>
<br>
Thy say (p. 2-3) that "it appears that only some languages
actually have a lexeme with the meaning ‘word’... The vast
majority of languages spoken by small tribal groups (with from
a few hundred to a few thousand speakers) have a lexeme
meaning ‘(proper) name’ but none have the meaning ‘word’."<br>
<br>
Even Latin does not have a single word for 'word' (there is <i>verbum</i>,
<i>vox</i>,
<i>sermo</i>, and <i>dictio</i>, the latter a technical
calque from Greek <i>léxis</i>).<br>
<br>
(Dixon & Aikhenvald's 2002 paper was a major inspiration
for my 2011 paper on the indeterminacy of word segmentation.)<br>
<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div>Am 26.11.21 um 07:16 schrieb JOO,
Ian [Student]:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div name="messageBodySection">
<div dir="auto">Dear typologists,<br>
<br>
As you may know already, the concept of “word” is
notoriously hard to define.<br>
Without getting into that, is the concept of wordhood
attested cross-linguistically?<br>
In other words, do people with different language
backgrounds believe that there is such a thing as a
“word”, and do what people perceive as a “word” tend to
be roughly the same concept?<br>
Which boils down to two questions:</div>
<ol type="1">
<li>Do many languages have a native, monomorphemic word
for “word”?</li>
<li>If so, do these words for “word” refer to roughly
the same (or, at least, similar) concept?</li>
</ol>
<div dir="auto">I would like to examine whether wordhood
is a psychological reality shared by speakers of
different languages.</div>
</div>
<div name="messageSignatureSection"><br>
Regards,
<div dir="auto">Ian</div>
</div>
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Martin Haspelmath
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Eric W. Campbell (he/él)</div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Associate Professor of Linguistics<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-size:x-small">Director of Undergraduate Studies, Linguistics</span><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-size:x-small">Faculty in Residence, San Joaquin and Sierra Madre Villages</span><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-size:x-small">Academic Council, </span><font size="1">American Indian and Indigenous Collective</font></div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font size="1"><br></font></div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font size="1">Department of Linguistics<br>South Hall 3432<br><font color="#0b5394">University of California, Santa Barbara</font><br><font color="#000000">Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100<br></font></font></div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><i style="font-size:x-small">situated and working on traditional and unceded Chumash lands</i><span style="font-size:x-small"> </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:x-small"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:x-small">Zoom Room: </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font size="1"><font color="#000000"><a href="https://ucsb.zoom.us/my/eric.campbell" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">https://ucsb.zoom.us/my/eric.campbell</a></font></font></div></div></div>