[Lingtyp] Folk definition of “word”

[JOO, Ian [Student]]

Dear typologists,

As you may know already, the concept of “word” is notoriously hard to define.
Without getting into that, is the concept of wordhood attested cross-linguistically?
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?
Which boils down to two questions:

  1.  Do many languages have a native, monomorphemic word for “word”?
  2.  If so, do these words for “word” refer to roughly the same (or, at least, similar) concept?

I would like to examine whether wordhood is a psychological reality shared by speakers of different languages.

Regards,
Ian
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