[Lingtyp] Folk definition of “word”

[Martin Haspelmath]

I felt that Dixon & Aikhenvald's (2002) introductory chapter was very 
interesting:

Dixon, R. M. W & Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2002. Word: A typological 
framework. In Dixon, R. M.W & Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (eds.), /Word: A 
cross-linguistic typology/, 1–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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’."

Even Latin does not have a single word for 'word' (there is /verbum/, 
/vox/, /sermo/, and /dictio/, the latter a technical calque from Greek 
/léxis/).

(Dixon & Aikhenvald's 2002 paper was a major inspiration for my 2011 
paper on the indeterminacy of word segmentation.)

Martin

Am 26.11.21 um 07:16 schrieb 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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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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