[Lingtyp] Folk definition of “word”

Sun Nov 28 08:41:15 UTC 2021

Dear Ian,

In the Zenzontepec Chatino language of Mexico, the form *ītsáʔ* 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, *x-ītsáʔ*,
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.

Eric

On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 12:02 AM Seino van Breugel <seinobreugel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear All,
>
>
>
> The Atong language of Northeast India has no indigenous word for ‘word’,
> but uses a loanword from one of the surrounding Indic language, *kata ~
> khata ~ katha ~ khatha *(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 *katha*. They just said that
> something like “they say X, in Atong it is Y” or some other expressions.
> The word *katha* 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.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Seino
> __________________
> Dr. Seino van Breugel
> https://independent.academia.edu/SeinovanBreugel
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHfiZwqyWC7HfZUAQ1RH1ew
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 5:41 AM David Nash <david.nash at anu.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> 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:
>>
>> Goddard, Cliff. 2011. The lexical semantics of language (with special
>> reference to words). *Language Sciences* 33.1, 40-57.
>> http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.03.003
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> On 26/11/21 20:17, JOO, Ian [Student] wrote:
>>
>> Dear Martin,
>>
>> Thanks for citing this chapter.
>> I did some quick search to see if it’s true that “only some” languages
>> have a word for “word”.
>> 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.
>> https://wold.clld.org/meaning/18-26#2/32.2/-4.8
>> <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>
>> 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.
>> https://clics.clld.org/parameters/1599
>> <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>
>> 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.
>> But the real question would be whether all these words for “word”
>> designate roughly the same concept.
>> In many languages, the word for “word” seems to be co-lexified with
>> “speech” (such as Latin *verbum* or Japanese *koto-ba*).
>> 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?
>> It would be an interesting experiment. I’d be happy to be informed of any
>> previous study who conducted such an experiment.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Ian
>> On 26 Nov 2021, 2:56 PM +0800, Martin Haspelmath
>> <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de> <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>, wrote:
>>
>> 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 Leipzighttps://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/ <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eva.mpg.de%2Flinguistic-and-cultural-evolution%2Fstaff%2Fmartin-haspelmath%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdavid.nash%40anu.edu.au%7C0358502990c943f7416408d9b0bdac2b%7Ce37d725cab5c46249ae5f0533e486437%7C0%7C0%7C637735152318759035%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=FILfzp7AcGXaM5WJ7FTeoNPTthcbe6y%2F5fDunKoJZSI%3D&reserved=0>
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>>
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-- 
Eric W. Campbell (he/él)
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Linguistics
Faculty in Residence, San Joaquin and Sierra Madre Villages
Academic Council, American Indian and Indigenous Collective

Department of Linguistics
South Hall 3432
University of California, Santa Barbara
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*situated and working on traditional and unceded Chumash lands*
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