[Lingtyp] R: Folk definition of “word”

[Elisa Roma]

Dear Colleagues,

thank you very much for this interesting discussion.

I would like to add a reference about the European writing and word-division tradition, a paper which deals with measures of spaces in medieval manuscripts:

 

Bronner, Dagmar, Busch, Nathanael, Fleischer, Jürg and Poppe, Erich. "(Non-)separation of words in early medieval Irish and German manuscripts and the concept “word”". Empirical Approaches to the Phonological Structure of Words, edited by Christiane Ulbrich, Alexander Werth and Richard Wiese, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 45-70. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110542899-003

 

On a different issue, in order to explain to my students how, broadly speaking, the abjad writing system works, I have tried to write Italian sentences omitting grammatical morphemes (which may be word-final vowels, for example) and the result is in many cases comprehensible to a native speaker (while it would hardly if omitting vowels altogether). This exercise (writing one’s own language using a different writing system or a given convention) could perhaps also a be a useful experiment, albeit not simple to pursue, with speakers, readers and writers of different languages. It would probably tell more about writing and reading than about wordhood, though, as in the case of written borrowings. The issue of the separation of units is also very much relevant to word processors and spell-checkers, I suppose.

 

All the Best,

Elisa   

 

Elisa Roma

Associate professor of Linguistics

Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici

Università di Pavia

elisa.roma at unipv.it

 

 

 

Da: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> Per conto di David Gil
Inviato: lunedì 29 novembre 2021 12.29
A: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Oggetto: Re: [Lingtyp] Folk definition of “word”

 

Dear all,

On 29/11/2021 12:11, Guillaume Jacques wrote:

[...] 

 

On a related topic, some ancient languages such as Ugaritic and Old Persian had word separators other than space.

And some very modern languages too.  Here are some texts from my Indonesian SMS corpus, dating from the early 2000s, when semi-literate speakers began writing their colloquial varieties of Indonesian for the very first time, and were inventing orthographic conventions on the fly (Gil 2004,2020).  

 

In (1) the speaker uses a full stop for word boundaries, and a question mark for sentence boundaries.  In (2) the speaker uses a full stop for word boundaries and upper case for the beginning of the next word (though I suspect the latter was produced automatically by the mobile phone's texting software).  in (3) the speaker uses a comma for word boundaries.  And in (4) the speaker uses a plus sign.  What these examples show is that in spite of numerous deviations from the orthographic conventions of Standard Indonesian (many of which reflect particular phonological properties of the respective dialects), the speakers experienced a strong drive to represent word boundaries in one way or another.

 

(1) 

Dapit?ini.no.mama.adi?klu.mau.kirim.pls.no.ini.ya.pit?

 

(2) Pit.Sori.Yah.Pian.Antar.Teman.Nyjum.Dulu.Kasian.Ama.Dia.Yah.Pian.Kaga.Bawa.Hape.Takut.Ada.Jambret.Hp.Di.Taro.Di.Rumah.Pian.Kaga.Aptipin.Dulu.Yah.Jangan.Marah.Soalnya.Kalaw.Pian.Idupin.Kasian.Ama.Sodara.Pian.Dia.Udah.Tidur.

 

(3)

Terus,gimana,aku,disining,tak,mungkin,bang,rudi,menanggung,makanku,disini,sampai,kamu,sampai,dipakan,vid.bls.

 

(4)

Pit+kalao+udah+siyam+kerja+tlp+aku+ya+pit+

 

 

Gil, David (2004) "Learning About Language from Your Handphone; dan, and and & in SMSs from the Siak River Basin", in Katharina Endriati Sukatmo ed., Kolita 2, Konferensi Linguistik Tahunan Atma Jaya, Pusat Kajian Bahasa dan Budaya, Unika Atma Jaya, Jakarta, 57-61.

Gil, David (2020) "What Does It Mean to Be an Isolating Language? The Case of Riau Indonesian", in D. Gil and A. Schapper eds., Austronesian Undressed: How and Why Languages Become Isolating, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 9-96.

 





-- 
David Gil
 
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
 
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de> 
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
 
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