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42.1 Introduction: the troublesome notion of ‘word’ 42.1 Introduction: the troublesome notion of ‘word’
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42.1.1 Why does it matter what the word is? 42.1.1 Why does it matter what the word is?
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42.1.2 Doubt about the reliability of ‘word’ as a concept 42.1.2 Doubt about the reliability of ‘word’ as a concept
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42.2 What happens when we try to pin down the concept ‘word’? 42.2 What happens when we try to pin down the concept ‘word’?
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42.3 Our intuition about the word 42.3 Our intuition about the word
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42.3.1 Orthography and intuition 42.3.1 Orthography and intuition
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42.3.2 The influence of orthography on linguistic analysis 42.3.2 The influence of orthography on linguistic analysis
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42.4 The vagueness of wordhood 42.4 The vagueness of wordhood
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42.4.1 The company words keep 42.4.1 The company words keep
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42.4.2 The orthographic word as a unit in research 42.4.2 The orthographic word as a unit in research
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42.4.3 What frequency measures signify 42.4.3 What frequency measures signify
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42.4.3.1 Invisible words 42.4.3.1 Invisible words
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42.4.3.2 Never the same word twice 42.4.3.2 Never the same word twice
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42.5 Where individual knowledge and the external language meet 42.5 Where individual knowledge and the external language meet
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42.6 All words are equal, but some are more equal than others 42.6 All words are equal, but some are more equal than others
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42.7 Conclusion 42.7 Conclusion
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42 Why Are We So Sure We Know What a Word Is?
Get accessAlison Wray, Cardiff University
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Published:03 March 2014
Cite
Abstract
We all know what a word is. Yet describing and defining the word is far from easy. So, what is the source of our intuition? Is the word a universal concept across human languages? Is it a cognitive necessity, enabling us to express our ideas using small recombinable units? Or are our intuitions more superficial, reflecting only the convention of where spaces are placed in writing? This chapter argues that the concept of the word looks vague because it is inherently so, and that our intuition is fooled into seeing greater definition by the twin influences of orthography and the noun as a strong prototype. With only some conventional word classes rendering truly independent units, writing imposes word breaks that don’t always have much psychological reality. The consequence for linguistic theory is significant: a major difference between what the language learner knows and what corpora of texts can capture.
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