The word is a fundamental unit of a language used for the purposes of human communication, resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning, capable of grammatical employment. It is the smallest language unit that can stand alone as a complete utterance.
The word is a two-facet unit: it has form and content. Its content or meaning reflects human notions. Concepts fixed in the meaning of words are formed as generalized reflections of reality. Therefore in signifying those words reflect reality in their content. The acoustic aspect of the word serves to name objects of reality. When a word first comes into existence, it is built according to the existing patterns of the elements available in the language.
A borrowing
The English vocabulary has been enriched throughout its history by borrowings from foreign languages. A borrowing (or a loan word) is a word taken over from another language or modified in phonemic shape, spelling or meaning according to the standards of the English language.
Here we face 2 main problems with the vocabulary of a language:
1) the origin of the words;
2) their development in the language.
There are many words that have changed their meaning in English:
mind used to mean memory (to keep in mind, to bear in mind)
nice used to have the meaning of silly.
Native Words
A native word is a word that belongs to the Old English word-stock. The native words are the basic element though they constitute only up to 20-25 % of the English vocabulary. For example, home, stone, meat which belong the Old English.
Etymological Doublets
Sometimes a word is borrowed twice into English. It has different forms and meanings in English. We have 2 separate words with different spellings and meanings but which historically belong to one and the same word. For example, catch and chase, goal and jail, quiet and quite. Etymological doublets are typical of English.
International Words
These are words of identical origin that occurs in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source. (I.V.Arnold, p. 260)
International words reflect the history of word culture, they convey notions which are signified in communication: sputnik, bionics, gene, cybernetics, coffee, football, baseball, grapefruit, chocolate.
WORD STRUCTURE AND WORD FORMATION
Word-formation is the branch of lexicology that studies the derivative structure of existing words and the patterns on which a language builds new words. Its a certain principle of classification of lexicon and one of the main ways of enriching the vocabulary. Word-formation can be studied from 2 angles: synchronically (when we investigate the existing system of the type of word-formation) and diachronically (when we acre concerned with the history of word-formation).
These are cases when a structurally more complex word serves as the origin from which a simpler word was derived: beggar to beg; editor to edit, burglar to burgle.
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Morpheme. Allomorph
Linguists define the word as the smallest free form found in language. A word consists of smaller units organized with respect to each other in a particular way. The most important component of word structure is the morpheme (from Greek morphe which means form + -eme which means the smallest destructive unit). Morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning and function. For example, the word builder consists of 2 morphemes: build (which carries the meaning of to construct) + er (which shows the function of a noun with the meaning one who builds).
Some words consist of a single morpheme: train, boy. You cannot divide it into some smaller parts: t-rain or tr-ain as these do not carry information about its meaning and function. Such words are called simple. Complex words are words consisting of 2 and more morphemes.
| one morpheme words | two morpheme words | Three morpheme words | Even more morphemes |
| and | |||
| boy | boy-s | ||
| hunt | hunt-er | hunt-er-s | |
| act | act-ive | act-iv-ate | re-act-iv-ate |
So, morpheme is the smallest indivisible language unit. They are not independent sense units as words or sentences are. They are always used as parts of words. The morpheme is the minimum meaningful language unit.
A morpheme that can be a word by itself is called a free morpheme. A morpheme that is attached to another element is said to be a bound morpheme. For example, in the word boys there 2 morpheme: boy is a free morpheme and s is a bound morpheme.
A free morpheme coincides with the stem of a word-form. A bound morpheme is a constituent part of a word. Affixes are bound morphemes.
Morphemes in various texts can have different phonetic shapes. All the representatives of the given morpheme are called allomorphs (from Greek allos which means other) of that morpheme. For example, indefiniteness in English is expressed for 2 forms: article a before a consonant and article an before a vowel (a car, an orange, an account). The plural forms s has different pronunciation in cats, dogs, judges. Here you select the proper allomorph according to phonological facts.
Different allomorph of one and the same word can be monitored in the example below:
halfpenny and twopence
poor and poverty
divide and divisible
receive and receptive.
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