!

2 Words, sentences and dictionaries

2.1 Words as meaningful building-blocks
of language
2.2 Words as types and words as tokens
2.3 Words with predictable meanings
2.4 Non-words with unpredictable
meanings
2.5 Conclusion: words versus lexical
items

2.1 Words as meaningful building-blocks

of language
Babies first words
One-word commands Go! Sit!
Words seem to be the building- blocks of language
!

Not only babies but adults:

warning shouts, such as Fire!
conventional commands, such as Lights!, Camera!,
Action!
items on shopping lists, such as carrots, cheese,
eggs.

Tech resources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kB7GgLlR7M
How Does The Reading Brain Work?
!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i1z37nYMrM
How Children Acquire and Produce Language (BBC, 2001)

Conventional
classification that we are
likely to refer to most
often is a dictionary, in
which words are listed
according to their
spelling in alphabetical
order.

Given that English spelling is so erratic, a

common reason for looking up a word in an
English dictionary is to check how to spell it.

month noun. Any of twelve

portions into which the year is
divided. Example of a word from
the dictionary.
It seems, then, that a word is not
just a building-block of sentences:
it is a building-block with a
meaning that is unpredictable, or
at least sufficiently unpredictable
that learners of English, and even
sometimes native speakers, may
need to consult a dictionary in
order to discover it.

Words are: units of language which are basic in two

senses, both
1. in that they have meanings that are unpredictable
and so must be listed in dictionaries
and
2. in that they are the building-blocks out of which

2.2 Words as types and words as

tokens

How many words are there in the following sentence?

(1) Mary goes to Edinburgh next week, and she intends
going to Washington next month.
Sentences (spoken or written) may be said to be
composed of word- tokens, but it is clearly not wordtokens that are listed in dictionaries.

2.3 Words with

predictable meanings

predictable words
Do any words have meanings that are predictable that is, meanings that
can be worked out on the basis of the sounds or combinations of sounds that
make them up?
These include so-called onomatopoeic words, such as words for animal cries:
bow-wow, miaow, cheep, cock-a-doodle-doo. But even here convention plays
a large part.
Onomatopoeic words are not the same in all languages; for example, a cockcrow in German is kikeriki, and a dogs bark in French is ouah ouah
(pronounced roughly wah wah).
slip, slop, slurp, slide, slither, sleek, slick, slaver, slug. A technical term for
this situation is sound symbolism

Even in onomatopoeia and sound symbolism this

conventionality is still at work, so that people who know
no English are unlikely to predict the meaning of cocka-doodle-doo or bow-wow any more accurately than
they can predict the meaning of cat or dog.