Since different types of words exist, when one seeks to define what the word is one encounters complex problems concerning the word’s separability and identity. The different structural types of linguistic units-the morpheme, conjunction, simple content word, derived or compound word, and word group-are connected by transitional elements and often shift from one category to another. Conjunctions, which have neither phonetic independence nor an autonomous nominative function, have both semantic and grammatical markers. The meaning of compound words of this type is often determined by the meaning of the constituent parts.
Words with a morphological marker may be derived ( khodok, “walker”) and compound ( lunokhod, “lunar self-propelled vehicle”). Words with a phonetic marker may be unstressed (conjunctions, as in pered domom, “in front of the house”) and multistressed (compounds such as póslevoénnyi, “postwar”). In addition to simple content words, there are other types of words. These attributes of content words are not, however, typical of all words in all languages. Words form a system based on grammatical features (parts of speech), derivational connections (families of words), and semantic relationships. The speaker’s attitude toward the object being named constitutes the emotional aspects of the word’s meaning: this aspect expresses feelings and the speaker’s subjective opinion ( gorodok, “small town” gorodishko, “wretched little town”). The tendency toward polysemy is connected with this flexibility. On the other hand, shifts in the concrete meaning of a word make it possible to use the word for naming new objects, and the shifts are an aspect of literary creativity. The stability of a word’s meaning permits mutual comprehension.
A word’s meaning reflects a dialectical correlation between the general and specific and between what is fixed and changeable. In speech, a word may designate either an entire class of objects ( Sobaka-zhivotnoe, “The dog is an animal”) or a single representative of that class ( Eto ch’ia sobaka? “Whose dog is this?”). The meaning of a word is the generalized reflection of the object it signifies. Without words, ideas and concepts may not be expressed, transmitted, or even formed. The results of cognitive activity are consolidated in words. In inflected languages, the word represents the aggregate of all its grammatical forms: such forms as khozhu (“I go”), khodish’ (“you go”), and khodil (“he went”) constitute a single verb, khodit’ (“to go”). For example, Russian adjectives express gender, number, and case. This function is connected with their repeatability in speech, their isolability, and their ability to constitute a minimal sentence.Ĭombining both lexical and grammatical meanings, the word belongs to a specific part of speech and expresses any of the grammatical meanings in the system of a given language. Words also have an autonomous nominative function: they refer independently to objects and phenomena. Semantically, words are idiomatic owing to the arbitrariness of the connection between their meaning and phonic substance. Words are impenetrable that is, one word may not exist within the structure of another. Pauses may exist between words but not within a word. It has its own stress and also has phonic boundary signals. The basic type of word, the content word ( dom, “house”: khleb, “bread” khodit’, “go” bol’shoi, “big”) is structural in nature. The word is the building block of the sentence, but unlike the sentence, the word does not express a message. Structurally, the word consists of morphemes, sometimes of only one morpheme: tam, “there” vchera, “yesterday.” The word differs from the morpheme in that it is independent and freely reproduced in speech. The most important structural and semantic unit of language, serving to name objects, actions, and attributes.
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