3. Word as a language unit.

Language consists of units which are interrelated. These units are: phoneme, morpheme, word and sentence. Each of them has some functions. Phoneme has a function of distinction one sound from another, it’s a distinctive unit. Morpheme is the smallest significant unit of the language, cause it has the meaning. Word has nominative function, it’s the smallest nominative unit. Sentence is the smallest communicative unit of the language.

Words are the main unit of language system. They are the biggest units of morphology and the smallest of syntax. Word is two-faced unit, it consists of morphemes which have sound forms and written forms of sound expression.

In the 17^th century there was a great discovery in linguistics. Thomas Hobbs found out that a word possesses indivisibility. He proposed to compare two words of different parts of speech: “alive” and “a live”. He said that the word “a live” consists of two words and some other words can be added, word “alive” is indivisible. In the 18^th century John Lines, who was agree with Hobbs, added one more feature of the word – its positional mobility. E.g. the boys walked slowly. He proposed to write it with dashes to indicate morphemes: the-boy-s-walk-ed-slow-ly. He proved that a word possesses indivisibility and positional mobility. But as a word, not as morphemes: we can’t put it like this: walk-ly-the-s-boy-slow-ed. Other linguist Neilet took into account all the theories and stated that the word possesses semantic integrity. In a word group each word has its own meaning. But one phraseological unit – one meaning: to pull one’s legs – to deceive. He next his discover – word can function alone.

So, we can define word as the smallest nominative unit of the language which can be characterized by morphological indevisibility, functioning alone, positional mobility and semantic integrity.

4. Meaning. Different approaches to the problem.

There are two main approaches to lexical meaning: referential and functional. The referential approach studies the connection between words and thins or concepts they denote. Functional approach studies relations between words.

The referential model of meaning is the so-called basic semantic triangle. It consists of:

1. The sound-form of the word: [bз:d].

2. The referent – the object which the word names: the actual bird.

3. The concept – the essential properties of this object which are reflected in human mind: “a feathered animal with wings“.

Meaning is closely connected with all parts of the semantic triangle but cannot be equated with any of them. Generally speaking, meaning can be described as a component of the word through which a concept is communicated, in this way endowing the word with the ability of denoting real objects, qualities, actions and abstract notions.

The functional approach assumes that the meaning of a linguistic unit can be studied only through its relation to other linguistic units and not through its relation to concept or referent, e.g. we know that the meaning of “bird n“ and “bird v“ is different because they function in speech differently. Analysing various contexts in which these words are used we can observe that they have different distribution. As the distribution of the two words is different, their meanings are different too.