Word Boundary Issues
There are several issues regarding the definition of "word":
- Inflection can create several permutations of the same root (lexeme). (Most writers count lexemes, not inflectional variants, in their comparisons.)
- Polysynthetic languages can mechanistically combine what would be several words in a phrase in another language into a single "word".
- English compounds and compounds in other languages can be written with a space, creating controversy over whether a "word" should be defined by an orthographic word divider or by lexeme status (whether a compound has an independent entry in a dictionary or lexicon).
- The same morpheme can appear in multiple lexemes, creating controversy over whether the lexemes are sufficiently "different".
Read more about this topic: Eskimo Words For Snow
Famous quotes containing the words word, boundary and/or issues:
“... ideals, standards, aspirations,—those are chameleon words, and take color from their speakers,—often false tints. A scholarly man of my acquaintance once told me that he traveled a thousand miles into the desert to get away from the word uplift, and it was the first word he heard after he reached his destination.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)