Defining the word

Abstract

In this paper, I propose a definition of the term word that can be applied to all languages using the same criteria. Roughly, a word is defined as a free morph or a clitic or a root plus affixes or a compound plus affixes. The paper relies on earlier definitions of the terms free, morph, affix, clitic, root, and compound, which are summarized here. I briefly compare the proposed definition with Bloomfield’s, I note that it is a shared-core definition, and I say how word-forms differ from lexemes. In the final section, I explain why I think that an unnatural-seeming definition is better than a prototype definition or other options.