Words altogether

This chapter recapitulates the essence of the concepts of phonological and grammatical word discussed throughout the volume. Defining a phonological and a grammatical word is relatively straightforward for some languages, less so for others. For instance, components of a grammatical word generally occur in fixed order; but this can be challenged by highly synthetic languages of Amazonia. Generally, a phonological and a grammatical word tend to coincide. Recurrent mismatches between phonological and grammatical word involve reduplication, compounding, and noun incorporation. Further typical mismatches involve clitics—morphemes which can be shown to form a grammatical word, but cannot be pronounced on their own. Clitics can be distinguished from affixes based on a number of features, including selectivity of the host, position in a word, and phonological rules applying on the respective boundaries. The chapter then addresses the question of the applicability of the concept ‘word’ to languages of different types discussed in the volume.

Word in Hmong

Hmong (Hmong-Mien; Laos and diaspora) possesses categories of both phonological word and grammatical word. Phonological words exhibit a prosodic prominence in certain pragmatic situations combined with a lack of pauses within the word, and a minimal consonant-vowel-tone structure of a syllable serves as a minor third criterion. Grammatical words exhibit grammatical cohesion of two types—isolability, where words can appear alone in their domain, and the absence of separability, where components of a word cannot be separated—and serve as the domain for reduplication and lexical tone melody alternations. Given a category of grammatical wordhood, affixes and compounds can be recognized in Hmong, and coordinate compounds and four-syllable elaborate expressions can be distinguished as set expressions and templatic constructions, respectively. Hmong attests mismatches between phonological and grammatical word, which include the presence of clitics and cliticization in casual speech at a moderate rate of speed, and varying arrangements of grammatical words in four-syllable elaborate expressions.

The phonological and grammatical status of Murui ‘word’

Different sorts of phonological and grammatical criteria can be used to identify wordhood in Murui, a Witotoan language from Northwest Amazonia. A phonological word is determined on entirely phonological principles. Its key indicators include prosody (stress) and segmental phonology (vowel length). A phonological word is further produced by applying relevant phonological processes within it and not across its word boundaries. The further criterion is moraicity which requires that the minimal phonological word contains at least two moras. A grammatical word, determined entirely on grammatical principles, consists of one lexical root to which morphological processes (affixation, cliticization, and reduplication) are applied. The components of a grammatical word are cohesive and occur in a relatively fixed order. Although Murui grammatical and phonological words mostly coincide, the ‘mismatches’ include nominal compounds (that is, one phonological word consisting of two grammatical words), verbal root reduplication (one grammatical but two phonological words), and clitics.

Words within words

This chapter discusses the nature of ‘phonological word’ and ‘grammatical word’ in three disparate languages (on each of which the author has done extensive fieldwork and published a comprehensive description), examining the ways in which one type of word may be included within another type. In Yidiñ, an Australian language, a grammatical word may consist of a whole number of phonological words. Jarawara—from the small Arawá family in the Amazonian jungle of Brazil—also has this feature and in addition allows a phonological word to consist of a whole number of grammatical words. Finally, the Austronesian language Fijian shows both these and also has a grammatical word consisting of one and a bit phonological words (and thus, necessarily, a phonological word consisting of one and a bit grammatical words).

Word in Yalaku

This chapter focuses on phonological and grammatical word in Yalaku, a minority language from the Ndu family in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. The phonological word in Yalaku is characterized by one single stress, and a number of phonological processes, including voicing of stops and the post-alveolar affricate, and k-fortition word-internally. The usual length of a phonological word is two syllables. One grammatical word corresponds to two or more phonological words in case of echo-compounds, nominal compounds, serial verb constructions, and full reduplication of non-cohering type. Cohering reduplication which produces one phonological word. One phonological word corresponds to more than one grammatical word if it contains clitics. All clitics in Yalaku can occur as independent phonological words if in focus. Monosyllabic third person cross-referencing markers are anticipatory clitics which form one phonological word with the constituent preceding their host, unless that constituent contains three syllables or more.

Wordhood in Chamacoco

This chapter investigates ‘wordhood’ in Chamacoco, a Zamucoan language with about 2,000 speakers who traditionally inhabit the department of Alto Paraguay in Paraguay. After having examined the concept of ‘word’ in Chamacoco culture and the phonological inventory of the language, this chapter defines the phonological word according to its phonological rules, segmental features, and prosodic features (stress, nasal harmony and vowel harmony). Then, the morphological structure of the main word classes (verbs, nouns and adjectives) is outlined in order to identify the grammatical word and the mismatches between phonological and grammatical word. The latter can consist of one or more phonological words, as for compound subordinators, complex predicates, and instances of reduplication. By contrast, owing to cliticization, one phonological word can comprise two or more grammatical words. Finally, the chapter describes the properties of regular clitics and distinguishes them from morphemes which are independent phonological words frequently undergoing cliticization.

The essence of ‘word’

This chapter offers general background for the analysis of ‘phonological word’ and ‘grammatical word’ in a cross-linguistic perspective. It outlines the defining characteristics of phonological word (including segmental and suprasegmental features and phonological processes), formulates restrictions on the length of a minimal word, and places ‘word’ within a hierarchy of phonological units. Defining features of grammatical word are outlined next. In most instances phonological words and grammatical words coincide. In some cases a grammatical word can consist of a number of phonological words, and vice versa. Typical instances of mismatches involve reduplication, compounding, and complex predicates, including serial verbs. Clitics—morphological units which form a phonological unit with a word preceding or following them—account for further mismatches. The reality of word and the nature of its orthographic representation are discussed next. The chapter concludes with an overview of the volume, and an appendix containing points to be addressed by fieldworkers.

The notion of ‘word’ in Makary Kotoko

Based on criteria proposed by Dixon and Aikhenvald (2002) for identifying grammatical and phonological words in a language, this chapter presents the notion of ‘word’ in Makary Kotoko (Chadic, Cameroon). The criteria of (i) pause phenomena, (ii) isolatability, (iii) meaning, and (iv) tone assignment are determinative, not for the identification of word per se, but for identifying word classes—in particular, the major word classes of the language: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and ideophone. Misalignment between grammatical and phonological words occurs with functional elements of the language and is addressed in a discussion of the clitics of the language. Clitic behaviour creates issues for determining orthographic words for this language which has had no known written tradition until fairly recently. Words used for expressing the concept of ‘word’ are discussed and the chapter concludes with a brief presentation of some word games used by speakers of Makary Kotoko.

Word in Lao

This chapter describes and analyses the ‘word’ in Lao, a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, focusing on the concepts of grammatical versus phonological word and the relations between them. All morphemes in Lao consist of at least one syllable. In turn, syllables can be grouped into feet. A foot must include one stressed syllable, which bears contrastive tone, and consists of one or more unstressed, phonologically dependent syllables, including independent yet phonologically-bound morphemes such as class term prefixes. Above the level of the foot is the phonological word, in which two or more feet may be grouped together, with primary stress on the final foot. The boundaries of the grammatical word in Lao do not always align directly with the boundaries of the phonological word. Some grammatical words occur as clitics, incorporated into phonological words and dependent on adjacent stressed syllables.

Words in Japanese

Although Japanese does not divide words orthographically, there is no doubt that the notion of ‘word’ is highly salient for native speakers of this language. Words are talked about, joked about, used as strategies for secrecy and exclusion. They are regarded as having enormous evocative power and euphonic beauty. While we can clearly distinguish phonological and grammatical criteria for Japanese words, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the grammatical word and the phonological word coincide. This is, however, not invariably the case. Japanese exhibits two possibilities for the non-coincidence of phonological and grammatical words: the first in which a grammatical word consists of a whole number of phonological words, and the second in which a phonological word consists of a whole number of grammatical words. Cases in which a single word can stand alone as a full utterance are quite common, and are limited to those in which the two word types coincide completely.