English has no words at all.
Or so has been claimed. I turn the lectern over to Dr Goodword, who at alphadictionary.com writes:
No one has ever been able to define the word “word despite gargantuan efforts to do so. The linguistic concept of word: an analytic bibliography by Alphonse
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Bill Brohaugh
Juilland and Alexandra Roceric is a 118-page bibliography of books and articles (unsuccessfully) attempting to define “word” over the past 3 millennia. Why can no one define “word”? Maybe because words simply do not exist; rather, the sentences we speak are composed of lexemes and morphemes and these two linguistic objects differ too much to be subsumed under one concept.
Well, then.
I might tend to disagree that words do not exist, as I suspect I’ve used a few in my life (including this very day!), just as I’ve eaten lasagna a time or two. There’s no non sequitur involved in those two claims, because Dr Goodword’s argumentation sounds to me like arguing that lasagna simply doesn’t exist because the dish we eat is composed of pasta and meat sauce, and these two nutritional objects differ too much to be subsumed under one concept. Still, eating the nonexistent pasta seems to be making me fatter. And as for you, kind reader, likely thinner than I am, I can not say with complete confidence that you are eating lasagna as you read this, but I’m absolutely confident that you are reading something, those little units I’ll take comfort in continuing to refer to as words.
The crux of Dr Goodword’s argument is that a lexeme is a verb, a noun, an adjective—all of which connote objects, actions, and concepts (apparently all concepts other than the concept of a linguistic unit unifying morphemes and lexemes to communicate a specific meaning) in the real world. A morpheme is a cognitive view of the lexeme, expressed with prefixes and suffixes. Quick is a lexeme, -ly is a morpheme. Quickly is . . . well, what it is.
Why can’t the tandem work of these two -ernes be considered a unified, well-meshed “word"? Notes the good Dr: “Current evidence now suggests that the two processes [envisioning a lexeme and conceptualizing how the morpheme acts or is acted upon] take place in two different parts of the brain.” And the two processes of cooking lasagna [boiling pasta and baking it in the meat sauce] take place in two different parts of the kitchen.
So, because lasagna doesn’t exist, I believe I’ll have another helping.
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Bill Brohaugh