Word as a language unit.

Language consists of units which are interrelated. These units are: phoneme, morpheme, wordandsentence. 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.