The lexical meaning of a word is its most important feature

The word is the main, central, nodal unit of the language. A person called any actions and conditions, defined all the qualities and attributes. All his knowledge of the world, its phenomena and properties, he expressed a word.

What is the word and what is not? Are the words considered separate sounds? What are the criteria for determining the word? Linguists respond differently to these questions. Characterization of the word and its definition today is one of the most controversial problems in the science of language.

The complexity of the problem is determined by the uneasy nature of the word, difficulties in its delimitation from both the morpheme and the word combination. Complicating the solution of this question is the phenomenon of polysemy, homonymy, etc. Since at all levels of the language - phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactic - the word is a word, it is difficult to give one definition that can satisfy the tasks of all levels.

The word is infinitely diverse in its meanings, structure, and grammatical features. The role of words in the language is different: these are the names of objects and phenomena, the transfer of relations between words, the expression of feelings and human emotions. Words are pronounced differently, some are stressed, others lose it in speech. They can lose, change and develop the inherent lexical meaning of the word, expanding or narrowing its boundaries over time.

The question of what a word is, not only linguists, but also each of us are compelled to deal with it. And schoolchildren, first-graders who are just beginning to comprehend the basics of grammar, and graduates who have accumulated enough experience not to be afraid of the examination in literature, and every adult who knows the grammar of his native language and has a vast practical experience of writing.

Without defining the signs of a word, we can not say what it is. Its most important features are the lexical meaning of the word (the ability to call objects, signs, actions, numbers), as well as grammatical meaning (morphological signs, material for construction of word combinations and sentences). In addition, the word has also formal features: reproducibility, stability, isolation and one-shot.

The lexical meaning of a word is considered the most important sign of it. It is this word that differs from phonemes - smaller lexical units. As for the nature of meaning, the word is primarily opposed to the sentence. The main difference is that in a speech the sentence is used ready, as an utterance, while a word can express a concept. In some utterances, one word is able to relate to whole episodes of extralinguistic reality.

It often happens that the lexical meaning of a word is broader than one concept. It may include evaluative and expressive components, but this does not apply to all words. For example, proper names do not correspond to concepts. They call only a particular object, which does not apply to the whole class of similar objects. If any of the proper names starts to designate a number of objects with similar characteristics, it loses its exclusivity and goes on to the rank of common nouns.

Concepts also do not express words that only point to an object - such as pronouns. Suppose a personal pronoun indicates the one who speaks, but does not mean all the speakers. A pronoun without an extralinguistic pointing gesture or reference in the text to the previous mention of this subject will not be able to clearly say which subject is being discussed.

Interjections are directly related to emotions and also do not call concepts. The conclusion is that the lexical meaning of words is not inherent in all of them. Although, of course, sometimes interjection acts as another part of speech. Then it turns into a full-fledged word and its lexical meaning passes to it. In this situation, the interjection becomes even a member of the sentence. For example: "Ay, guys!". "Aye da" in this sentence plays the role of a definition.