INTERRELATION OF THE NOTIONS MORPHEME, WORD AND WORD-FORM IN THE CONTEXT OF PHONOLOGICAL STUDIES

Abstract

The proposed article discusses theoretical aspects in the definitions of such concepts, as the morpheme, the word and the word-form in the context of phonological studies. Available to the author domestic and foreign linguistic literature on this issue is immense. In the article general directions and tendencies of morphological, morphonological and phonological theories concerning the phonemic structure of Gothic word forms at segmental level and at the level of primary phonological units are analyzed; acceptable criteria for definitions of the morpheme, the word, and the word-form for the study of phonological structure of Gothic word-forms at phonemic and sub-phonemic levels were found. The objective criterion that distinguishes the morpheme from the meaningful units of higher ranks is its minimality, elementariness, indivisibility into smaller meaningful segments, which could be given the status of the morpheme. Common in the concepts under consideration is that the morpheme is endowed with a meaning, or a certain material, real, formal, or grammatical function in the structure of language. One of the reasons for the lack of a generally satisfactory definition of the word for all languages is the typological diversity of languages. The following criteria for defining the word are considered: semantic criterion; the criterion of separability, substitutability, replaceability; the phonetic-phonological identity criterion; the criterion of cohesion. The word-form is characterized by a certain inherent unity, intrinsic connectivity, idiomaticity, which is manifested in the properties of the signifier, signified and syntactics of linguistic signs that are part of the structure of these wordforms: within the signified - semantic connectivity of the word-form; within the signifier - the sound (phonemic) connectivity of the word-form; within syntactics - syntactic connectivity of the word-form; within the whole word-form - morphological connectivity: the word-form can be characterized by the presence of word-forming affixes (prefixes at the beginning of the word-form, suffixes - at the end of the word-form, circumfixes that "embrace" the word-form - on both sides).