Words as types and words as tokens

How many words are there in the following sentence?

(1) Mary goes to Edinburgh next week, and she intends going to Washington next month.

If we take as a guide the English spelling convention of placing a space between each word, the answer seems clearly to be fourteen. But there is also a sense in which there are fewer than fourteen words in the sentence, because two of them (the words to and next) are repeated. In this sense, the third word is the same as the eleventh, and the fifth word is the same as the thirteenth, so there are only twelve words in the sentence. Let us say that the third and the eleventh word of the sentence at (1) are distinct tokensof a single type, and likewise the fifth and thirteenth word. (In much the same way, one can say that two performances of the same tune, or two copies of the same book, are distinct tokens of one type.)

The type–token distinction is relevant to the notion ‘word’ in this way. Sentences (spoken or written) may be said to be composed of wordtokens, but it is clearly not word-tokens that are listed in dictionaries. It would be absurd to suggest that each occurrence of the word next in (1) merits a separate dictionary entry. Words as listed in dictionaries entries are, at one level, types, not tokens – even though, at another level, one may talk of distinct tokens of the same dictionary entry, inasmuch as the entry for month in one copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary is a different token from the entry for month in another copy.

Is it enough, then, to say that characterisation 2. (words as buildingblocks) relates to word-tokens and characterisation 1. (words as meaningful units) relates to word-types? Again, if that were all there was to it, this book could be quite short. The term word would be ambiguous between a ‘type’ interpretation and a ‘token’ interpretation; but the ambiguity would be just the same as is exhibited by many other terms

not specifically related to language, such as tune: a tune I heard this morning may be ‘the same’ as one I heard yesterday (i.e. they may be instances of the same type), but the two tokens that I have heard of it are distinct. However, the relationship between words as building-blocks and as meaningful units is not so simple as that, as we shall see. So, while it is important to be alert to type–token ambiguity when talking about words, recognising this sort of ambiguity is by no means all there is to sorting out how characteristics 1. and 2. diverge.

2.3. The lexeme concept

How many words are listed in (1)?

(1) {cat, dog}

Clearly two. How many are listed in (2)?

(2) {cat, cats}

In a sense there are also two words here, but in another sense there is only one word, ‘cat’, with two forms, cat and cats. If you look in a dictionary under ‘cat’, you’ll only find the one form, cat. The plural, cats, is formed by a completely general rule of English and there is no need to list it separately. We can describe cat as ‘the singular form of the word “cat”’ and cats as ‘the plural form of the word “cat”’. It is rather useful to have different terms for the two different senses of the word ‘word’ here. We will therefore say that there is a lexeme ‘cat’ which has two word forms, cat and cats. We will write the names of lexemes in small capitals from now on. Thus, we speak of the lexeme CAT. For the present we will think of a lexeme as a single meaning associated with a set of word forms.

The lexeme concept is also valuable for analysing verbs. Consider the examples in (3):

(3) a. Tom will walk to work

b. Tom walks to work

c. Tom is walking to work

d. Tom walked to work

Here we see various forms of the lexeme WALK: {walk, walks, walking, walked}. Again, these forms can all be produced by perfectly regular rules of English grammar. The form walking has a variety of uses and this will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Two. The form walked expresses a tense form (past tense), indicating the time of the event relative to the time of speaking (i.e. some time in the past). The form walks is used just when the subject is of the type Tom, Harriet, the girl, she, i.e. when the subject is third person (not I or you) and singular (ruling out they or the boys). We say that the form walks agrees with the subject for the grammatical properties of person (third) and number (singular).

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Words as meaningful building-blocks of language	\|	Morpheme concept

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