The Classification of Words

THE STRUCTURE OF WORDS
§ 7. One of the main properties of a word is its double nature. It is material because it can he heard or seen, and it is immaterial or ideal as far as its meaning is concerned. We shall regard the material aspects of the word (written and oral) as its forms ², and its meanings as its content³. When defining the word as "the smallest naming unit" (§ 1), we refer prima­rily to its content, whereas in pointing out the most character­istic features of words (§ 6) we deal chiefly with the form.
§ 8. The word books-can be broken up in two parts: book-and -s. The content of the first part can be rendered by the

¹ L. Bloomfield has this to say on the subject: "In our school tra­
dition we sometimes speak of forms like book, books or do, docs, did,
done as different forms of the same words. Of course, this is inaccurate,
since there are differences of form and meaning between the members of
these se,ts: the forms just cited are different linguistic forms and, accord­
ingly, different words". (Language. N. Y., 1948, p. 178.)
² Many authors attribute also other meanings to the term form.'
See В. Н. Ж и г а д л о, И. П. И в а н о в а, Л. Л. И о ф и к. Сов­
ременный английский язык. 1956, р. 9; Л. С. Бархударов,
Д. А. Ш т е л и н г, op. cit. 1965, р. 17.
³ С. L. Ebeling writes: "The meaning of a word is its possibility
to point to certain things in reality (in the same way as the form of a '
word is its possibility to be recognized)". (Linguistic Units, 'S-Grav-
enhage, 1960, p. 12.)
See also the following statement:
"In spite of rather excenlric pronouncements on the part of some, no linguist has really ever doubted that he has to take note of both the physical shapes ('forms') and the purposes they serve ('meanings')." (W. Haas. On Defining Linguistic Units. Lnd., 1954, p. 54.)
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Russian книг- and the meaning of the second part is 'plural­ity'. So each of the two parts of the word books has both form and content. Such meaningful parts of a word are called morphemes. If we break up the word books in some other way, e. g. boo-ks, the resulting parts will not be morphemes, since they have no meanings.
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