8mo ago

I thought it was an easy question ...

Linguistics Humor @sh.itjust.works

Jakylla @sh.itjust.works

8mo ago

34 comments

If you want a clear definition, ask a mathematician:
A word is any written product of group elements and their inverses.
Or a computer scientist:
A word is a fixed-sized datum handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of the processor.
- Meanwhile, in Unicode land...
- Maybe ironically, neither one would be appropriate as a linguistic definition.
- i wonder what the inverse of the letters in the english alphabet are. since it has a non-prime number of letters (26 to be exact), we know that some letters won’t have inverses. i wonder which letters don’t have inverses. i guess it would be pretty easy to find out if you use the standard alphabet ordering and then port the alphabet over to ℤ/26ℤ, but that’s not a particularly satisfying answer.
- Or, in either field (formal language theory bridges both) it can mean any string of symbols, letters, or tokens.
"word" is a four letter word
- I think you’ll find that in actual fact “bird” is the word
  
  That's what I heard.
  
  Birds are not real, though, are they?
  
  And it begins...probably be 2 days until I get the song out of my head
  
  The definition still applies.
- Please, it's wrd, we want to keep this fmily friendly
  
  jst blck ll vwls t b* sf
- Word!
- Recursive ~~acronyms~~ definitions
- that's a bit wordy
if you accept the definition that a word is some letters, surrounded by a gap...
- From which Tom Scott video is this ?
  
  this one
Still even people new to writing have a good intuition about that but formalizing this intuition is a different story
xnopyt
And I love them for it. Seriously comfortable society is built on and by nerds.
- Yeah I love it too. It was quite an interesting deep dive into that topic.
As a linguist, I'd just shrug.
- "everyone knows what a word is, that is the definion"
  
  the cries of alien archaeologists from the far future echo in the distance
Saussure feelings
What IS a word?
- vsauce music starts playing
- "what" is a word, correct.
What is Truth and what is God?

34 comments