The elusive notion of word

The tension between inductive and co-inductive

Tesnière says: words are carved out of sentences. You find words in the vocabulary of the corpus.

This is unsatisfactory. Where are these words coming from, in the first place. Granted, God did not gave names to the animals, he did not give man a dictionary or better a thesaurus to find the words naming the notions, remember de Saussure law. Then where do the words come from ?

The answer to this puzzle is not the same in the synchronic and the diachronic views. In the synchronic view, language is defined by its corpus (even if idealized). Thus the vocabulary is given. In the diachronic view, man invents words for his new needs. New signifié arises, new signifiant must be coined. Remember the Chinese and the mobile phone. This is the whatchamacallit problem.

Story of Montezuma and the mobile phone.

NB. “whatchamacallit” est un mot anglais - voir le lien. Tesnière ne croyait pas si bien dire !