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different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are
realized.
So, the formal/structural properties of the word are
1) isolatability (words can function in isolation, can make a
sentence of their own under certain circumstances);
2) inseparability/unity (words are characterized by some
integrity, e.g. a light – alight (with admiration);
3) a certain freedom of distribution (exposition in the
sentence can be different);
4) susceptibility to grammatical employment;
5) a word as one of the fundamental units of the language is
a double facet unit of form (its external structure) and meaning (its
internal/semantic structure).
There are 4 basic kinds of words:
1)orthographic words – words distinguished from each other
by their spelling (night-knight);
2) phonological words – distinguished from each other by
their pronunciation (present-present);
3) word-forms which are grammatical variants (girls-girls-
girl’s);
4) words as items of meaning, the headwords of dictionary
entries, called lexemes.
A lexeme is a group of words united by the common lexical
meaning, but having different grammatical forms. The base forms
of such words, represented either by one orthographic word or a
sequence of words called multi-word lexemes which have to be
considered as single lexemes (e.g. phrasal verbs, some
compounds) may be termed citation forms of lexemes (sing, talk,
head etc), from which other word forms are considered to be
derived.
To sum it up, a word is the smallest naming unit of a
language with a more or less free distribution used for the purposes
of human communication, materially representing a group of

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