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independent unit of utterance” by L.Bloomfield. E. Sapir
concentrates on the syntactic and semantic aspects calling the word
“one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated meaning,
into which the sentence resolves itself”. A purely semantic
treatment is observed in S. Ullmann’s explanation of words as
meaningful segments that are ultimately composed of meaningful
units. The prominent French linguist A. Meillet combines the
semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria: “A word is
defined by the association of a given meaning with a given group
of sounds susceptible of a given grammatical employment”.
Our native school of linguistics understands the word as a
doublefacet unit of form and content, reflecting human notions,
and in this sense being considered as a form of their existence.
Notions fixed in word meanings are formed as generalized and
approximately correct reflections of reality, thus, signifying them
words objectivize reality and conceptual worlds in their content.
So, the word is a basic unit of a language resulting from the
association of a given meaning with a given cluster of sounds
susceptible of a certain grammatical employment.
Taking into consideration the above, let us consider the
nature of the word.
First, the word is a unit of speech which serves the purposes
of human communication. Thus, the word can be defined as a unit
of communication.
Secondly, the word can be perceived as the total of the
sounds which comprise it.
Third, the word, viewed structurally, possesses several
characteristics.
a) The modern approach to the word as a double-facet unit is
based on distinguishing between the external and the internal
structures of the word. By the external structure of the word we
mean its morphological structure. For example, in the word post-
impressionists the following morphemes can be distinguished: the
prefixes post-, im-, the root –press-, the noun-forming suffixes -

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