zenmonkey wrote:Hashimi wrote:zenmonkey wrote: the conventional definition of what a word is.
a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and shown with a space on either side when written or printed.
Writing or printing are irrelevant here.
Says you. And yet, here we are writing and not speaking.
Not just hashimi. Generally linguists do not consider writing to be an inherent part of language. Grammar is posterior to writing so I'm not sure how grammatical categories can be defined according to orthographic criteria, unless we're specifically talking about the grammar of the written language as a distinct code.
zenmonkey wrote:Yet we understand that in English it is 4 words and in German it is a single word.
Because that is the conventional definition of what a word is.
a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and shown with a space on either side when written or printed.
zenmonkey wrote:Compound word are... made up of 2 or more words. Even the definition of compound words reinforces what a word is.
Compound noun can be written either as a single word, as a word with a hyphen, or as two words.
Armbanduhr is not three words. Armbanduhr mit Wecker is three words.
Handschuh is not two words.
Umwelteinflüssen is not four words.
Who made these definitions?