Although the word is one of the basic units of semantics (dictionaries), there are some difficulties in treating it as the natural unit of semantics. We can’t ignore the word and look for some ’modality independent’ meanings for semantic entities that are totally unrelated to words.
Firstly, full words have semantic meaning, form words have grammatical menaning, Palmer - they can’t be defined except in relation to the other words. One possible objection to Palmer’s view is the semanticity (type of meaning) of deictic elements such as pronouns and prepositions or determiners. We believe that deictic elements (many of which are classified as form words) have a very clearly non-grammatical reference to the real world extended in the space-time continuum. "But often this is not so." Some form words do have a meaning that seems to be only grammatical: the of and or. Typically, we do not look for the meaning of such words in isolation, but only within the sentence.
Secondly, it is not clear that the word is a clearly defined unit, except as a conventional one. Compare (The) White House with greenhouse. Any reasons for saying that the former is two words and the latter two? One of the solutions to the problem of the definition of the word is Bloomfield’s ’minimum free form’, the smallest form that may be in isolation.: how about the, is, by, this in isolation? Thus we have to be very precise about what we mean by isolation…
Thirdly, there’s a problem that arises with transparent and opaque words. Transparent words – their menaing can be implied from their parts- chopper, doorstopper, and opaque words- theirs cant. A note: if we decide that chopper is to be interpreted as chop and –er (instrument), then what do we do with hammer? Thus it appears that it is next to impossible to determine the semantic elements within a word
Fourthly, there are many words in English that are called phonaesthetic. Phonaesthetic- sl- slippery, slip, slide, shusl, lump, plump, hump, stump, though we cant generalize too far slide, ide has no menaing. However, there are other sl- words, like sleep, slave, slat, and slogan, that do not have those connotations.
Fifthly, semantic division seems to ’override’ word division. Good singer and a heavy smoker, these cant be broken down into parts and are not a sum of their meanings. Idioms as well, are units of a single menaing.
Sixthly, we simply miss adequate binary terms: ram/ewe; stallion/mare; but no pairs for giraffe and elephant (male giraffe, female giraffe, elephant bull, elephant cow)
Finally, there is the problem of treating idioms. An idiom is a sequence of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of the words themselves.