Language was created by human beings to communicate meaning. While we can also convey meaning in other ways – for example, through gestures and visual images – language is our primary way to communicate with others and understand our world. Learning a language includes learning the units that represent meaning. Our words appear in streams of sound that we make with the tongue, mouth, and teeth. Our ears process the sounds and our brains sort them into meaningful units. Usually we think of the words of the language (or the lexicon) as the smallest units of a language that can exist on its own in either written or spoken language. It is used in a language to express an idea, thing, attribute or relation.
According to Pan (2003) “Words are not the smallest semantic units but are built up of smaller components of meanings which are combined differently to form different words. The smaller components are called semantic components or primitives, and the analysis employing these primitives is often called Componential Analysis (CA).” (p.1)
Knowing a word involves being able to recognize it when it is heard (what does it sound like?) or when it is seen (what does it look like?). This includes being able to distinguish it from words with a similar form and being able to judge if the word form sounds right or looks right. Receptive knowledge of a word also involves having an expectation of what grammatical pattern the word will occur in. Knowing the verb suggest involves the expectation that this word will be followed by an object sometimes in the form of a clause. Knowing the noun music involves the expectation that it will not usually occur in the plural form. Much of this receptive knowledge can be gained only from experience and would not be greatly increased as a result of teaching.
When we know a word we know whether it is a frequently occurring word or a rare one. For example, we know that student is a frequent word but disciple is more