word

A word is the basic meaning unit pointer used in text and natural language and can be expressed with text or sound.

The contextual information used with a word or how the word is expressed (tone, pronunciation, text style…) deforms its semantic field.

The associations with the character of the expression / shape of a word facilitates the retrieval of its meaning unit from memory.

E: A word made of arbitrary sounds or characters makes very hard to retrieve its corresponding meaning unit.

New words benefit highly by being formed as a composition of other words. The retrieval of its sub-words meaning units serves as retrieval pathway for the meaning unit of the super-word. The sub-words also tint the super-word with their corresponding semantic field.

words are fundamental primitives of thought and reasoning. Its semantic clarity is fundamental to create more accurate and useful constructs. That’s why each professional / cultureal domain has its own shared dictionary/vocabulary/jargon. The more precise a word is, the higher the complexity the subject can deal with.

Generating new words, as better abstractions, is fundamental to increase the efficiency of communication and thought.

The generation of new words for communication is motivated by the need for shared meaning (to deal with greater complexity) and limited by the fact that language needs to be shared. For a word to survive it requires a culture to use it with a high degree of shared meaning.

The generation and maintenance of new words for thinking does not require a culture or language as it does not need to be shared. For the word to stay alive it does require system (personal dictionary) that can support remembering, iterating over its meaning and to keep its use consistent with its semantic field. To my awareness Interplanetary mindmap is the only system that has attempted to realize that promise.