A final lay assumption about “words”, [...] is that they should always have some sort of meaning of their own, predictable in terms of their structure if they are larger than morphemes, and reasonably constant from one occurrence to another.
- Hockett (1958), a pag.171

A word is thus any segment of a sentence bounded by successive points at which pausing is possible.
- Hockett (1958), a pag.167

We sometimes unthinkingly assume that a sentence is composed solely of words. This is false under the either the lay definition of “word” or our own, since it leaves intonation out of account. […] All morphemes can be classed according to their status relative to words. […] A form consisting of two or more words is a ‘phrase’.
- Hockett (1958), a pag.168