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6 September 2005: Paramorpheme. I don't know whether this this is one of my neologisms or a "real" word. It means textual element other than morpheme, the latter being the smallest semantically meaningful element of a word (e.g., "unhappiness" consists of three morphemes, "un" "happi" and "ness"). The main kinds of paramorphemes are punctuation marks, but there are also parentheses, brackets, slashes--whatever they are.
While on terminology again, a question: is there a word for smallest full sound-indicating symbol in a language? I know "phoneme." A phoneme, as I understand it, is the smallest sound in a language, such as the t-sound or k-sound. The sound of a consonant or a vowel. But the st-sound is not considered a phoneme--logically so, since it is two sounds combined. Linguists call it a consonant cluster. What I want, and believe would be useful, is a term for vowels, consonants, and consonant clusters--the sound-units of syllables.
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