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> Is the French je a word? Before you reflexively say yes, consider that it never appears on its own and never receives word stress even though it has a specific meaning.

And? That doesn't change what the word "word" mean. Even in french, where "word" is "mot". There's no rule saying that a word has to be able to appear on its own to be named a "word".

More specifically "je" is defined, by linguists, in french, as a "mot grammatical".

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot_grammatical

Maybe what you're after is the difference between a "mot grammatical" and a "mot lexical"? But both are "mots" (words).




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