This paper deals with Prof. Mattoso Câmara Júnior's concept of word and its identification in the structure of Brazilian Portuguese. Initiallly, I briefly survey the main problems concerning the concept of word in structuralism and its origin; in the central part of the article, I focus on Mattoso Câmara's proposals in his main works, situating them in the context of the development of Linguistics in Brazil; I then present the author's view of the question of word compounding. The last part of the article summarizes his main contributions towards establishing the concept and defining processes for the identification of the word in Portuguese.
Word; Compounds; Mattoso Câmara Júnior; Brazilian Portuguese