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Lexeme''For its use in the context of Computer Science, see Lexical analysis''.
A '''lexeme''' () is an abstract Unit of measurement|unit of Morphology (linguistics)|morphological Semantic analysis (linguistics)|analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word. For example, in the English language, ''run'', ''runs'', ''ran'' and ''running'' are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN.[RUN is here intended to display in small caps. Software limitations may result in its display either in full-sized capitals (RUN) or in full-sized capitals of a smaller font; either is anyway regarded as an acceptable substitute for genuine small caps.] A related concept is the lemma (linguistics)|lemma (or '''citation form'''), which is a particular form of a lexeme that is chosen by convention to represent a canonical form of a lexeme. Lemmas are used in dictionaries as the headwords, and other forms of a lexeme are often listed later in the entry if they are not common conjugations of that word.
A lexeme belongs to a particular syntactic category, has a certain Meaning (linguistic)|meaning (Semantics|semantic value), and in inflecting languages, has a corresponding Inflection|inflectional paradigm; that is, a lexeme in many languages will have many different '''forms'''. For example, the lexeme RUN has a present Grammatical person|third person Grammatical number|singular form ''runs'', a present non-third-person-singular form ''run'' (which also functions as the past participle and Non-finite verb|non-finite form), a past form ''ran'', and a present participle ''running''. (It does not include ''runner, runners, runnable,'' etc.) The use of the forms of a lexeme is governed by rules of grammar; in the case of English verbs such as RUN, these include subject-verb agreement and compound tense rules, which determine which form of a verb can be used in a given Sentence (linguistics)|sentence.
A lexicon consists of lexemes.
In many Theoretical linguistics|formal theories of language, lexemes have subcategorization frames to account for the number and types of complements they occur with in Sentence (linguistics)|sentences and other syntax|syntactic structures.
The notion of a lexeme is very central to morphology (linguistics)|morphology, and thus, many other notions can be defined in terms of it. For example, the difference between inflection and derivation (linguistics)|derivation can be stated in terms of lexemes:
- Inflectional rules relate a lexeme to its forms.
- Derivational rules relate a lexeme to another lexeme.
Decomposition
Lexemes are often composed of smaller units with individual meaning called morphemes, according to '''Root (linguistics)|root morpheme''' + '''Derivation (linguistics)|derivational morphemes''' + '''desinence''' (not necessarily in this order), where:
- The root (linguistics)|root morpheme is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced to smaller constituents.[SIL dictionary of linguistic terms: What is a root?]
- The derivational morphemes carry only derivation (linguistics)|derivational information.[SIL dictionary of linguistic terms: What is a derivational affix?]
- The desinence is composed of all inflectional morphemes, and carries only inflectional information.[SIL dictionary of linguistic terms: What is an inflectional affix?]
The compound '''root morpheme''' + '''derivational morphemes''' is often called the stem (linguistics)|stem.[SIL dictionary of linguistic terms: What is a stem?] The decomposition '''stem''' + '''desinence''' can then be used to study inflection.
See also
- Ending (linguistics)
- Inflection
- Lexical unit
- Lexical word|Lexical word vs. grammatical word
- Lexicography
- Lexis (linguistics)
- Marker (linguistics)
- Morpheme
- Morphology (linguistics)
- Multiword expression
- Null morpheme
- Root (linguistics)
- Stem (linguistics)|Stem
Notes
Category:Lexical units
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