Lexemes

A lexeme is a theoretical construct that stands for the unitary meaning and shared syntactic properties of a group of word forms. A lexeme is stripped of any inflectional endings. Thus play, plays, played, and playing are all inflected forms of the lexeme play. In a similar vein, cat and cats are inflected forms of the same lexeme, i.e., cat. Although inflection creates forms of the same lexeme, derivation creates new lexemes. Thus, player is not a form of the lexeme play but is considered a different lexeme; it has its own meaning and lexical category; it is a noun. With respect to their morphology, lexemes can be either simple or complex. For example, door is simple and lemon-tree is complex. With respect to their semantics, lexemes can be monosemous or polysemous. For instance, names for days such as Saturday have only one meaning and are monosemous, whereas a lexeme such as university is polysemous; it has more than one meaning. Polysemy is often contrasted with homonymy, under which the same form is associated with two or more unrelated meanings. Polysemous senses are attributed to the same lexeme; homonyms are considered as different lexemes. Although it is usually possible to identify a phonological form that is basic to all the forms of a lexeme, this is not always the case. For example, the form kiss is shared by all forms of the lexeme kiss (e.g., kiss, kisses, kissed, kissing). There is no common phonological form, however, between all forms of the lexeme go (e.g., go, went). Lexemes and their citation form should be kept distinct since the way a lexeme is cited is merely a convention and does not bear on any crucial phonological property of that lexeme. In certain traditions, as for example in Greek, the first-person singular is used as a citation form for verbs, whereas in other traditions, as for example in French, the infinitive is used. For nouns, the nominative singular is used. The terms lexeme, lexical unit, lexical item, word, and lemma are often used interchangeably in the relevant literature and in different linguistic fields. The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Collaborative Research Centre 991: “The structure of representations in language, cognition, and science,” Project C08, “The semantics of derivational morphology: A frame-based approach”).