WORD AND
LEXEME
Anindia Ayu Rahmawati, M.Hum.
Discussion Points
1. Word
2. Lexical Category
3. Content Word
4. Function Word
5. Grammatical Word
6. Phonological Word
7. Lexeme
8. Lexicon
9. Inflection
10. Derivation
Word
■ The words are difficult to define, and that traditional notions such as
bound and free are not always reliable.
■ However, we have certain characteristics about word, in simplicitic
fom, word is:
– Words are the things separated by white space in writing.
– Morphemes are the part of words that we recognize as being
meaningful or functional (in terms of grammar).
What is lexical category?
■ Lexical Category = Word Class = Parts of Speech
■ Words like noun, verb, adjective, and adverb refer to what linguists call lexical
category.
■ Function: Lexical Category tells us how a word is generally used in sentence. A noun
can be subject of a sentence, but not so a verb.
■ Lexical category is basic information about a word.
■ Subject, Verb, Object/Complement, Adverbial Sentence Structure
■ The an air into boy arrow the shot
■ The boy shot an arrow into the air.
Lexical Category
■ Each word has a name – (PARTS OF SPEECH) i.e., the “class” to which
each word belongs, like Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Pronoun,
Preposition, Conjunction, Article, Interjection
■ Each word has a use or function also referred to as syntax. The
function determines how the word is used in a sentence (Subject,
Verb, Object, Complement, Adverbial)
Content Word / Open Class
■ Content Words: noun, verbs, adjective, and adverbs
■ They have meaning in that they refer to objects, events, and abstract concepts; are
marked as being characteristic of particular social, ethnic, and regional dialects and
of particular contexts,and convey information about the feelings and attitudes of
language users.
■ One generalization we can make is that while content words are an open class and it is
possible to coin new ones, function words are a closed class. A person cannot easily
invent a new preposition or conjunction.
■ coin = to invent a new word/expression, or to use one in a particular way for the first time
■ Kita bisa menciptakan kata baru atau mengembangkan kata baru jika kata tersebut masuk
dalam golongan Content Word.
■ Perfect (adj) perfectionist (noun)
Function Word / Close Class
■ Function Words: are often best defined by their function.
■ Example of function words are determiner, pronouns, conjunctions,
articles and certain verbs – those with little or no meaning such as be,
should, or must.
■ A word, such as determiner, conjunction, or modal that has a
grammatical function and is best characterized by this function.
■ Function words are like thumbtacks. We don’t notice thumbtacks; we
look at what they are holding up. If we were to take the tacks away, the
calendars and posters would fall down. Likewise, if we took the function
words out of speech, it would be hard to figure out what was going on.
What is grammatical word?
■ A word that plays a distinct grammatical role within an utterance.
■ Distinct grammatical words can belong to a single lexeme. It is generally used to
refer specifically to different forms of a single word that occur depending on the
syntactic context.
For example, the grammatical word sing and sings both belong to the lexeme ‘sing’.
Also called morphosyntactic word. However, they are 2 grammatical words.
Another example:
■ rabbit and rabbits are tokens of the same word. But they absolutely must be
considered to be different grammatical words.
Rabbit : a singular noun
Rabbits : a plural noun
Phonological Word
■ Phonological word can be defined as a string of sounds that behaves
as a unit for certain kinds of phonological processes, especially stress
or accent.
■ A word that behaves as a unit for certain phonological processes,
including stress assignment.
■ If a word has stress in it, it’s phonological word.
■ For example, the sentence, ‘The hot dogs ran for the lake’. It has 7
words but only 4 words stress (belongs to phonological words). There
being no stress on the or for.
Lexeme
■ A lexeme is a word with a specific sound and a specific meaning. Its
shape may vary depending on syntatic context. Thus we have dog and
dogs, distinct grammatical word forms of the same lexeme dog.
■ Some linguists restrict the class of lexemes to the major lexical categories: noun,
verb, adjective, adverb
■ The lexeme go has 5 forms, 2 of them are irregulars: go, goes, went, gone,
going.
■ The words fever (noun) (illness/ a medical condition in which the body
temperature is higher than usual and the heart beats very fast ) and fever
(noun) (a state of great excitement ) DIFFERENT LEXEME – SAME WORD,
SAME LEXICAL CATEGORY BUT DIFFERENT MEANING
■ love (n), loves (verb) Different lexeme (different lexical category)
Lexicon
■ Lexicon refers to the mental dictionary.
■ A speaker’s mental dictionary, containing information about
the syntactic, semantic, phonological, and morphological
representation of the words of the speaker’s language.
■ A list of forms that we know. It contains irregular forms, forms that are
in some way unpredictable.
■ If we hear the word ‘function’, it happens inside our brain, the word
function has meaning the natural purpose of something, it’s noun, it
has 1 morpheme, it’s singular. That kinds of information related that
word is called LEXICON.
Inflection
■ The formation of grammatical forms of a single lexeme. is, are,
and being are examples of inflected forms of lexeme be.
■ Inflection involves the formation of grammatical forms – past, present,
future; singular, plural, masculine, feminine, neuter; and so on – of a
single lexeme. (selects, selected, selecting). The use of these
grammatical forms is generally dictated by sentence structure.
Derivation
■ The creation of new lexeme from one or more other lexemes through the
application of some morphological process, such as affixation or
compounding. Also called lexeme formation and word formation. (doghouse,
greenhouse)
■ Perfectionists
■ Free morpheme: perfect
■ Bound morpheme: -ion, -ist, -s
■ Derivational morpheme: -ion, -ist
■ Inflectional morpheme: -s
Lebih Jelasnya
■ Derivation dan inflection proses pembentukan KATA yang sifatnya
berbeda-BEDA
■ Kalau Derivation ada proses pembentukan kata dengan mengubah
makna kata dan leksikal kategori. Contoh dari possible menjadi
impossible. Itu contoh derivation.
■ Tetapi kalau inflection, kata-nya berubah tapi tidak merubah makna
maupun lexical category. Perubahannya karena aturan gramatikal,
contoh: get, gets, got, gotten, Ada perubahan bentuk kata kan?
Tapi tidak merubah makna maupun kelas kata/lexical category.
region, regions (both nouns with the
same meaning)
■ Single Lexeme
■ 2 Grammatical Words
jump (v), jumps (n), jumped (v), jump
(n)
■ 2 lexemes
■ 4 grammatical words
expert (n) ‘a person with a high level knowledge or skill’,
experts (adj) ‘having or showing a lot of knowledge or skill’
■ 2 different Lexemes
■ 2 grammatical words
‘Race’
■ race (n) ‘a competition in which all the competitors try to be the
fastest and to finish first’, race (n) ‘a group, especially of people, with
particular similar physical characteristics, who are considered as
belonging to the same type, or the fact of belonging to such a group”.
■ 2 different Lexemes
■ 2 grammatical words
How many grammatical words in the following set? List them. Then, how many lexemes are there?
List them as well, write them in capital letters.
1. fever (noun): illness/ a medical condition in which the body temperature is higher than usual
and the heart beats very fast
fever (noun): a state of great excitement
answer:
■ grammatical words (2): Each of the words listed is a separate grammatical word.
■ lexemes (2): DIFFERENT LEXEME (SAME WORD, SAME LEXICAL CATEGORY BUT DIFFERENT
MEANING)
How many grammatical words in the following set? List them. Then, how many lexemes are there?
List them as well, write them in capital letters.
2. love (noun), loves (verb)
■ answer:
■ grammatical words (2): Each of the words listed is a separate grammatical word.
■ lexemes (2): love and loves is DIFFERENT LEXEME
How many are grammatical words in the following set? List them. Then, how many lexemes are
there? List them as well, write them in capital letters.
1. down (Adv): destroy IIIIII: 6 lexeme
2. down (verb): defeat Lexeme? 6 different lexemes
3. downed (verb): defeat 8. Down (Adv)
4. down (Adj): unhappy 9. Down (ver)
5. down (adj): not in operation 10. Down (adj)
6. down (noun): dislike 11. Down (adj)
7. down (noun): feathers 12. Down (noun)
Grammatical Word ? 7 13. Down (noun)
Lexeme:
