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For its use in the context of Computer Science, see Lexical analysis
Lexical analysis

In computer science, lexical analysis is the process of converting a sequence of characters into a sequence of tokens. Programs performing lexical analysis are called lexical analyzers or lexers....
.


A lexeme is an abstract unit
Unit

Unit may refer to:In mathematics:* Unit vector, a vector with length equal to 1* Unit circle, the circle with radius equal to 1, centered at the origin...
 of morphological
Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
 analysis
Semantic analysis (linguistics)

In linguistics, semantic analysis is the process of relating syntax structures, from the levels of phrases, clauses, sentence s and paragraphs to the level of the writing as a whole, to their language-independent meaning , removing features specific to particular linguistic and cultural contexts, to the extent that such a project is possible....
 in linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word
Word

A word is a unit of language that represents a concept which can be expressively communication with Meaning . A word consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value....
. For example, in the English language
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN.






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For its use in the context of Computer Science, see Lexical analysis
Lexical analysis

In computer science, lexical analysis is the process of converting a sequence of characters into a sequence of tokens. Programs performing lexical analysis are called lexical analyzers or lexers....
.


A lexeme is an abstract unit
Unit

Unit may refer to:In mathematics:* Unit vector, a vector with length equal to 1* Unit circle, the circle with radius equal to 1, centered at the origin...
 of morphological
Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
 analysis
Semantic analysis (linguistics)

In linguistics, semantic analysis is the process of relating syntax structures, from the levels of phrases, clauses, sentence s and paragraphs to the level of the writing as a whole, to their language-independent meaning , removing features specific to particular linguistic and cultural contexts, to the extent that such a project is possible....
 in linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word
Word

A word is a unit of language that represents a concept which can be expressively communication with Meaning . A word consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value....
. For example, in the English language
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN. A related concept is the lemma
Lemma (linguistics)

In linguistics a lemma has two distinct interpretations:# morphology / lexicography: the canonical form or citation form of a set of forms ; e.g....
 (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 headword
Headword

A headword, head word, lemma, or sometimes catchword is the word under which a set of related dictionary or encyclopaedia entries appears....
s, 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
Syntactic category

A syntactic category is either a phrasal category, such as noun phrase or verb phrase, which can be decomposed into smaller syntactic categories, or a lexical category, such as noun or verb, which cannot be further decomposed....
, has a certain meaning (semantic value
Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning in communication. The word is derived from the Greek language word s??a?t???? , "significant", from s??a??? , "to signify, to indicate" and that from s??a , "sign, mark, token"....
), and in inflecting languages, has a corresponding inflectional paradigm
Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as grammatical tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical case....
; that is, a lexeme in many languages will have many different forms. For example, the lexeme RUN has a present third person
Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deixis reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns....
 singular
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
 form runs, a present non-third-person-singular form run (which also functions as the past participle and non-finite
Non-finite verb

In linguistics, a non-finite verb is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflection by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood, grammatical number, grammatical gender, and grammatical person....
 form), a past form ran, and a present participle
Participle

In linguistics, a participle is a derivative of a non-finite verb verb, which can be used in compound Grammatical tense or Grammatical voice, or as a Grammatical modifier....
 running. (It does not include runner, runners, runnable, etc.) The use of the forms of a lexeme is governed by rules of grammar
Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
; in the case of English verbs such as RUN, these include subject-verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
 agreement and compound tense
Tense

Tense may refer to:*Grammatical tense, a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs...
 rules, which determine which form of a verb can be used in a given sentence
Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
.

A lexicon
Lexicon

In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes....
 consists of lexemes.

In many formal
Theoretical linguistics

Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally considered the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology , and semantics....
 theories of language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
, lexemes have subcategorization frame
Subcategorization frame

In syntactic linguistic theory, the subcategorization frame of a word is the number and types of syntactic verb arguments that it co-occurs with ....
s to account for the number and types of complements they occur with in sentences
Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
 and other syntactic structures
Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
.

The notion of a lexeme is very central to morphology
Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
, and thus, many other notions can be defined in terms of it. For example, the difference between inflection
Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as grammatical tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical case....
 and derivation
Derivation (linguistics)

In linguistics, derivation is "Used to form new words, as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine....
 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 morpheme
Morpheme

In morpheme-based morphology, a is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantics Meaning .In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes ....
s, according to root morpheme
Root (linguistics)

The root is the primary lexicology unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantics content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
 + derivational morphemes
Derivation (linguistics)

In linguistics, derivation is "Used to form new words, as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine....
 + desinence (not necessarily in this order), where:

  • The root morpheme
    Root (linguistics)

    The root is the primary lexicology unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantics content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
     is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced to smaller constituents.
  • The derivational morphemes carry only derivational
    Derivation (linguistics)

    In linguistics, derivation is "Used to form new words, as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine....
     information.
  • The desinence is composed of all inflectional morphemes, and carries only inflection
    Inflection

    In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as grammatical tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical case....
    al information.


The compound root morpheme + derivational morphemes is often called the stem. The decomposition stem + desinence can then be used to study inflection.

See also

  • Ending (linguistics)
  • Inflection
    Inflection

    In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as grammatical tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical case....
  • Lexical unit
  • Lexical word vs. grammatical word
  • Lexicography
    Lexicography

    The pursuit of lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionary....
  • Lexis (linguistics)
    Lexis (linguistics)

    In linguistics, lexis describes the storage of language in our mental lexicon as prefabricated patterns that can be recalled and sorted into meaningful speech and writing....
  • Marker (linguistics)
    Marker (linguistics)

    In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word or sentence. In analytic languages and agglutinative languages, markers are generally easily distinguished....
  • Morpheme
    Morpheme

    In morpheme-based morphology, a is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantics Meaning .In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes ....
  • Morphology (linguistics)
    Morphology (linguistics)

    Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
  • Multiword expression
    Multiword expression

    A multiword expression is a lexeme made up of a sequence of two or more lexemes that has properties that are not predictable from the properties of the individual lexemes or their normal mode of combination....
  • Null morpheme
    Null morpheme

    In Morphology #Morpheme-based_morphology, a null morpheme is a morpheme that is realized by a phonology null affix . In simpler terms, a null morpheme is an "invisible" affix....
  • Root (linguistics)
    Root (linguistics)

    The root is the primary lexicology unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantics content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
  • Stem