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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 ....
, the lexicon (from the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ?e?????) of a language is its vocabulary
Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and learning....
, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexeme
Lexeme

A lexeme is an abstract Unit of Morphology Semantic analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word....
s.

The lexicon includes the lexemes used to actualize words. Lexemes are formed according to morpho-syntactic
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 ....
 rules and express sememe
Sememe

Sememe - semantical language unit of meaning, correlative to morpheme.A sememe is a proposed unit of transmitted or intended meaning; it is atomic or indivisible....
s. In this sense, a lexicon organizes the mental
Mind

Mind refers to the aspects of intellect and consciousness manifested as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, free will and imagination, including all of the brain's conscious and unconscious cognitive processes....
 vocabulary in a speaker's mind: First, it organizes the vocabulary of a language according to certain principles (for instance, all verbs of motion may be linked in a lexical network) and second, it contains a generative device producing (new) simple and complex words according to certain lexical rules.






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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 ....
, the lexicon (from the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ?e?????) of a language is its vocabulary
Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and learning....
, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexeme
Lexeme

A lexeme is an abstract Unit of Morphology Semantic analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word....
s.

The lexicon includes the lexemes used to actualize words. Lexemes are formed according to morpho-syntactic
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 ....
 rules and express sememe
Sememe

Sememe - semantical language unit of meaning, correlative to morpheme.A sememe is a proposed unit of transmitted or intended meaning; it is atomic or indivisible....
s. In this sense, a lexicon organizes the mental
Mind

Mind refers to the aspects of intellect and consciousness manifested as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, free will and imagination, including all of the brain's conscious and unconscious cognitive processes....
 vocabulary in a speaker's mind: First, it organizes the vocabulary of a language according to certain principles (for instance, all verbs of motion may be linked in a lexical network) and second, it contains a generative device producing (new) simple and complex words according to certain lexical rules. For example, the suffix '-able' can be added to transitive verb
Transitive verb

In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more object s....
s only, so that we get 'read-able' but not 'cry-able'.

Usually a lexicon is a container for words belonging to the same language. Some exceptions may be encountered for languages that are variants, like for instance Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by virtually all the 189 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
 compared to the Portuguese language
Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Portugal. It is derived from the Latin language spoken by the Romanization Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago....
, where a lot of words are common and where the differences may be marked word by word.

When linguists study the lexicon, they study such things as what words are, how the vocabulary in a language is structured, how people use and store words, how they learn words, the history and evolution of words (i.e. etymology
Etymology

Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
), types of relationships between words as well as how words were created.

An individual's mental lexicon, lexical knowledge, or lexical concept is that person's knowledge of vocabulary
Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and learning....
. The role the mental lexicon plays in speech perception and production, as well as questions of how words from the lexicon are accessed, is a major topic in the fields of psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychology and neurobiology factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language....
 and neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics

File:Gray726-Brodman.pngFile:DTI-sagittal-fibers.jpgNeurolinguistics is the study of the Neuron mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language....
, where models such as the cohort model
Cohort model

The cohort model in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics is a model of lexical retrieval first proposed by William Marlsen-Wilson in the late 1980s....
 have been proposed to explain how words in the lexicon are retrieved.

Further reading

  • Aitchison, Jean
    Jean Aitchison

    Jean Aitchison is a Professor of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford....
    . Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003.


See also