Size and Organization
Items in the lexicon are called lexemes or word forms. Lexemes are not atomic elements but contain both phonological and morphological components. When describing the lexicon a reductionist approach is used, trying to remain general while using a minimal description. To describe the size of a lexicon, lexemes are grouped into lemmas. A lemma is a group of lexemes generated by inflectional morphology. Lemmas are represented in dictionaries by headwords which list the citation forms and any irregular forms, since these must be learned to use the words correctly. Lexemes derived from a word by derivation morphology are considered new lemmas. The lexicon is also organized according to open and closed categories. Closed categories, such as determiners or pronouns, rarely get new lexemes and their function is primarily syntactic. Open categories such as nouns and verbs have highly active generation mechanisms and their lexemes are more semantic in nature.
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Famous quotes containing the words size and/or organization:
“Eat your meals according to the size of your bowl.”
—Chinese proverb.
“The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country. It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity, ... [ellipsis in original] it has by its nature a field of its own.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)