There are different levels of scientific study of languages. Here are some of them: syntactic, lexical, morphemic, phonological. Each of these levels is handled by a separate branch of linguistics, the complex science of language.
The emergence of the concept of a language lexeme
One of the key concepts of lexicology and linguistics in general is a lexeme. The essence of a large number of other phenomena can be expressed using this term. But first, we should turn to the history of this concept.
It was first introduced into use by the domestic linguist A. Peshkovsky at the beginning of the last century. Subsequently, such scientists as V. Vinogradov, A. Smirnitsky, A. Zaliznyak worked on concretizing this term in different years.
History of the term
In the middle of the twentieth century, English linguists also began to use this term. The concept named by them was used in a meaning similar to that given to it by Russian scientists.
In the US, the term has been used since the thirtiesyears of the twentieth century. However, its meaning in American linguistics is still somewhat blurred. More precisely, there are several definitions of this concept parallel to each other.
Often the concept of "lexeme" is confused by American scientists with the concept of "idiom".
French linguists also interpret this term in their own way, significantly narrowing the boundaries of the concept. It is considered by them as a phenomenon similar in meaning to the term “word stem”.
Lexeme in Russian linguistics
In Russian linguistics, a lexeme is a word as an abstract phenomenon, a unit of the vocabulary of a language. This term is usually found in the titles of articles in spelling and some other dictionaries. A lexeme is an abstract unit in all its many forms and semantic meanings. Thus, the lexeme is considered as a complex phenomenon, combining the grammatical and semantic sides.
A lexeme is a variety of possible inflections (morphemes that appear at the end of words and serve to connect them in a sentence: table, table -a, table -om). This means that it is possible to speak about this phenomenon only in relation to inflectional languages, that is, those in which new word forms are formed with the help of affixes (prefixes and suffixes).
It combines all the possible meanings of the word. But you should not confuse it with the concept of a semantic field, since the latter consists of words, phrases and sentences that are not grammatically related to each other. However, it is worth mentioning that earlierthe word "lexeme" was also used to designate a semantic field, but this meaning of this term is outdated.
A concrete example of the implementation of a token is called a token. For example, house is a token, home is a lex. The lexeme, as a rule, is unchanged, with rare exceptions. An example of an exception is a galosh-galosh. An allolex is the totality of all grammatical forms of a lexeme.
Token examples
For a deeper understanding of the concept, examples of lexemes will be given below in comparison with such language units as phonemes, morphemes, semantic fields, words, and so on.
The first thing to focus on is that a lexeme, unlike a word, necessarily carries a certain semantic load. For example, "book" is both a lexeme and a word at the same time. And the preposition "but" is only a word, not a lexeme. Since prepositions do not carry an independent meaning, they cannot be lexemes by definition. The phenomena of "semantic field" and "lexeme" should be compared in order to distinguish between these concepts.
For example, the lexeme "head" can be a semantic field. But the semantic field "head" usually includes the following words:
eyes, mouth, mustache, etc
And the lexeme "head" is a set of grammatical forms:
head, chief, leader, etc
It also includes semantic meanings:
- body part;
- leader;
- leader;
- smart person etc.
Another difference is that a lexeme is a phenomenonobjective, and the content of the same semantic field may be different for different people, which indicates the subjectivity of semantic fields.
As for the “phoneme”, this term is used to formally designate the smallest sound unit, while the lexeme is a semantic and grammatical phenomenon. For example, the lexeme "house" consists of the morphemes "d", "o" and "m".
The term "morpheme" also belongs to a completely different area of linguistics - morphology.
As an example, we can cite the lexeme "eye", which is at the same time a morpheme. But the last concept implies the morphological composition of this word, namely, the eye -, from the point of view of morphology, this is the root of the word.
Conclusion
Lexeme is one of the most important concepts of linguistics, along with phoneme, morpheme, semantic field and others. A correct and accurate understanding of these terms is necessary for students of philological faculties of various higher educational institutions who are preparing to become specialists in the field of linguistics. Information about this phenomenon will also be of interest to all people interested in the problems of lexicology.
