Name: Faremi David Olamide
Matrix number: ENE/2022/37648
Programme: English Education
Course Code: ENG 317
Course Title: Introduction to Semantics
QUESTIONS
Discuss word, lexeme and word token.
ANSWERS
Concept of Word
It's the duty of linguists to characterise or establish the knowledge of the relationship between word
forms. It is believed that language users must have the knowledge of the systematic relationship
between words (how words are patterned or structured) either words and their forms or word family.
The sub discipline on the level that is responsible for this is morphology.
Morphology is concerned with the internal structures of words.
Words are the most difficult items to describe. For non-linguistics, word can be described as
what can be worked up in the dictionary. This definition is broad. However, there are a lot of criteria
that can be used to describe a word;
1. Pronunciation and meaning: Words are made up of sounds that are structured together to
give meaning. Every word is made up of sound or meaningful unit. Some of these words have
habitual relationship ( based on chance rather than reason.) Some of these words sound alike
but different in meaning. Some have the same meaning but does not sound alike e.g sofa,
couch. Some words does not have meaning in themselves but are used to achieve meaning e.g
a, an, the, they etc. They are know as grammatical function.
2. Grammatical category: Word can be classified into word classes e.g noun, pronoun, verb,
adverb, adjectives, preposition, conjunction and interjection/exclamation. These words classes
can be divided into grammatical classes.
Noun: It's a naming word, e.g David, bag, Osogbo, January etc.
Pronoun: It's used to replace noun, e.g him, her, himself, themselves, ourselves, yourself etc.
Verb: It states action word, e.g jumped, danced, draws, addressed etc.
Adverb: It adds to the meaning of a verb, an adjective or another adverb. E.g quickly, very,
slowly etc.
Adjectives: It qualities a noun or pronoun, e.g fat, ugly, thin, many, clean etc.
Preposition: It's used with a noun or pronoun to mark its relation with another word. E.g, on,
over, between, across etc.
Conjunction: It joins together word phrases or sentences. E.g, and, but, along etc.
Interjection: It shows emotion or strong feeling. E.g, wow!, Thank God!, Kudos! Etc.
Concept of Lexeme
A lexeme can be described as a linguistic sign and abstract entry. It is also known as dictionary word.
Capital letters are used to denote lexeme when necessary, to avoid confusion between two words.
English dictionaries assume that the language users should be able to construct different forms of
lexeme by applying the relevant rules of word formation.
In other words, a lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning, representing a single word or phrase with a
specific sense or meaning. It's a theoretical construct that helps linguists analyse and describe the
vocabulary of a language.
Features of Lexeme
1. Word or phrase: A lexeme can be a single word (e.g "run") or a phrase (e.g., "kick the
bucket.")
2. Unique meaning: Each lexeme has a distinct meaning or sense, which distinguishes it from
other lexemes.
3. Abstract representation: A lexeme is an abstract concept, not a physical word or phrase. It
represents the underlying meaning or concept.
4. Inflectional variations: A lexeme can have multiple inflectional forms, such as "run" (base
form), "runs" (third person singular), "running" (present participle), and "ran" (past tense).
These forms are all part of the same lexeme.
5. Semantic relationships: Lexemes can be related to each other through semantic
relationships, such as synonymy (e.g., "big" and "large"), antonymy (e.g., "hot" and "cold"),
or hyponymy (e.g., "dog" and "animal.")
Illustration of Lexeme;
- The lexeme "bank" can refer to a financial institution or the side of a river. These two meanings are
distinct and represent two separate lexemes.
- The lexeme "run" encompasses various inflectional forms, such as "runs," "running," and "ran," but
they all share the same core meaning.
Word Token
Word tokens are essential in corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and natural language
processing, as they provide a foundation for analysing language patterns, frequencies, and
distributions.
A word token is a single occurrence of a word in a text or corpus. It's a concrete representation of a
word, as opposed to a lexeme, which is an abstract representation of a word's meaning.
Features of Word Token
1. Concrete occurrence: A word token is a specific instance of a word in a text.
2. Countable: Word tokens can be counted, allowing researchers to quantify word frequencies.
3. Include inflectional variations: Word tokens include different forms of a word, such as
"run," "runs," "running," and "ran."
4. Same word, different tokens: Each occurrence of the same word is considered a separate
token.
Illustration of Word Token:
- In the sentence "The dog runs quickly," "runs" is a word token.
- In the sentence "The dogs run quickly," "run" is a different word token.
- If the word "run" appears 10 times in a text, there are 10 word tokens of "run."