The Lexicon

The Lexicon
• Lexical Entries or Lexemes
– Cat = one form-meaning composite
– -s [pl] = one form-meaning composite
• Cats = a combination of two form-meaning composites
– Karen = female given name
– Karen = pejorative use in reference to a person
regarded as ignorant, meddlesome, entitled,
racist, or generally negative, is attested by 2005
 Boundaries of the Lexicon
• Two views
• Lexicon vs. Grammar
 Lexical Entries
• Cat
– Group of sounds associated with an idealized
meaning, consisting of a general image, plus a
network of meaning features that make up the
concept of cat as personally experienced
 Lexical Entries
• -s
– [s] or [z] or [əz]
– Expresses the notion of plural, more than one, when
attached to a noun root
• -s has other identical forms with different
meanings or no meaning at all
• Narrow view of the lexicon
– -ed means past tense
• The rules are part of the Syntax
• V[past tense] -> STEM + -ed
 Grammar
• Lexicon
– Mental dictionary of morphemes
• Syntax
– Patterns and rules for combining morphemes
• Morphology?
– Where the two meet
• No strict boundary between these parts
 Lexicalization
• Complex pieces of language can be moved
into the lexicon
• Frequently combined segments are often
stored as a group
– Sidewalk vs. sideship
– United States vs. unitable regions
• This is a personal process
– What is frequent and useful varies a lot
– X+Y=Z gets stored separately as X,Y, & Z
 Lexicalization
• Common words are lexicalized as is
• With very frequent use, they are often worn down
– Bye from goodbye, Godby, Godby'e, Godbwye, God
b'w'y, God bwy yee, God buy you, God be wi' you,
each a progressively shorter contraction of God be
with you. Note the change of God to good by
confusion with good morning, good day, etc.
– Y’all from you all
– Night and Morning from good night and good morning
 Grammaticalization
• Words can be used so often that take on
grammatical functions
• Original meanings and pronunciations get lost
to time
• Was and be started as separate verbs
• Go/went
– From verbs gan and wendan (causative of wind)
 Grammaticalization
• Language change keeps the lexicon fuzzy and
fluid
• Forms of Go and Be could be grammaticalized
as forms of Say
– Then he goes ‘wassup with that?’ And I’m all
‘Thanks a lot!’
 Language Learning
• Second language learners lexicalize and
grammaticalize common and useful forms
– There’s
– I wanna
– gonna
• This is one major difference between native
speakers and non-native speakers
 Expanding the Lexicon
• Borrowing aka Stealing
– Most English speakers always have been multilingual
to some extent
• Celtic, Norse, Romance, the Renaissance, colonial languages
• Whiskey to Castles to Pecans to Khaki
– New concepts require new words
• Coining
– Entirely new words are invented occasionally but
rarely catch on
– Googol (Milton Sirotta, 1938)
 Coining
• Most words are coined by changing words or
parts of words that already exist
• Clipping: text, phone, gym, gas, flu, commie, the
rona
• Compounds: road rage, playroom, manbun,
hashtag, lockdown, (or plus clipping) halfcaf, sci-
fi
• Blends/Portmanteau: Japanimation,smog,
ginormous, blog, podcast, Covid
• Acronyms: radar, WASP, brb, U.S.A., gif, N95
 Coining
• New Uses for Existing Words:
– Awesome, drunk, kicks, word, bowl, triggered,
woke, ghost, lit, tea
• Phrases or Idioms:
– Once-in-a-lifetime, be on the same page, dog eat
dog, first base (dating), tactical spooning
 Classes in the Lexicon
• Often called Parts of Speech in non-linguistic
contexts
• Lexical or Content Words:
– Independent words in content classes, roots, or
complex stems and useful phrases that have
lexicalized
• Grammatical or Function Words:
– Affixes, clitics, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliaries,
conjunctions, and particles
 Content vs Function
• Content words
– can start out in a content category and move to a
function category over time
• Function words
– It is rarer for words to move from function to
content
– Traditionally called closed categories because it is
hard for words to enter or leave
Content vs Function
 Syntactic Classes or Categories
• Syntactic Class:
– A set of words (morphemes) with similar or
identical sets of morphosyntactic (form), semantic
(meaning), and pragmatic (use) properties
• Also called Lexical Categories or Classes
• Words can appear in different categories with
similar meaning
– Nouns and Verbs
– Chair and Chair
 Class Shift
• Open class words can move fairly easily to
other open classes
– Nouns, Verbs, Adj, etc.
• Closed class words move very rarely to any
other class, but usually another “closed” class
• Open class words can move to closed classes,
but it usually takes time and is rare
– French Chez
 Syntactic Classes
• Nouns
• Verbs
• Adjectives
– Attributive and Predicative
• Adverbs
– Kind of a catch-all pp.73-74
• Auxilliaries
• Prepositions
• Pronouns
• Conjunctions
– Coordinating and Subordinating