Grammar II Graciela Palacio

LV/JVG/UTN 2016

LESSON 6 A
LEXEME VS WORD FORM

The following quote is a partial entry from the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.

cat: / kæt / noun

1. A small animal with soft fur that people often keep as a pet. Cats catch and kill birds
and mice: cat food – see also KITTEN, TOMCAT. 2. A wild animal of the cat family: the
big cats (= LIONS, TIGERS, etc.) – see also FAT CAT, WILD CAT. IDM…..

Dictionaries list the lexemes of a language, non-exhaustively, since new words (or rather
lexemes) are constantly being created.

A lexeme is an abstract unit. Different lexemes refer to different concepts. When we add a
derivational prefix to a morpheme as in happy/unhappy, we do not change the category of the
word but we create a new lexeme.

Actual occurrences in speech or writing always have phonic or orthographic forms. The items
that occur in speech or writing are therefore word forms.

Word forms realize lexemes. For example, Radford et al. (1999) tell us that cat and cats are
two different word forms, the singular and plural forms of the same lexeme, the lexeme CAT.
cat and dog are also two different word forms but of two different lexemes, the lexeme CAT
and the lexeme DOG. shoot, shoots, shooting, shot (past tense, finite), and shot (past
participle, non-finite) all belong to the inflectional paradigm of the lexeme SHOOT. Notice
that the convention is to write lexemes with capital letters.

Morphology can be divided into two main branches:

a. Inflectional morphology, which deals with the various forms of lexemes. We will
refer to inflections as inflectional formatives or inflectional pieces. An inflection is
an exponent of a grammatical category (e.g. number, person, tense, etc.).

b. Word formation or lexical morphology, which deals with the formation of new
lexemes from given bases.

ROOTS, STEMS AND BASES

What is a root?
When words such as dog or walk appear unadorned with prefixes and affixes they are called
canonical roots.

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Fromkin et al. (2011) state that morphologically complex words (not compound words)
typically consist of a root and one or more affixes. Some examples of English roots are paint
in painter, read in reread, ceive in conceive, and ling in linguist.

A root may or may not stand alone as a word (paint and read do; ceive and ling don’t).1

A canonical root is a linguistic sign, an arbitrary pairing between a meaning and a sound. A
canonical root does not have to sound like its referent 2 as is the case with onomatopoeic
words (e.g. oink), it symbolizes the referent by a conventional pairing.

Radford et al. (1999) define a root as the ultimate starting point for deriving a word, that is,
the most basic morpheme in a word is its root.

Now there are free roots and bound roots. A bound root is a root which does not occur in
isolation and which only acquires meaning in combination with other morphemes. For
example, words of Latin origin such as receive, conceive, perceive and deceive share a
common root, ceive; and the words remit, permit, commit, submit, transmit and admit share
the root mit. For the original Latin speakers, the morphemes corresponding to ceive and mit
had clear meanings, but for modern English speakers, Latinate morphemes such as ceive and
mit have no independent meaning. Their meaning depends on the entire word in which they
occur.

A similar class of words is composed of a prefix affixed to a bound root morpheme.

Examples are ungainly (there is no word *gainly); discern, (there is no word *cern); non-
plussed (there is no word *plussed) downhearted (there is no word *hearted), and others such
as unkempt hair, a non-descript person, etc.

Affixes do not belong to the lexical categories. They are bound functional categories and they
have morphological selectional properties (m-selectional properties). The morphological
selectional properties of bound functional categories include the following information:

a. that the category is affixal

b. the categorial nature of the element that it can attach or adjoin to, e.g. in the case
of tense (TNS) that it can attach to verbs.3

The word teacher is made up of a root teach (a free morpheme) and a bound derivational
morpheme –er.
1
In languages that have circumfixes, the root is the form around which the circumfix attaches (e.g.: in German,
lieb (“love”) produces geliebt (“loved” the past participle of a regular verb). In infixing languages, the root is
the form into which the infix is inserted.
2
Referent: the object which it denotes.
3
The morphological selectional properties of free functional categories include the following information: a.
that the category is non-affixal and so that it will not need to attach or adjoin to any other category.

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What is a base?
A base is the form to which an affix is added. In many cases the base is also the root. In the
case of teacher, teach is the root and the base (a free morpheme) and –er is a suffix, a bound
derivational morpheme. In the case of books, book is the root and the base (a free morpheme),
and the –s is an affix, a bound inflectional morpheme.

In other cases, the base and the root may not coincide, e.g. blackened. Black is the root and
base for the suffix –en, from the adjective black we derive the verb blacken. Blacken is the
base for the addition of the bound inflectional morpheme –ed, the marker of past tense, but it
is no longer a root.

What is a stem?
Stem has to do with inflectional morphology. In the case of the word touchable, touch is an
unanalysable root and a base, -able is a derivational bound morpheme. In the case of
untouchable, touch is the root, -able is a bound derivational affix, which derives an adjective
from a verb. The prefix –un is added to that base, an analyzable base. The prefix is a bound
derivational prefix. It does not change the category but it creates a new lexeme in the sense
that it expresses a different meaning.

In the case of untouchables, untouchable is the base and the stem for the plural bound
morpheme –s, a bound inflectional suffix.

In the case of touched, touch is a root, a base and a stem at the same time because the –ed
suffix is a bound inflectional morpheme.

A stem is of concern only if we are dealing with inflectional morphology. A stem may be
simple or complex. Touch in touched is a simple stem, government in governments is a
complex stem, made up of a root (govern) and a derivational affix (ment). Redskins is made
up of a complex stem redskin (made up of two roots: red + skin) and a bound inflectional
morpheme for the plural.

Stem can be defined as that part that remains when all the inflectional affixes have been
removed.

The plural form of the lexeme KNIFE has a special stem form /naiv/.

Consider the following figures, taken from Bauer (1983)

Unanalysable root (derivational)

(or base) suffix

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 Touch able

Derivational analysable
prefix base

un touchable

Stem inflectional
(or base) suffix

untouchable s

root, stem or base inflectional

suffix

touch ed

To sum up:

Morphology can be divided into two main branches:

a. Inflectional morphology, which deals with the various forms of lexemes. We will
refer to inflections as inflectional formatives or inflectional pieces. An inflection is
an exponent of a grammatical category (e.g. number, person, tense, etc.).

Inflection does not change the grammatical category or the meaning of the word to
which it applies.

Remember that the base to which an inflectional piece is added is often called a stem.
Inflection applies after the word has been formed (e.g.: worker + s, blackboard +s)

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 b. Word formation or lexical morphology, which deals with the formation of new
lexemes from given bases. In the following lessons we will discuss different word
formation processes.

Lesson 6 Activity 1: Be ready to answer the following questions:

1. What is a lexeme?
2. What is a word form?
3. What is the relationship between word forms and lexemes?
4. Which are the two main branches into which morphology can be divided?
5. What is a root?
6. What is a bound root?
7. In what way do affixes differ from roots?
8. What is a base?
9. What is a stem?

Lesson 6 Activity 2: (to be handed in as Assignment 6)

Read the following paragraph and then state the category of the underlined words. If they
are made up of more than one element, describe their morphological structure. Account for
you answers:

So things were ticking along quite nicely. In fact, I’d say that good stuff had been
happening pretty solidly for about six months.
- For example: Mum got rid of Steve, her rubbish boyfriend.
- For example: Mrs Gillet, my art and design teacher, took me to one side after a lesson
and asked whether I’d thought of doing art at college.
- For example: I’d learned two new skating tricks, suddenly, after weeks of making an
idiot of myself in public. (I’m guessing that not all of you are skaters, so I should say
something straight away, just so there are no terrible misunderstandings. Skating =
skateboarding. We never say skateboarding, usually, so this is the only time I’ll use the
word in this whole story. And if you keep thinking of me messing around on ice, then it’s
your own stupid fault.)
All that, and I’d met Alicia too.

References:
Bauer, L. (1983) English Word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R. & Hyams, N. (2011) An Introduction to Language, Ninth Edition.
Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Introduction.
Pinker, S. (1999) Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. Phoenix.

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