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Re: Linguistic Terminology

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Friday, January 1, 1999, 9:10
Kristian Jensen wrote:
> This is the smallest unit in the grammar that is either a word in > its own right (free morpheme e.g. "bird"), or part of a word (bound > morpheme e.g. "-s" in "birds"). Note that in the examples just > given, "bird" is a lexeme (a lexical/dictionary word) while the "-s" > ending is a plural suffix.
Actually, "bird" is an example of a *free morpheme*. A free morpheme is a unit that can be used by itself, which bird can. -s is a *bound morpheme*, a morpheme that cannot be used independantly, it has to be connected with something else, usually they are affixes. "Bird" is also a lexeme, but lexeme does not necessarily equal free morpheme. IIRC, a lexeme is a word whose meaning cannot be taken from parts, for example, "hot dog" is a lexeme. It must be learned as a seperate item, altho it is a compound word created from "hot" and "dog", it does not mean "a dog which is hot".