lexicon
Sign in to saveA lexicon (, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word (), neuter of () meaning 'of or for words'.
A lexicon is the complete set of words in a language or a specialized field of knowledge, like medicine or sailing. It matters because understanding a lexicon helps us communicate accurately and access the unique vocabulary that different communities and professions use to describe their world.
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Article
13 sectionsContents
- Size and organization
- Lexicalization and other mechanisms in the lexicon
- Neologisms (new words)
- Neologisms that maintain the sound of their external source
- Guestwords, foreignisms and loanwords
- Phono-semantic matches, semanticized phonetic matches and phonetic matches
- Role of morphology
- Compounding
- Diachronic mechanisms
- Second-language lexicon
- See also
- References
- Further reading
A lexicon (, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word (), neuter of () meaning 'of or for words'.
Linguistic theories generally regard human languages as consisting of two parts: a lexicon, essentially a catalogue of a language's words (its wordstock); and a grammar, a system of rules which allow for the combination of those words into meaningful sentences. The lexicon is also thought to include bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone as words (such as most affixes). In some analyses, compound words and certain classes of idiomatic expressions, collocations and other phrasemes are also considered to be part of the lexicon. Dictionaries are lists of the lexicon, in alphabetical order, of a given language; usually, however, bound morphemes are not included.