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In lexicography [citation needed], a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). [ citation needed ] Examples are cat , traffic light , take care of , by the way , and it's raining cats and dogs .
A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. [1] Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. [2]
Lexical meaning is not limited to a single form of a word, but rather what the word denotes as a base word. For example, the verb to walk can become walks , walked , and walking – each word has a different grammatical meaning, but the same lexical meaning ("to move one's feet at a regular pace").
Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings. [1] [2] It includes the study of how words structure their meaning, how they act in grammar and compositionality, [1] and the relationships between the distinct senses and uses of a word. [2]
For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme -ness to the root happy changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness). In the word unkind, un-functions as a derivational morpheme since it inverts the meaning of the root morpheme (word) kind. Generally, morphemes that affix to a root morpheme (word) are ...
For example, the category of tense usually expresses the time of occurrence (e.g. past, present or future). However, purely grammatical features do not always correspond simply or consistently to elements of meaning, and different authors may take significantly different approaches in their terminology and analysis.
Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men"). During the Renaissance, scholars meticulously enumerated and classified figures of speech.
In other words, the word girl can have three basic factors (or semantic properties): human, young, and female. Another example, being edible is an important factor by which plants may be distinguished from one another (Ottenheimer, 2006, p. 20). To summarize, one word can have basic underlying meanings that are well established depending on the ...