Abstract
The notion of “lexeme” is central to realizational theoriesof morphology and to the notion of “morphology by itself”. Itis generally assumed that “inherent” inflections such as Pluralor Past Tense impart a meaning to the inflected word. However, this runs counterto the usual understanding of the notion “lexeme”, which is supposedto have a single constant meaning for all word forms. Since derivational morphologyis supposed to create new lexemes by adding a new component of meaning thismakes it difficult to distinguish in ection from derivation, which in turnundermines the whole lexeme concept. The problem evaporates if we assume thatsyntactic features are properties of phrases, not individual words, and thattheir semantic interpretation is therefore defined over phrasal expressions.This brings inflections on lexical heads into line with all otherexponents of functional features.
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Spencer, A. Inflection and the lexeme. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47, 335–344 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014026901690
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014026901690