Is some a lexical word

In English grammar and semantics, a content word is a word that conveys information in a text or speech act. It is also known as a lexical word, lexical morpheme, substantive category, or contentive, and can be contrasted with the terms function word or grammatical word.

In his book The Secret Life of Pronouns (2011), social psychologist James W. Pennebaker expands this definition: «Content words are words that have a culturally shared meaning in labeling an object or action. . . . Content words are absolutely necessary to convey an idea to someone else.»

Content words—which include nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs—belong to open classes of words: that is, classes of words to which new members are readily added. «The denotation of a content word,» say Kortmann and Loebner, «is the category, or set, of all its potential referents» (Understanding Semantics, 2014).

Examples and Observations

• «All morphemes can be divided into the categories lexical [content] and grammatical [function]. A lexical morpheme has a meaning that can be understood fully in and of itself—{boy}, for example, as well as {run}, {green}, {quick}, {paper}, {large}, {throw}, and {now}. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are typical kinds of lexical morphemes. Grammatical morphemes, on the other hand—such as {of}, {and}, {the}, {ness}, {to}, {pre}, {a}, {but}, {in}, and {ly}—can be understood completely only when they occur with other words in a sentence.» (Thomas E. Murray, The Structure of English. Allyn and Bacon, 1995)
• «Reverend Howard Thomas was the presiding elder over a district in Arkansas, which included Stamps.» (Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Random House, 1969)
• «Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.» (George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty. Hyperion, 2001)
• «The odor of fish hung thick in the air.» (Jack Driscoll, Wanting Only to Be Heard. University of Massachusetts Press, 1995)
• «Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center.» (Jon Stewart)

Function Words vs. Content Words

All languages make some distinction between ‘content words’ and ‘function words. Content words carry descriptive meaning; nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are types of content word. Function words are typically little words, and they signal relations between parts of sentences, or something about the pragmatic import of a sentence, e.g. whether it is a question. Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’ poem illustrates the distinction well:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

In this poem all the made-up words are content words; all the others are function words.

In English, function words include determiners, such as the, a, my, your, pronouns (e.g. I, me, you, she, them), various auxiliary verbs (e.g. have, is, can, will do), coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but), and subordinating conjunctions (e.g. if, when, as, because). Prepositions are a borderline case. They have some semantic content, but are a small closed class, allowing hardly any historical innovation. Some English prepositions serve a mainly grammatical function, like of (what is the meaning of of?) and others have clear descriptive (and relational) content, like under. New content words in a language can be readily invented; new nouns, in particular, are continually being coined, and new verbs (e.g. Google, gazump) and adjectives (e.g. naff, grungy) also not infrequently come into use. The small set of function words in a language, by contrast, is much more fixed and relatively steady over centuries.» (James R. Hurford, The Origins of Language: A Slim Guide. Oxford University Press, 2014)

There are three major groups of words: lexical words, function words and inserts.

You can watch the video version here:

LEXICAL WORDS are words which carry a concrete meaning. Here belong nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, so all the open classes of words.

Lexical words are crucial to understand the meaning of a text or piece of information. Even if you leave out all the other words and keep just the lexical words, the meaning will be understandable. This is often used in headlines or telegrams. Here’s an example of a headline:

Missing Link Found in Australia

As you can see, most of the function words have been removed and only the lexical ones have been maintained. Still, the meaning is clear.

Function Words

FUNCTION WORDS do not carry a meaning themselves. They bind lexical words and create relationships between them. They also help you interpret lexical words in a text.

These words belong to the closed classes, like conjunctions, prepositions.

Here are the main differences between the two types of words discussed above:

feature	lexical words	function words
number	There’s an unlimited number of lexical words, because they belong to the open classes.	There’s a limited and relatively small number of function words, because they belong to the closed classes.
length	Lexical words may be of any length.	Most function words are short.
frequency	Lexical words occur with low frequencies. Some of them only occur in specialized texts.	They occur frequently in any text. Some occur more frequently than others, though.
lexical meaning	Lexical words carry a meaning.	Function words don’t have a lexical meaning.
morphology	Lexical words are variable. They can be inflected.	Function words are invariable.
stress	Lexical words usually carry the primary or secondary stress.	Function words are usually unstressed and often reduced.
role in phrase	Lexical words can be the heads of phrases.	Function words are never the heads of phrases.

Inserts

Finally, there are INSERTS. These are words that are inserted relatively freely in a text to add some emotional or interactional value. They include words like: YES, YEAH, NO, NOPE, HM, UGH, UHHUH and such like.

In spoken language they are often marked by intonation or pauses, in written language by punctuation. They are rather typical of spoken language, but they can appear in written language as well, especially if it imitates spoken language, like in dialogues.

Inserts play an important role in communication. Many inserts are spelled inconsistently.

Content

• Lexicon concept
• Features of lexical units
• Formal features
• Examples
• Semantic features
• Examples
• Phonological features
• Example
• Types of lexicon
• Types of lexicon according to origin and diffusion
• Active
• passive
• Patrimonial
• Dialect
• Cultisms
• Jargon
• Social jargon
• Professional jargon
• Types of lexicon according to function
• Lexical Categories
• Ways to create words
• Functional categories
• Lexical examples
• Technical lexicon in legal matters
• Computer technical lexicon
• From Latin American social jargon
• References

The lexicon It is the set of words that make up a language and that are also part of its dictionary. This changes from region to region, and even within themselves, because words created by the inhabitants themselves are always being added, who give them their own meaning according to their needs.

What we know as the Spanish lexicon, comes mostly from transformations of the language of the Romans, Latin. Over time, the Spanish language was also influenced by Greek, Arabic and Celtic words, just to name a few.

Technical words that some professionals have, depending on their area, are also considered lexicon. For example, a lawyer has his own linguistic terms on legal concepts and laws. We know these as «technicalities.»

The languages ​​are adjusted to the situations, customs and experiences of those who speak to them. So, we could say that languages ​​are constantly changing and are subject to those who use them. To know the lexicon of a certain population, you must learn to use it and know its rules.

Lexicon concept

The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language. It is part of a territory or a specific activity. It is made up of words contained in the dictionary that represents said language, and in turn can include internal modifications, according to the activities and customs of each province, city or town.

In general, we will find a formal way of the lexicon of each language, which is dominated by the whole of society and accepted institutionally. However, we will also find an informal side of the language, with distinctive own words for a group of people from a community, social class or region.

It is also considered lexicon to the terms of a specific professional field or activity that is carried out. These technical words are mastered by a certain group of people who are dedicated to studying and working in that particular area.

It is common that new words continue to appear, according to the idioms of the regions. Over time, many words have been added, created by speakers or taken from external languages. In turn, each term that makes up a language is influenced by the new generations.

Features of lexical units

Lexical units are all the words that allow communication between two people. Each of the words is a lexical unit. Generally, these units have 3 types of lexical features, which we can define as:

Formal features

They are the main characteristics about the type of word. They also show the information of the syntactic content they have and the type of alteration that the word in question has.

— If it is a verb (to be, pray, go).

— From a noun (table, school, house).

— From a pronoun (yo, tù, èl).

Semantic features

These features or qualities are made up of the data that the lexical unit (word) has. In addition, they contain the essential properties of that word.

• Examples

— The cow is a vertebrate, at the same time it is a farm animal.

— Ringo Starr is a member of the Beatles. But at the same time in a name.

— Spring is a season of the year. But at the same time it is a name.

Phonological features

As its name implies, it refers to the sound qualities of each word. It is a very broad field of study, but simple. It involves each letter that makes up our vocabulary.

• Example

The letter «s» will sound louder in a word if it comes before a «p» than an «m». This is the case with:

— Esperar.

— EYeerar.

Types of lexicon

Types of lexicon according to origin and diffusion

• Active

The lexicon of this type is made up of a large number of frequently used words. Therefore, it is easily understood, as it is the most widely spoken. It is commonly called «productive language.»

• passive

This type of lexicon is less common, as it is rarely used. Despite this, it has words that are easily understood, and it does not require any specialized knowledge to understand.

• Patrimonial

They are words of a particular language, they are part of its heritage. They can also be foreign words, words adopted from some other language and that end up being part of the recipient.

• Dialect

It is the characteristic lexicon of a particular region. It is the one that is properly discussed in the place.

• Cultisms

They are the words of colloquial use. In some cases they are vulgar, depending on the grammar.

• Jargon

They are variations of the standard language, which change according to the environment (age, profession, social class). Among the most common jargons, we can highlight:

Social jargon

Here we can find a set of variations that identify a group of people and that differentiate them from others. Among them we have: young people, athletes, computer scientists, just to name a few.

Professional jargon

As the name implies, they are for professional use. Technical words typical of a particular profession are used. As for example philosophers, mathematicians, sailors, scientists, among others.

Types of lexicon according to function

Depending on their function, there can be two types:

• Lexical Categories

These allow the creation of new words (by composition, derivation, among others) to give qualities or name new objects. That is why it is said that they are open class, since there is no limit on inventory. These types of words have referential meaning, and they describe properties, processes or actions.

Among this group we can find:

— Nouns.

— The adjectives.

— Verbs.

— Adverbs.

Ways to create words

The words that make up the lexical category can be put together to form new words. For this, the following forms are used:

— Composition (linguistics).

— Derivation (linguistic).

— Parasynthesis.

• Functional categories

This type is used for the connection in sentences, which is why it is said that they are words with strictly grammatical function. Unlike the previous one, this one has a closed catalog, and no more elements are allowed in this class. Among them we can highlight:

— Conjunctions.

— The auxiliaries.

— The articles.

Lexical examples

Technical lexicon in legal matters

• Abrogate: void a regulation or a law.
• Expendable goods: are those goods that disappear after use, or are damaged over time.
• Coasts: refers to the expenses that occur in the process of processing a lawsuit. It also applies to the expenses of legal procedures.

Computer technical lexicon

• Chat: refers to the conversation that takes place by any cybernetic means.
• Encrypt: is the process that allows data protection by means of a special encryption.
• Handheld: This is a minicomputer. It is so small that it can be carried in the palm of your hand.

From Latin American social jargon

• Corduroy: refers to the friend. It is widely used throughout the territory.
• Jeva: refers to a girlfriend or partner. It is also widely used, although in more informal social strata.
• Perol: is synonymous with the word «thing». This word is used to designate any object. Example: «Pass me that pot», referring to a chair.

References

1. Lexicon. (2020). Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org.
2. Lexicon. (2019). Spain: Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy. Recovered from: rae.es.
3. Lexicon. (S. f.). (N / A): Euston. Recovered from: euston96.com.
4. Lexicon. (2006). Spain: The Free Dictionary. Recovered from: es.thefreedictionary.com.
5. Lexicon. (S. f.). (N / A): Lexicon. Recovered from: lexico.com.

Discover the right content for your subjects

Sign up to highlight and take notes. It’s 100% free.

3) Lexical and Grammatical Word Classes

Compound Words

We know, that lexical morphemes carry the main meaning (or significance) of the word it belongs to. The morpheme ‘ready’ in ‘readiness’ carries the meaning of the word, as does ‘bound’ in ‘unbound’, or ‘cran’ in ‘cranberry’. These morphemes, because they carry the lexical meaning, are lexical morphemes.

Grammatical morphemes can become attached to lexical morphemes. The ‘ing’ in ‘singing’ carries no lexical meaning, but it does provide a grammatical context for the lexical morpheme. It tells us that the ‘sing’ is ‘ing’ (as in ‘on-going’). In the same way, the morpheme ‘ely’ in ‘timely’ carries no meaning, but it does turn the noun ‘time’ into a word more frequently used as an adverb. Time the thing becomes the description of an action – as in ‘his intervention was timely’.

Of course, as with so many things in life, these definitions are by no means uncomplicated. For example, if we were to consider the lexical meaning of the words ‘stand’ and ‘under’, then they would be distinctive and straightforward. ‘Stand’, means to be upright, and ‘under’ means to be beneath something. However, when we put these two lexical morphemes together (although technically ‘under’ is actually a preposition), we get the word ‘understand’ which has an entirely different lexical meaning.

The combining of morphemes in order to create a new lexis is known as compounding, and words which are formed by the combination of such morphemes are known as compound words. Compound words do not necessarily have to be the consequence of combining lexical morphemes alone. Certainly, the lexical morphemes ‘earth’ and ‘quake’ combined create ‘earthquake’, but the combination of grammatical morpheme ‘to’ and the lexical morpheme ‘day’ creates ‘today’.

Here is a list of compound words. See if you can identify the lexical and grammatical morphemes:

lifetime	elsewhere	upside	grandmother
cannot	backbone	fireworks	passport
together	become	became	sunflower
crosswalk	basketball	scapegoat	superstructure
moonlight	football	railroad	rattlesnake
anybody	weatherman	throwback	skateboard
meantime	earthquake	everything	peppermint
sometimes	also	backward	schoolhouse
butterflies	upstream	nowhere	bypass
fireflies	because	somewhere	spearmint
something	another	somewhat	airport
anyone	today	himself	grasshopper
inside	themselves	playthings	footprints
therefore	uplift	without	homemade

Whether these compound words are composed of grammatical or lexical morphemes, the compound itself is almost always lexical. ‘Therefore’ is composed of two morphemes which in some ways can both be considered grammatical, but the compound carries a lexical meaning of ‘as a consequence of’.

Word Classes

It is useful to be able to distinguish between lexical and grammatical morphemes, because by doing so we are able to understand that words are constructed using specific mechanisms. Understanding those mechanisms means that we understand more clearly not only how we use words today, but how new words are formed.

If this is true of the morphemes in relation to the construction of words, then is is true also of words in relation to the construction of sentences. This is our next topic: the categorisations of words.

Words are divided into various classes (or ‘parts of speech’), each of which has a specific function in relation to creating meaning within sentences. The first and easiest distinction is that between open-class words (or lexical words) and closed-class words (or grammatical words).

Open-class words, or Lexical words

Open-class words, as Leslie Jeffries writes, are “those which contain the main semantic information in a text, and they fall into the four main lexical word classes: noun, verb, adjective and adverb” (Jeffries, 2006, p. 83). Stott and Chapman, in their book Grammar and Writing (2001) define these classes as:

• Verb: A word or phrase which expresses the action, process or state in the clause (e.g. I’m eating my favourite meal right now; I will go to that football match; I went quietly)

• Adverb: Single words that modify verbs by adding to their meaning (e.g. The choir sang sweetly). Words or phrases that modify or give extra definition to the verb in terms of place, manner and time (e.g. I’m eating my favourite meal right now; I’m eating my favourite meal in my favourite restaurant), are often referred to as adverbial.

• Noun: Words that names persons / places / things or abstractions (e.g. Edward, Tanzania, guitar, happiness). In earlier centuries all nouns in the English language were given a capital letter. In German, they still do the same. In English now, only proper nouns are given capital letters.

• Adjective: Words that modify nouns by adding to their meanings (e.g. That was a long film). Most adjectives have comparative (I’m glad it wasn’t any longer) and Superlative forms (It was the longest film I’ve ever seen).

They classes are referred to as open-class because “they are open-ended and can be added to readily” (Jeffries, 2006, p. 83), but they are also often referred to as lexical words because they carry a lexicial meaning (sometimes they are even referred to as semantic words, for the same reason). Sara Thorne goes on to say:

New words can be added to nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs as they become necessary, developing language to match changes in the society around us. The computer age, for example, has introduced new words like hardware, software, CD-Rom and spreadsheet; the 1980s introduced words like Rambo, kissogram and wimp; the 1990s introduced words like babelicious, alcopop and e-verdict; and the twenty-first century words like bling, chav, sudoko, bluetooth, chuggers (‘charity muggers’), mediatrics (‘media dramatics’ i.e. a story created from nothing), and doorstepping (journalists catching celebrities on their doorsteps to question them about incidents they would prefer not to discuss). Open-class words are often called lexical words and have a clearly definable meaning. (Thorne, 2008. p. 4)

Closed-class words, or Grammatical words

If open-class words tend to change frequently, then closed-class words tend not to change very often. Closed-class or grammatical words (sometimes referred to as function words) have less meaning than open-class or lexical words, but do useful jobs in language. They are the ‘little words’ that act as the glue, or connectors, inside a sentence. Without them, lexical words might still carry meaning but they do not make as much sense.

Grammatical words include articles, prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns.

• Articles: There are only two articles in English: the definite article, the, and the indefinite article a(n) (Jeffries, 2006. p. 96).

• Prepositions: Define the relationships that exist between elements. This includes relationships of place (at, on, by, opposite), of direction (towards, past, out, of, to, through), of time (at, before, in, on), of comparison (as, like), of source (from, out of), and of purpose (for) (Thorne, 2008. p. 20). Prepositions are by no means uncomplicated – you will have noticed from this list that the word ‘at’ can function as both a preposition of place and of time, depending on its contexts.

• Conjuntions: The function of conjunctions is to link together elements of sentences and phrases. They come in two forms. Co-ordinating conjunctions are words that join two clauses in a sentence, where each clause is of equal importance (i.e., ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘either’, ‘or’, ‘neither’, ‘nor’). Subordinating conjunctions are words that link sentences where one half is a consequence of the other (‘although’, ‘as’, ‘because’, ‘if’, ‘since’, ‘that’, ‘though’, ‘until’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘while’, etc.).

• Pronouns: Pronouns come in two forms. Firstly, the pronoun itself, where words are “used instead of a noun or noun phrase (e.g. it, he, who, theirs)”. Secondly, there is the personal pronoun, in which “[w]ords identify speakers, addressees and others (I, you, she, it, we, they)” (Stott and Shapman, 2001).

What is the significance of word classes?

Note: I am indebted to Dr. Geoffrey Finch for his help with much of this next section, to which I have added some additional notes and material. This means that some parts of this section have doubtless either already appeared in one of Dr. Finch’s book, or will imminently do so – but without the details I have been unable to reference them properly.  See here for published works, and buy them all — ‘cos they’re great.

Word classes are important in the acquisition of language because they enable us to construct sentences with a maximum of economy. Knowing that only a verb can complete the following sentence:

	loved
The boy	…………..	the dog
	hit

or an adverb the one below,

	badly
The boy wrote the essay very	………..
	easily

means that we don’t have to try out every word in our mental lexicon to see whether it will fit or not.

So classifications of words and grammar enable us to communicate much more efficiently. Not only this, such systems enable us to communicate with much more variety. Humans simply could not memorise a lexicon which contained a different word for every thing they wanted to express. This means that there are only two options – either make do with a limited range of expression, or develop a system which allows for individual words to mean more than one thing. Word classes are part of that very system – as we shall discover more of in a moment.

Bauer, Holmes and Warren (2006) argue that word class systems are like the assembly instructions for language:

Kit-sets for furniture (and other construction toys for older children) generally come with a parts list and a set of instructions. If the parts list of a language is the set of words used by that language, then the grammar is the instruction set. If your build-it-yourself bookcase arrives with a parts list and no instructions, then the construction of a well-formed piece of furniture may be more difficult, if not impossible. If we have a set of words but no grammar then the construction of well-formed sentences is similarly compromised.

The language instruction set is useful not only in constructing sentences, but also in deconstructing them, in understanding what someone is saying to us. And understanding what someone is saying is not just understanding the words they use. Compare, for instance, Tama would like to speak to you and you would like to speak to Tama. These sentences share the same words, and the result of the situation expressed might be the same (i.e. the people referred to as you and Tama get together to talk), but our understanding of these sentences involves not just knowing what each word means but also recognizing how the words, as components of sentences, are combined. After all, Max loves Alice does not mean Alice loves Max. Success in communicating the message depends on speakers and listeners working with the same instruction set. It is this type of shared knowledge which constitutes part at least of what we call grammar. (Bauer, Holmes and Warren, 2006. p. 104)

Problems with classifications

The criteria by which linguists assign words to particular classes, however, are less certain. Most people if asked to say what a verb or a noun are rely on what is called ‘notional’ criteria. These are broadly semantic in origin. They include referring to a verb as a ‘doing word’, i.e. a word that denotes an action of some sort (go, destroy, eat), and a noun as a ‘naming word’, i.e. one that denotes an entity or thing (car, cat, hill). Similarly, adjectives are said to denote states or qualities (ill, happy, rich), and adverbs, the manner in which something is done (badly, slowly, well).

As a rule of thumb this works reasonably well, but it’s not subtle enough to capture the way in which word classification essentially works. Not all verbs are ‘doing’ words. The verbs ‘to be’, and ‘to have’ clearly aren’t. And neither are all nouns necessarily ‘things’. Nouns such as ‘advice’, and ‘consequence’ are difficult to conceive as entities. We’re forced to call them ‘abstract’ nouns, a recognition that in some way they are not typical. Indeed, notional criteria only work for prototypical class members, but there are many others for which such criteria are not adequate. The word ‘assassination’, for example, seems like a verb since it describes a process or action, but it is in fact a noun.

The Lawlessness of English

The English language is flexible. It has, over the centuries developed from a corruption of Latin — the twisting and changing of ‘proper’ Latin with local jargon and slang. “From at least the time of Shakespeare”, Measham says, “the English language has not been overly hampered by rules” (Measham, 1965. P. 83).

To use an example from Measham — look at these three sentences:

• Gardening is a good way of getting blisters.
• I was gardening at the time the wall fell down.
• I had on my gardening boots.

The word ‘gardening’ appears three times. But does it serve the same function each time?

• Gardening is a good way of getting blisters

here ‘gardening’ functions as a noun.

• I was gardening at the time the wall fell down

here ‘gardening’ functions as a verb: it describes an action.

• I had on my gardening boots

here ‘gardening’ functions as an adjective.

Of course, for native English speakers the meaning of these sentences might appear plain, despite the fact that the same word operates in very different functions. 

So how can we classify words at all?

The only secure way to assign words into word classes is on the basis of how they behave in the language. If a word behaves in a way characteristic of a noun, or a verb, then it’s safe to call it one. This, of course, means recognising that words can belong to more than one class. It also means recognising that words may be more or less noun-like or verb-like in behaviour.

Word classes are similar to family groupings in that some members are more recognisably part of their class than others. Basic to word behaviour are two sets of criteria, namely, the morphological, and the syntactic. Morphological criteria, as we have seen, are concerned with the structure of words. Important here are such processes as inflection. Most verbs will inflect to show tense (show + ed), most nouns to indicate plurality (bat + s), and many adjectives to show the comparative and superlative (fat > fatter > fattest). But there is no one criterion which all words in a particular class will obey. As a consequence, linguists also use syntactic criteria, in particular, the distribution of a word in an individual string. This is the topic we will be considering in my next post: Whereabouts a word can occur in a phrase or sentence is an important indication of its class.

Using the behaviour of individual words as an indication of word class means that our approach is descriptive rather than prescriptive. And we shall also find that, because of the variable character of words, each class will contain within it several sub-classes. So there are sub-classes of nouns, verbs, and so on. And because the different classes have features in common it is possible to cross-classify them into larger groups. Linguists, therefore, differentiate between lexical and grammatical classes. The former contain words which have a meaning outside the context in which they are used, and include nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives and adverbs, whilst the latter consist of words which are only meaningful as part of the syntactic frame for example, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns and auxiliary verbs.

Bibliography

Jeffries, L. (2006). Discovering Language: The Structure of Modern English. Basingstoke, Palgrave.

Thorne, S. (2008). Mastering Advanced English Language. Basingstoke, Palgrave.

Sott, R. and Chapman, J. (2001). Grammar and Writing. Harlowe, Longman

Measham, D. C. (1965). English Now and Then. Cambridge, Cambridge

Bauer, L., Holmes, J. and Warren, P (2006). Language Matters. Basingstoke, Palgrave