Lexical and Grammatical Words

Not all linguistic signs have reference to the outer world. Word-signs be subdivided into two principal groups: lexical words and grammatical words.

Lexical words are the linguistic signs which possess deno­tative ability. They are denotators of extralingual objects and phenomena, objective and subjective: a window, a country, to judge, etc. Their function consists in nominating or designating the denoted objects and phenomena.

The nomina­tive character of denotative words, which correlate with no­tions and have full denotative content, helps to distinguish nominative words from non-nominative (non-naming) ones. Lexical words in contrast to " grammatical words" are nomi­native units which function as lingual nominators of denoted referents.

Grammatical words are also linguistic signs but they pos­sess significative ability. They are significators of general notions. They do not designate or nominate them. This results from their function of signification, i. e. the rep­resentation of general conceptual notions (categories) not in the way of nominating but by signifying or marking them grammatically. They may or may not have reference to objective reality. If they have any, grammatical words are said to possess cer­tain referential and reflective ability. The significative cha­racter of the main stock of grammatical words is obvious.

Nomination and signifi­cation are correlative and distinctive, they lie at the basis of differentiating lexical words from grammatical ones.

Since grammatical words are devoid of nominative power they can be qualified as " function-words", i. e. words attri­buted with particular functional design such as to signify conceptual categories, to form up language units in their function and relationships or to provide orientation in speech situations.

e.g. That day he had yet another business meeting with his colleagues regarding the sales policy of their affiliate.

Both types of words are bilateral entities having their content and expression sides

                                         content

W = ------------------------------------------

                                         Expression

 

Words and Lexemes

Syntax deals with combinations of words, as far as morphology studies the form of words. The term 'word', however, is used in a variety of senses, so that it will be helpful to begin with some clarification. Con­sider the sentences This tooth needs attention and These teeth need attention. Are tooth and teeth instances of the same word or of different words? In one sense they are clearly different: they differ in pronunciation, spelling, meaning and in their grammatical behaviour. In another sense, however, they are manifestations of a single element, and indeed they are traditionally said to be 'forms of the same word.

 We thus have two distinct concepts here, the second more abstract than the first: so the word is often used in the less abstract sense and then it’s necessary to introduce the term lexeme for the more abstract one. If we say that tooth and teeth are different words, but forms of the same lexeme. Words will be represented in ordinary italics, lexemes in bold italics: tooth is the singular form of the lexeme tooth, while teeth is its plural form.

More precisely, we will say that tooth and teeth are different inflectional forms of tooth, and will speak of " singular and 'plural' here as inflectional properties.

Similarly with verbs: sang and sung, for example, are respectively the past tense and past participle forms of the lexeme sing. The set of inflectional forms of a lexeme constitutes an inflectional paradigm: the paradigm for tooth contains the two forms tooth and teeth, while that for sing contains sang, sung, sing and vari­ous others as the verb inflection is a good deal more complex than noun inflection.

The distinction we have drawn between word and lexeme makes our concept of word more precise, but there remains one further point to be clarified.

 

E.g. Consider the pairs

[The window was] clean    and        [I'll] clean [the window]

[She drew some cash from the] bank [by the post office]

and       [She lay on the] bank [of the river]

 

The two cleans are forms of different lexemes: the first is a form of the adjective clean, which has cleaner and cleanest as its other forms, whereas the second is a form of the verb clean, which has cleaned, cleans, etc., as its other forms. The difference between the two banks is lexical rather than grammatical: they are different lexi­cal items - i.e. different items of the vocabulary. I will distinguish between the term word used without qualification and lexicogrammatical word in such a way that the former does not presuppose any lexical or grammatical analysis while the latter does. Given this terminology, the two cleans or the two banks will be in­stances of the same word but of different lexicogrammatical words. We have more occasion to talk simply of words than of lexicogrammatical words.

The structure of the entire word may be represented by means ol either a sel < rf labeled brackets or a tree diagram, (Brackets and trees are also used to rep­resent the structures of sentences).

    The two types. of notation are for the most part interchangeable

                       N

             V

 

                       V

 

                       Adj

             N

 

De nation             al  ize ation

 

CF

    [[[hospital]N ize]V ed]V

                 

Both ways indicate the details of the morphological structure of the word.

 

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