1.

1 Definitions of Basic Terms

This section will outline notions which will be used in the further text. Throughout the

whole thesis, problems concerning inconsistency of terminology used among scholars will be felt.

This will be also the case here although larger discrepancies will be present later.

1.1.1 Lexeme, word-form, derivation and inflection

It is important to distinguish between lexemes and word-forms. Lexemes are “all the

possible shapes that a word can have” (Bauer, 1983, p. 11). On the other hand, word-form is the

particular shape of a given word. As it usually occurs at a specific occasion, word-forms1 are much

more concrete and realize lexemes (Bauer, 1983, p. 11). This can be illustrated by the lexeme

FLY2. This lexeme subsume all the words like flies, flying, or flew and these words are word-forms

of the lexeme FLY. These forms are also termed inflectional (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002, p.

27) and therefore inflection is the process of creating new word-forms. Contrary to derivation3,

which is process of creating new lexemes (Lyons, 1977, p.522). Free forms are those that can occur

alone, such as all the examples, while the term bound forms refers to entities that cannot occur in

isolation. Typical examples of bound forms are affixes4. They could be defined as bound forms

attached to lexemes that do not realize unanalyzable lexemes (Bauer, 1983, p. 11). They are usually

divided into prefixes such as dis- or re- and suffixes (-dom, -ness). Prefixes are attached before the

lexemes, while suffixes occur behind them.

1.1.2 Root, stem and base

Contrary to affixes, roots are most usually free forms and are “at center of word-derivational
processes” (Stockwell and Minkova, 2001, p. 69). All lexemes include roots, as they are the
forms that remain after removal of all inflectional as well as derivational affixes (Bauer, 1983, p.

1
For further discussion regarding lexemes and word-forms, see e.g. Matthews (1974) or Beard (1995).
2
Lexemes are conventionally written in capital letters.
3
Derivation is also often defined as addition of affixes (Lipka, 1992, p. 72).
4
Several approaches to affixes were adopted by Lieber and Štekauer (2009).
20). Stem is concerned only with inflection and so it is form of the word without all the
derivational affixes, which are “analysable as such” (Quirk et al, p.1519). Therefore, in
unbeatable, beat is the root, while the stem is unbeatable, as the word does not contain any
derivational affixes. Finally, base is “any form to which affixes of any kind may be added”
(Bauer, 1983, p. 20). This means that all stems and roots are bases, but this is not so the other
way around. In the example of unbeatable, beatable may be a base for a prefixation by un-, but
neither root nor stem