Access the lexeme-word dichotomy in the content of word formation process in English and

with copious examples; discuss the formal criteria for the identification of word class in

English language.

Introduction.

In this paper the differences between lexeme and word have been discussed and also different

word formation processes were explained including derivation, compounding, blending,

clipping, acronym, backformation and conversion among others. This paper also discusses

formal criteria for identification of a word class.

Distinction between a word and a lexeme.

The dichotomy between word and lexeme has brought about the distinction between traditional

grammar and functional grammar. Traditional grammarians assign class to words and categories

words into different groups with definite definitions. The word class include nouns, verbs,

pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, exclamations, synonyms, antonyms,

homonyms and homophones among others.

Functional grammarians consider a single unite of a language only as a word when use in

content. Traditional grammarians consider for example the word “go” as an action word

however; functional grammarians will consider the same utterance “GO” only as a lexeme. It has

no meaning until it is used in a sentence. And its actual meaning depends on the slot it occupies

in the sentence. For example: Nyamekyre go to school. (‘Go’ in this content is a verb). Go is a

difficult word to spell. (‘Go’ in this content too is a noun). From these examples, it must be

realized that every word has its meaning based on the content in which it is used, however, one
must be quick to add that functional grammar has not come to replace traditional grammar but to

build on it.

A word is the smallest element that may be pronounce in a language. It consist of a single

morpheme. A complex word may contain a root and one or mere affixes. A word has a meaning

because it occupies a particular slot in sentence. It may morphologically be a noun, verb, adverb,

adjective or a preposition. It can also syntactically occupies a subject or object position in a

sentence.

A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to

set of forms taken by a single word. They are prototypical words because they have not been

used in contents; they are utterances without meaning. According to Thakur, D. (2010). Lexeme

is that abstract form of the word which all the word forms in its in flexional paradigm represent,

it subsumes all the word forms in a paradigm. It refers not to the shape a word has on one

occasion but to all shapes that it can have. For example the lexeme ‘SING’ subsumes sing, sang,

sung, sings and singing, similarly, ‘SINGER’ subsumes singer, singers, singer’s, singers’ and

singers. Lexeme becomes a word when it occurs at a particular slot in a sentence.

The distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning determine form class words and

structure class words. The form classes provide the primary lexical content; the structure classes

explain the grammatical relationship. The form classes are known as content or open classes.

They include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The closed or function classes include

determiners, pronouns, auxiliaries, interrogatives, preposition, expletive and particles.

A word class is a set of words that display the same format properties, especially their inflections

and distributions. The word class is referred to in traditional grammar as parts of speech.
The differences between the form classes and the structure classes is characterized by their

numbers. The structure words with some few exceptions can be counted. According to Allyn and

Bacon, (1998), the form classes, are large, open classes; new nouns, verbs, adjectives and

adverbs regularly enter the language as new technology and new ideas require. Items may belong

to more than one class. In most instances, we can only assign a word to a class when we

encounter it in content. According to Greenbaum (1996), Look is a verb in ‘It looks good” but a

noun in “She has good looks”. One must be careful not to offend them. (one is a general

pronoun). Give me one good reason. (one is a numeral).

Class of words are determine by its use in context. Some words have suffixes that is endings

added to words to form new words that help to signal the class they belong to. These suffixes are

not necessarily sufficient in themselves to identify the class of a word. For example, - (y is a

typical suffix for adverbs (slowly, proudly), but we can also find this suffix in adjectives:

cowardly, homely, and manly.

According to Nordquist, R. (2017), we can think of the form–class words as the bricks of the

language and the structure words holds them together.

Every lexeme can undergo a paradigm. It is only nouns that can have genitive possessive form

not a verb.

Paradigm test of a table

Table (noun) Table (verb)

table table

tables tables
table’s tabling

tables’ tabled

tabled

It is only verbs that have the “-ing”, ‘-ed’ and‘s’ forms. Lexeme are usually written in capital

letters and are also regarded as the citation form. A word is not an abstract entity. It has a

meaning due to its slot in the sentence. A word is a physical realization of a lexeme. Lexeme has

no meaning but a word has. A word is meaningful.

According to Yule, G. (2010), morphology is about investigating basic forms in language, which

is the study of forms of words. It talks words.

Competence of a language is when you can use the language like a native speaker and having the

ability to construct and interpret words correctly and you can do that by applying the rules. Your

knowledge of phonology can help to interpret words. The type of investigation that analyzes all

those basic elements used in a language is referred to as morphology which is the study of word

structure, the formation of rules and their application.

The study of word forms lead to the breakdown of words into morphemes. A morpheme is a

minimal unit of meaning. There are two types of morphemes which are free morphemes and

bound morphemes. A free morpheme is one which can be used as a word by itself.

A bound morpheme according to Thakur, (2010), is the one which can only appear in the

structure of a word in conjunction with at least one other morpheme; it cannot be used as a word

by itself. In pens, for example, (pen) is a free morpheme, whereas (- s) is a bound morpheme.
Morphologically, a word can either be simple or complex. Simple words have only one

morpheme such as ‘girl’. Complex words have more than one morpheme such as ‘girls’.

The two main branches of morphology are inflexional morphemes and derivational morphemes.

Inflexional morpheme are not used to produce new words in the language. They are used to

indicate aspect of the grammatical function of a word. They are used to show whether a word is

plural or singular, whether it is in the past tense or not and if it is in a comparative or possessive

form. English language has strictly eight inflections which are

1. -‘s; possessive suffix

2. - s: plural suffix

3. - s: third person singular suffix

4. – ing: present participle suffix

5 – ed: past tense suffix

6 – en: past participle suffix

7- est: superlative suffix

8- er: comparative suffix

Nouns + ‘s, - s

Verb + -s, –ing, -ed, en

Adjective + er, est.

Inflexional morphology is there are the study at how words change their form to indicate

number, person, tense and adjectives.

Derivational morphology is therefore study of how morphemes are combined to form new word

Class. For example:

boy + ish = boyish

fool + ish = foolish

Derivational bound morphemes are used to make new words or to make words of a different

grammatical category from the stem. For example the addition of derivational morpheme -ness

changes the adjective good to the noun goodness, and care become careful or careless by the

addition of derivational morphemes –ful or- less. It includes suffixes and prefixes.

Free lexical (child teach)

Morpheme functional (and, the)

Bound derivational (re, ness)

Inflexional (-‘s, -ed)

Morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language which is the actual phonetic realization

of phonemes and morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes. For instance there are

at least two different morphs (- s and –es, actually /s/ and /əz/)use to realize the inflectional

morpheme ‘plural’. A group of different morph is refered to as allomorphs.

Word formation processes

Word formation process is the study of how new words are formed in English language. The

following are some of the common processes of word formation.

1. Compound formation (compounding): When two or more words are joined to make a longer

word, the process is known as compound formation. A compound word can be a noun such as a

she-goat, book-keeper, and maleservant. It can also be a pronun such as anybody, myself and

themselves. Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same part of speech (word class) such as a

screwdriver. Exocentric compounds do not have a head, and their meaning often cannot be

transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound white-collar

is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric compound, the word class is

determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For example, a must-have is not a

verb but a noun.

Compound nouns can be classified on the basis of the underlying syntactic link between

constituent words.

Noun + noun

oil + well = oil-well

gold + mine =goldmine

tear + gas = teargas

Subject + verb

Sun + rise = sunrise

Machine + washing = washing machine

Heart + beat = Heat-beat

Subject + complement

Blackboard

Fast-food

Blueprint

Verb + object

Sun worship pickpocket

Birth control house keeping

Verb + adverbial

Hidingplace walkingstick

homework bakingpowder

2. Duplication is forming new words by repeating an item with a change in the initial

consonant or the medial vowel.

Change in the initial consonant

n’tty gritty higgledy-piggledy

hdtes-skelter teeny-weeny

Change in the medial vowel

Flip-flap zig-zag
Wishy-washy ping-pong

3. Conversion is when a word of one grammatical class is used as word of another grammatical

class without any change in its form. It is also called functional shift a number of nouns such as

butter, vacation and chair have come to be used through conversion, as verbs. For instance.

i. Have you buttered the toast?

ii. I am going to chair the university council meeting.

iii. They are vacationing in Florida.

Verbs, see through, stand up also becomes adjectives as see through material or a stand-up

comedian or adjectives, as in a dirty floor, an empty room, some crazy ideas and those nasty

people, can become the verbs to brity and to empty, or the nouns a crazy and the nasty.

4. Clipping is the process whereby a word is made smaller without any change in its meaning or

its grammatical class.

Memorandum - memo Pornography – porno

Microphone - mike Photography – photo

Professor - prof Stereophonic – stereo

Examination – exam Telephone - phone

Aeroplane – plane Omnibus – bus

Refrigerator –fridge Influenza – flu

Spectacles – specs
Back clipping or apocopation is the most common type of clipping in which the beginning is

retained. The unclipped original may be either a simple or a composite. Examples are: advert

(advertisement), cable (cablegram), doc (doctor), exam (examination), gas (gasoline), maths

(mathematics), memo (memorandum), gym (gymnastics, gymnasium), pub (public house), pop

(popular concert), fax (facsimile).

Fore-clipping or aphaeresis retains the final part of the word. Examples are: phone (telephone),

bike (motorbike) and bus(omnibus).

In middle clipping or syncope, the middle of the word is retained. Examples are: flu (influenza),

Polly (Apollinaire), and, shrink (head-shrinker).

Complex clipping: Clipped forms are also used in compounds. One part of the original

compound most often remains intact. Examples are: cablegram (cable telegram), op art (optical

art), org-man (organization man), and linocut (linoleum cut). Sometimes both halves of a

compound are clipped as in navicert (navigation certificate). In these cases it is difficult to know

whether the new formation should be treated as a clipping or as a blend, for the border between

the two types is not thin. According to Bauer (1993), the easiest way to draw the distinction is to

say that those forms which retain compound stress are clipped compounds, whereas those that

take simple word stress are not. By this criterion bodbiz, Chicom, Comsymp, Intelsat, midcult,

pro-am, sci-fi, and sitcom are all compounds made of clippings. According to Marchand (1969),

clippings are not coined as words belonging to the standard vocabulary of a language. They

originate as terms of a special group like schools, army, police and the medical profession in the

intimacy of a milieu where a hint is sufficient to indicate the whole. For example, in school slang

originated exam, math, lab, and spec(ulation), tick(et = credit) originated in stock-exchange

slang, whereas vet(eran), cap(tain), are army slang.

5. Borrowing or loanword is the process of taking words from other language. English has

borrowed as much as seventy percent of it words other language especially from classical

languages of Greek, Latin, German and French. English also borrowed some African words like:

Vudu, Juju, Tapioca Gari, Coffee, Tilapia, kwashiorkor, Agushi, Jamboree, zebra shitor and

Apartheid.

6. Etymology is the study of the origin and history of a word. The constant evolution of new

words and new uses of old words as a reasoning sign of vitality and creativeness in the way a

language is shaped by the needs of its users. A lot of words in daily use today were, at one time,

considered barbaric misuses of the language.

Example: handbook and popcorn.

7. Coinage is total invention of new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names

for commercial products that become general terms for any version of the product. For example,

Kleenex, Xerox, and Kodak. These started as names of specific products, but now they are used

as the generic names for different brands of these types of products. Examples: Aspirin, nylon,

Vaseline, and zipper.

8. Word manufacture is the process of arbitrarily selecting any acceptable sequence of sounds

using it as name of objects. Examples: quark, Kodak.

9. Multiple formation is the formation of new word by applying two processes of word

formation one after the other, each of the two processes being obligatory for the formation of the

word.
handkerchief – hanky

nightgown- nighty

pinafore – pinny

porosity + polymer + ic = poromeric

10. Back-formation is when a new word is formed by deleting the suffix or what

erroneously looks like a suffix at the end of a word. Many words came into English by this route:

‘Pease’ was once a mass noun but was reinterpreted as a plural, leading to the back-formation

pea. The noun ‘statistic’ was likewise a back-formation from the field of study of statistics. In

Britain the verb ‘burgle’ came into use in the 19th century as a back-formation from ‘burglar’,

which can be compared to the North America verb ‘burglarize’ formed by suffixation. Even

though many English words are formed this way, new coinages may sound strange, and are often

used for humorous effect. For example, gruntled or pervious (from disgruntled and impervious)

would be considered mistakes today, and used only in humorous contexts. The comedian George

Gobel regularly used original back-formations in his humorous monologues. Bill Bryson mused

that the English language would be richer if we could call a tidy-haired person shevelled - as an

opposite to dishevelled. Frequently back-formations begin in colloquial use and only gradually

become accepted. For example, enthuse from enthusiasm is gaining popularity, though it is still

considered substandard by some people today. The immense celebrations in Britain at the news

of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking briefly created the verb to maffick, meaning to celebrate

both extravagantly and publicly. "Maffick" was a back-formation from Mafeking, a place-name

that was treated humorously as a gerund or participle. For example, editor – edit, enthusiasm-

enthuse, television-televise
11. Blending is forming a new word by combining the meaning and also the sound of two

words. These two parts these are sometimes, but not always, morphemes .The single new word

produce, is sometimes termed as portmanteau word. A blend is however slightly different from a

portmanteau word in that a portmanteau refers strictly to a blending of two words similar to a

contraction function. Most blends are formed by one of the following methods: The beginning of

one word is added to the end of the other. For example, brunch is a blend of breakfast and lunch.

This is the most common method of blending. The beginnings of two words are combined. For

example, cyborg is a blend of cybernetic and organism. One complete word is combined with

part of another word. For example, guesstimate is a blend of guess and estimate. Two words are

blended around a common sequence of sounds. For example, the word Californication, from a

song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is a blend of California and fornication.

Multiple sounds from two component words are blended, while mostly preserving the sounds'

order. Poet Lewis Carroll was well known for these kinds of blends. An example of this is the

word slithy, a blend of lithe and slimy. This method is difficult to achieve and is considered a

sign of Carroll's verbal wit. When the two words are combined in their entirety, the result is

considered a compound word rather than a blend. For example, bagpipe is a compound, not a

blend.

Oxford+ Cambridge = Oxbridge

Motorists’+ hotel =motel

International + police = Interpol

Television + broadcast =telecast

Slang + language = slanguage

Ballon + lunatic = ballonatic

12. Acronym is a word composed of by the initial letters of a group of words. With the

passage of time, more and more acronyms are being corned particularly in the field of science

and technology. Examples are.

UNESCO = United Nation Educational scientific and cultural organization

NATO = north Atlantic Treaty Organization

BASIC = Beginners All –Purpose symbolic instruction code

IQ= Intelligent Quotient

13. Derivation is adding a prefix or non-inflexional suffix to a base or inserting an infix into

a root to form a new word. Derivation is used to form new words, as with happi-ness and un-

happy from happy, or determination from determine. A contrast is intended with the process of

inflection, which uses another kind of affix in order to form variants of the same word, as with

determine/ determine-s/ determin-ing/ determin-ed. A derivational suffix usually applies to

words of one syntactic category and changes them into words of another syntactic category. For

exa adjective-to-noun: -ness (slow → slowness)

adjective-to-verb: -ize (modern → modernize)

noun-to-adjective: -al (recreation → recreational)

noun-to-verb: -fy (glory → glorify)

verb-to-adjective: -able (drink → drinkable)

verb-to-noun: -ance (deliver → deliverance) mple, the English derivational suffix -ly changes

adjectives into adverbs (slow → slowly).

Prefixation

a + sleep = asleep de + president = expresident

Suffixation

friend + ship = friendship

treat + ment = treatment

book + let = booklet

infixation

Absogoddamlutely

Unfuckinbellevable

Both prefixes and suffixes

Unfaithfulness

Unbelievable

Disrespectful

Two or more suffixes

Faithfulness

Foolishness
14. Concatenative is the arrangement of two or more morphemes in order, one after the other.

Concatenative processes are by far the ones which happen to be the most productive in the Indio-

European language family. Thus, they are of major concern when it comes to discussing word-

formation processes in either English. These include the following: compounding, affixation and

incorporation. The last is almost non-existent in the English language. Concatenation is a process

which deals with the formation of new lexical items by putting at least two distinct morphemes

together. However, as it is often the case in morphology, establishing clear borders for certain

categories is a rather daunting task and one definition very rarely proves sufficient. The blurry

cases would involve such processes as back-formation, which resembles suffix extraction, or

reduplication in the branch of non-concatenative morphology.

15. Non-concatenative morphology

When a word is created as a result of linguistic operations on one morpheme, such process

belongs to the branch of non-concatenation. However, certain cases of word formation prove not

to be as clear exact as one would wish it to be. An example would be the process of

reduplication, which although is said to operate on one base that is reiterated, often involves

changes in the very and therefore is hard to classify as conconcatenation.

16. Narrowing occurs when meaning of a word becomes restricted to a narrower field than the

original word. For example the word meat used to refer to food in general is now refers to a

particular kind of food that flesh of an animal likewise deer used to mean animals in general and

not a particular kind as we know it today.

17. Broadening occurs when the meaning of a word become expanded to include things

other than the original word. For example dog now refers to the whole family of dogs, likewise

bird.

18. Antonomasia is where the name of a place or person evolves into a new noun, verb or

adjective as in frankfurter (Frankfurt, Germany), Soga → Sogakope,

kwame→ kwamikrom and Mary-Hailmary.

19. Elevation occurs when a word acquires more prestige during the process of change. For

examples, the word knight used to mean lad, is now used prestigiously to mean a certain high

class of people.

20. Degradation occurs when a word loses its prestige such as knave which used to mean simply

‘boy’ rather than its present pejorative connotations.

21. Semantic shift is a situation where there is a real change in the meaning of the word. For

instance the word bead used to refer to act of praying. In order to avoid the repetition of prayer

topics, communicants counted with round objects on strings that we now know as beads. Here

the word being used to signify becomes the signified.

22. Folk etymology is the reshaping of a word or loan word phonologically and semantically to

make it more understandable or more familiar in the target language. For example, let ball-

netball, crawfish – fish. From male, we now have female, maleshe (for hermaphrodite,

gynandromorphy, androgyne or intersex).

23. Total subppletion is a kind of internal change. The singular form does not resemble the

plural form. For instance;

Present tense past tense

go (gəʊ) went (wɛnt)

good better

bad worse

23. Partial subppletion does not have complete change. For instance:

Think thought

Catch caught

Fight fought

Has have

Formal criteria for the identification of word class in English

A word class is the traditional categories of words intended to reflect their functions in a

grammatical context. The words of English are classified as parts of speech and are named

according to their functions, thus every word depending on its use falls into a noun, verb,

pronoun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, articles and exclamation or interjection.

When we wish a thought we use words group together in a certain order so that we convey a

sensible, definite meaning. This combination of words is termed as a sentence. In conversation or

writing, sentences should always be used in order that the hearer or reader may clearly

understand the meaning. According to Thakur (2010), the grammatical class of a word can be
ascertained on the basis of its typical inflexional ending. A verb, can be identified due to its

potential to take -s , -ed and –ing.

A noun takes the plural suffix and genitive suffix. An adjective is identified because of its

potential to take the comparative suffix -er and the superlative suffix –est.

Word – classes are also identified derivationally like –ation, hood, ity, -ism, - ment, - ness and –

ship and they are generally nouns. Words ending in suffixes like – en, -fy and are verbs; and

words ending in suffixes like – able, ish, and – less are generally adjectives.

A grammatical class of word can also be identified on the basis of its syntactic function in a

sentence or a phrase. A noun can be identified, on the basis of its potential to be the subject of a

sentence, the object of a transitive verb and the completive to a preposition. An adjective can be

identified on the basis of its potential to operate as a subject- complement or object-complement.

A verb can be identified on the basis of its potential to operate as the predicator element in a

sentence. It is therefore important to conclude that the grammatical class of a word in English

can be ascertained not only on the basis of its morphological characteristics but also on the basis

of its syntactic features. Word classes in English fall into two broad groups. Major word classes

are known as open classes and the minor classes are known as closed classes. Open classes have

a very large numbers of members. Every language has a large number of nouns, verbs, adverbs

and adjectives or in other wise dictionary words. The words continue to increase to suit the ever

increasing needs of the community of words which also include borrowed words. The closed

classes of words are fixed. According to Huddleston (1984), closed classes are highly resistant to

the addition of new members. Prototypical word classes include the following list:

Noun classes
Proper nouns are names of people, cities and towns, institutions, places and a particular thing.

The clue is, they start with capital letters wherever they are found in a sentence such as:

My supervisor Dr. Charles Owu-ewie comes from Ajumako, and he lectures at University of

Education, Winneba.

Common Nouns are names of ordinary everyday objects and things. The clue is –‘a’ , ‘the’.

There are tables and chairs in every classroom.

Collective nouns are names of a collection or group of things such as

“A class of students”.

Abstract nouns are intangible things. You can give it to someone but not in a box.

My sister’s intelligence and perseverance won her first class degree in medicine.

Regular nouns carry ‘-e’ and ‘es’ as plural markers such boy, become, boys, table becomes

tables.

Irregular nouns do not take /s/ and /es/ as regular nouns. Their forms take plural markers

different from regular nouns.

Plurals which are formed without the simple addition of /s/ and /es/ are irregular nouns.

Some irregular nouns change vowels to indicate plural for example:

woman –men, louse-lice, foot-feet, mouse-mice, man – men, goose-geese, tooth – teeth.

One or more letters may be added to indicate plural, for instance,

ox – oxen

child-children

Some nouns retain the same form in both singular and plural forms such as sheep-sheep, deer-

deer spacecraft-spacecraft, cattle - cattle, equipment – equipment, furniture –furniture, luggage-

luggage, police- police, information -information.

Some nouns ending in /f/ and /fe/ usually change to /ves/ wife-wives, leaf-leaves, life- lives, leaf

–leaves, calf-calves, half-halves.

Some nouns even though they have a plural form are considered and used as singular nouns. For

example ‘news’. Without /s/ at the end, it means different thing all together.

Some nouns are used only in the plural such as scissors, jeans, livestock, poultry, greetings,

congratulations, tongs, shears, pliers, shorts, stairs, outskirts, trousers.

Pronouns are used in place of noun phrases to avoid repetition, typically referring to things and

people already known.

Apart from personal, possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives there are also reflexive

pronouns which reflect back to the noun or the pronoun, they usually ends in –‘self’ and ‘-

selves’. Such as himself, myself, themselves and herself. For instance, ‘I bath myself’.

Interrogative pronouns ask questions such as who, whose, when, what and which, to whom

does this belong? What are you doing?

Demonstrative pronouns point out a specific, person or thing. They are indicated by words like

this, that these or those. For instance:

This is not the way we do things.

 Person Personal subject Pronouns object Possessive Possessive
pronouns adjectives

Singular

1st person
2nd person You you yours your
3rd person (m) He him his his
3rd person (f) She her hers hers

3rd person (n) It it its

Plural

1st person We us ours our

2nd person You you yours your

3rd person They them theirs their

That has to go.

Indefinite pronouns refers to people or things in a general way. They are indefinite in number:

you, one, they, someone, anyone, no one, and everyone: ‘One must remember to reference

authors’.

Relative pronouns perform the function of a conjunction by joining or connecting one part of a

sentence to another. There are six relative pronouns in common usage:

- When, whom, whose, -referring to people

- That, which, what-referring to animals or inanimate objects.

Verbs are words used to refer all kinds of actions (come, talk) and states (be, have) involving

people and things in events.

i. Professor Akpanglo wrote many books

ii. Harriet is ill

iii. I can’t teach at midnight.

Adverbs are used, typically with verbs, to provide more information about actions, states and

events such as ‘quickly’ and ‘yesterday’.

Adjective qualify or describe nouns and pronouns. They add interest and colour to sentences by

describing or giving more information: The clever boy won the price. Adjectives may follow

linking verbs such as ‘is, am, are, was, and were’.

Irregular verbs do not follow the usual patterns. For example: ‘am- was-been, go-went-gone,

ride-rode-ridden. Verbs can be transitive and intransitive. Intransitive verbs do not take objects.

Prepositions are words used with nouns in phrases providing information about time, place and

other connections involving actions and things. Examples are ‘at, in, on, near, with, without,

under, beside and inside’. Complex prepositions consist of more than one word such as in front

of, on behalf of, in view of, and in spite of’.

Conjunctions are words used to make connections, thus connecting words that join two or more

sentences together. They join words, phrases or clauses such as ‘and, but, because, for, if, or,

whether, while, yet, unless and though’: He completed the course and received a certificate. He

was in great pain, yet he never complained.

Articles are words such as /a/ , /an/ and /the/ which usually precede nouns or adjectives to form

noun phrases classifying those ‘things’. You can have a banana or an apple. Rhoda received the

award for bravery.

Exclamation or interjection words expresses sudden emotions, such as Oh! Hulla! Stop! ah!

And aha!

Conclusion

Lexemes are abstract entities which meaning cannot be determine in isolation, they subsumes all

the word forms in a paradigm. A word on the other hand, has a semantic meaning based on how

it is used in a sentence and the slot it occupies.

Word formation refers to how new words are made morphologically, syntactically and

semantically. It is the creation of new words that add to the existing words, which enable English

language get large volume of words.

All words belong to classified group of words referred to as parts of speech in their various

forms according to the part they play in sentences. In English, word classes include nouns,

adjectives, verbs adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles, connectives and interjections.

Functions of words in sentences indicates tense, aspect, mood and voice, either as active or

passive voice. Verbs may also show agreement.

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Published - May 2009

Greenbaum, S (1996), Oxford English Grammar oxford university press.