Lexeme (morphology)

Lexeme is a term that is used to express the idea that inflected forms, which are words themselves, are still variants of one single word.

Example

if we take a look at the declension of the Russian adjective bol'soj 'large, big, grand', we find that this word has a variety of forms:

(i)  bol's-oj	nominative singular masculine
     bol's-omu	dative singular masc.
     bol's-ix	genitive plural masc.
(ii) bol's-aja	nom.sg. feminine
     bol's-oj	dat.sg. fem.
     bol's-ix	gen.pl. fem.

In a sense each of these variants is itself a word: the term 'word form' is used for them, and the term 'lexeme' is used for the more general sense, so that we can say that bol'somu is a form of the lexeme BOL'SOJ (lexemes are represented in upper case).

Link

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

• Spencer, A. 1991. Morphological Theory, Blackwell, Oxford.