4. The Notion of Lexeme. Variants of Words

Besides the term ‘word’ there exists a scientific term lexeme. This term emerged from the necessity to differentiate a word-form and the word as a structural element of the language. Thus in the sentence My friend has got a lot of books and I borrowed an interesting book from him the words books and book are perceived as two words but actually these are the grammatical variants of one lexeme. The term lexeme was introduced to avoid such kind of ambiguity. Besides it is in line with the terms of units of other levels: phoneme, morpheme, phraseme.

Lexeme is a structural element of the language, word in all its meanings and forms (variants). Lexeme is an invariant (from Lat. invarians ‘unchangeable’), i.e. “the common property inherent in classes of relatively homogeneous classes of objects and phenomena” (Сoлнцев, p. 214). This common property is realized in all the variants of a lexeme’s use in actual speech.

When used in actual speech the word undergoes certain modifications and functions in one of its grammatical forms, e.g. singer, singer’s, singers, singers’ (He is a good singer. I like the singer’s voice, etc.) or to take, takes, took, took, taking. Grammatical forms of words are called word-forms, or grammatical variants of words. In the above example these are variants of the lexemes singer and take. The system showing a word in all its word-forms is called its paradigm. The lexical meaning of the word remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. All the word-forms are lexically identical but they differ in their grammatical meanings. Actually in each particular context we deal with particular grammatical variants of lexemes.

Besides paradigms of particular words, such as boy, boy’s, boys, boys’ there is an abstract notion of paradigms of parts of speech. For instance, the paradigm of the noun is ( ), (-’s), (-s), (-s’), the paradigm of the verb is ( ), -s, -ed, -ed, -ing. The sign ( ) stands for a zero morpheme, i.e. its meaningful absence.

Besides the grammatical forms (variants) of words, lexical varieties of the word are distinguished, which are called lexico-semantic variants (LSVs). The overwhelming majority of English words are polysemantic, i.e. they have more than one meaning but in actual speech a word is used in one of its meanings. Such a word used in oral or written speech in one of its meanings is called a lexico-semantic variant.

E.g. to call - 1) say in a loud voice: She called for help, 2) pay a short visit: I called on Mr. Green, 3) name: We call him Dick, 4) consider, regard as: I call that shame, 5) summon, send a message to: Please call a doctor. The verb to call is presented here by five LSVs.

Many lexemes have more than one variants of pronunciation. They are phonetic variants of lexemes. Phonetic variants are different ways of pronouncing certain lexemes, e.g. again [ə`gein, ə`gen], interesting [`intristiŋ, intə`restiŋ], often [`o:fn, `ofn, `ofən, `oftən], etc. There are also graphical variants, i.e. different ways of spelling one and the same lexeme: inquire/enquire.

To morphological variants belong the cases of certain differences in the morphological composition of words not accompanied by differences in meaning. These are the cases of the two variants of the Past Indefinite tense: to learn – learnt, learned, to leap – leapt, leaped; to spoil – spoilt, spoiled; to dream – dreamt, dreamed, to broadcast – broadcast, broadcasted, etc. Also to morphological variants belong parallel formations like: phonetic – phonetical, geologic – geological, etc. Phonetic and morphological variants are modifications of the same lexeme as the change in the composition of a word is not followed by a change in meaning. In case of different meanings we deal with different lexemes. Compare for instance economic 'экономический' and economical ‘экономный’ which are different lexemes.

Thus, within the language system the word or lexeme exists as a system and unity of all its forms and variants. It is an invariant – the structural unit of the language.