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First things first: morphemes.

A morpheme is the smallest lexical unit bearing meaning in a word, the basic component in a way. Affixes and suffixes are morphemes.

Eg: "Restart" is formed with two morphemes. Start [=begin], but also Re [=again].

That was the almost easy bit. Now, lemmas and lexemes... bit tougher.

A lemma is basically the word form you look for in a dictionary.

Eg: you just read the sentence "I like eating furniture - my son, on the other hand, eats plastic yucca plants. We eat in, most of the time." (I have no idea where you could read this, but still).

You do not know what "eating" and "eats" mean (also unlikely, but bear with me).

Grab your imaginary dictionary - you know there won't be anything under "eating" or "eats", so look at "eat".

"Eat" is the lemma here. It's the word you will find in a dictionary, it's the reference word, if you will.

Now, lexemes - treacherous bunch.

Lexemes are semantic units: 1 lexeme = 1 meaning. But there are variable lexemes (=that can have different forms). Moreover, lexemes don't have to be just one word. Ooh, ouch, I know.

Wait, wait! Don't run away just yet. Let's carry on with our previous gastronomical example, shall we? You've still got your imaginary dictionary in hand, have you?

You'll find neither eats or eating in the dictionary - they are variants of the lexeme EAT. The meaning is carried by EAT, not by the morphemes S or ING, right? That's a variable lexeme: it can have several forms.

Also, our omnivore above wrote "We eat in".

You'll have an entry for "in" but you won't find "eat in" there.

You'll have an entry for "eat", but it's not there either - not really. There's a subentry for "eat in". There you are.

Semantically speaking, eating in is not eating+in. It carries special meaning (=having dinner at home). So it's two words put together that have one particular meaning. EAT IN is a lexeme.

Basically: in a dictionary, headwords are lemmas andlexemes. Subentries, on the other hand, are just lexemes.

Hope that helped!

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3d ago

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in language, while a lexeme is the basic unit of vocabulary (e.g., a word). A lemma is the citation form of a word that represents its base or dictionary entry form.

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Q: In linguistics what is the difference between a morpheme a lexeme and a lemma?
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