Lexicon

A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word λεξικόν (lexikon), neuter of λεξικός (lexikos) meaning 'of or for words'.^[1]

Linguistic theories generally regard human languages as consisting of two parts: a lexicon, essentially a catalogue of a language's words (its wordstock); and a grammar, a system of rules which allow for the combination of those words into meaningful sentences. The lexicon is also thought to include bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone as words (such as most affixes).^[2] In some analyses, compound words and certain classes of idiomatic expressions, collocations and other phrasemes are also considered to be part of the lexicon. Dictionaries are lists of the lexicon, in alphabetical order, of a given language; usually, however, bound morphemes are not included.

^ λεξικός Archived 2021-05-14 at the Wayback Machine in Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek–English Lexicon (Perseus Digital Library). Sc. βιβλίον biblios 'book'.
^ Dominiek, Sandra; Taft, Marcus (1994). Morphological structure, lexical representation, and lexical access. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. ISBN 9780863779268.

[1] λεξικός Archived 2021-05-14 at the Wayback Machine in Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek–English Lexicon (Perseus Digital Library). Sc. βιβλίον biblios 'book'.

[2] Dominiek, Sandra; Taft, Marcus (1994). Morphological structure, lexical representation, and lexical access. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. ISBN 9780863779268.

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