Linguistics

[Dirk]

I have a cognitive psychology examination next week and one of the areas we covered was psycholinguistics (cue Hermes making jokes about serial killers with speech impediments) and I was wondering if anybody would be able to help, please? I am needing to know the difference between lemma selection and lexeme selection. I can find stuff on t'internet but it is pitched at a higher level than we need to know and I was hoping that somebody might be able to give me a nuts and bolts, simplified explanation, please?

Thanks

[chorlton]

have you tried wikidpedia?

[Hermes]

If you have an examination on this next week then you must have been studying it in your lectures.

Weren't you paying attention or were you AWOL? Another total waste of tax payers money.

[Dirk]

Originally Posted by chorlton have you tried wikidpedia?

Yeah I looked before but I couldn't gain a concise comprehension. Am I correct in thinking that 'going' is a lemma of 'go', with 'go' being the lexeme? Or is it the other way around?

In linguistics, and particularly in morphology, a lemma or citation form is the canonical form of a lexeme. Lexeme refers to the set of all the forms that have the same meaning, and lemma refers to the particular form that is chosen by convention to represent the lexeme. Lemmas have special significance in highly inflected languages such as Czech. In many languages, the citation form of a verb is the infinitive: French aller, German gehen. In English we can use either the bare infinitive go or the full infinitive to go. In Latin and Greek, however, the first person singular present tense is normally used, though occasionally the infinitive may also be seen. In Arabic, which has no infinitives, the third person singular of the past tense is the least marked form, and is used for dictionary entries. Hebrew often uses the 3rd person masculine qal perfect. In English, the citation form of a noun is the singular: e.g. mouse rather than mice. For multi-word lexemes which contain possessive adjectives or reflexive pronouns, the citation form uses a form the indefinite pronoun one: e.g. do one's best, perjure oneself. Dictionary headwords are lemmas (or lemmata). For example, the word "go" in a dictionary represents the forms "go", "goes", "going", "went", and "gone". The form that is chosen to be the lemma is usually the least marked form. There are significant exceptions; e.g. in Finnish, the dictionaries use not the verb root, but the first infinitive marked with -ta as the key with verbs, because it contains the unchanged form of the root, while the "unmarked" form or root has undergone consonant gradation. Likewise, with nouns, the nominative, but not the other forms, may undergo sound changes, e.g. vete- → vesi, or lampaa- → lammas. Lemmas are used often in corpus linguistics for determining word frequency. In such usage the specific definition of "lemma" is flexible depending on the task it is being used for.

[Dirk]

Originally Posted by Hermes If you have an examination on this next week then you must have been studying it in your lectures. Weren't you paying attention or were you AWOL? Another total waste of tax payers money.

I was present H, but as you no doubt know, lectures don't teach everything and an amount of self-teaching is expected. Or did you go to a university where you had to be spoon fed the information i.e a not very good one?

[chorlton]

"the Lemma (syntax) and the Lexeme(sounds)"

Is the only think i can find that seems at my level.

Given what you put maybe lexeme is the go as its the defning bit, the syntax being the ing or ne. Just a guess though man.

[Dirk]

Originally Posted by chorlton "the Lemma (syntax) and the Lexeme(sounds)" Is the only think i can find that seems at my level. Given what you put maybe lexeme is the go as its the defning bit, the syntax being the ing or ne. Just a guess though man.

It doesn't really matter if nobody knows as it is a multiple-choice examination and I doubt the level of detail will be such that I will need to know. I was just curious, more than anything else. There's a text book I need but the library I use at the University of Liverpool is closed till tomorrow. Fuck it, it's only linguistics.

[Jari37]

I suspect there wont be too much in an undergraduate psychology exam about lemmas & lexemes - way too complex, maybe one multiple choice question, and you should be able to make an educated guess. is Rick Hanley still teaching psycholinguistics at Liverpool?

[Dirk]

Originally Posted by Jari37 I suspect there wont be too much in an undergraduate psychology exam about lemmas & lexemes - way too complex, maybe one multiple choice question, and you should be able to make an educated guess. is Rick Hanley still teaching psycholinguistics at Liverpool?

That's what I was thinking. I wouldn't know, the guy who was teaching us was Julian Pine. Cheers for the help.

[Paul]

This was a very dull part of my degree, and I've consequently forgotten most of it. I've got a few linguistic reference books, but I keep them at work. I'll try and rememeber to look it up for you on Wednesday. In the meantime, you could try a PM to Johnb whose knowledge of language/linguistics is infinitely better than mine. Some of the Scandos are pretty good at the descriptive side of language, too (in fact most second language speakers are).

[Mav]

Ten posts in and NO ONE has cracked the cunning linguist gag?!!!

*gets coat*

[Dirk]

Originally Posted by Mav Ten posts in and NO ONE has cracked the cunning linguist gag?!!! *gets coat*

Hahaha. Fuck off!

[Dirk]

Originally Posted by Paul This was a very dull part of my degree, and I've consequently forgotten most of it. I've got a few linguistic reference books, but I keep them at work. I'll try and rememeber to look it up for you on Wednesday. In the meantime, you could try a PM to Johnb whose knowledge of language/linguistics is infinitely better than mine. Some of the Scandos are pretty good at the descriptive side of language, too (in fact most second language speakers are).

Cheers Paul.

[Hermes]

Originally Posted by Paul This was a very dull part of my degree, and I've consequently forgotten most of it.

Refer to post 3.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by Hermes Refer to post 3.

Refer to some other shit, because I couldn't give one. I went to University for a laugh and a degree, and achieved both very successfully. I think I've more than compensated society since, both directly in the significant tax and NI contributions I've made, and indirectly in educating thousands of children. Have you got a chip on your shoulder about some missed opportunities of your own?

[BatChainPuller]

Originally Posted by Paul Have you got a chip on your shoulder about some missed opportunities of your own?

* sound of arrow thudding into gold part of target *