Word- there is no exact definition of a word.
Some say that it is the smallest (unlike phrase) significant (unlike phoneme) unit of a given language that is internally stable (unlike sentence) and potentially mobile (unlike morpheme). A word is an arbitrary pairing of a sound and meaning.
Word- the basic term in morphology, it is one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated meaning into which the sentence resolves itself. (Sapir)
Words may be classified as:
- simple- a word that consist of only one morpheme (hand)
- complex- a word built of at least two morphemes (unhand, handy, handful)
Lexeme:
- the smallest meaningful object having a lexical meaning
- an abstract unit that can be found in a dictionary in citation form (smallest lexically meaningful) –lemma(entries in a dictionary)
''shoot''' lexeme , shot, shoots, shooting- word forms
- it has no grammatical form, no inflection at all
Word Forms
- they are complete realizations of the lexeme
- they have phonological and orthographic shape
lexeme- RUN – abstract
word forms- run, runs, ran, running – concrete
