The Building Blocks of Language: Lexemes and Morphemes

Lexical Morphology

A linguistic sign is an entity associated with two planes: a sequence of sounds (signifiers) and a mental image (meaning). These planes are indivisible.

Components of the Linguistic Sign

• Phoneme: The smallest unit of the linguistic sign without meaning on its own, but with distinctive value. They have no meaning alone but acquire it as part of a sequence. Example: /m + a + o/ → /p + a + o/
• Moneme: These are minimal units of meaning. An infix is a sound that serves as a liaison among other components of the word.

Lexemes

The lexeme is not always the unchanging part of a word (e.g., WIND - windy). What remains constant is the common concept, but phonetic irregularities may occur in the lexeme from one word family to another. Many of these irregularities are due to the evolution of Latin into Castilian (Spanish).

Evolution of Latin into Castilian: Examples

1. Transformation of Latin initial F- to H- (e.g., Farina = Flour, facere = Do)
2. Diphthongization of Latin short and tonic E vowels (e.g., portus = door, ventus = wind)
3. Evolution of Latin initial groups PL-, CL-, FL- to LL (e.g., plorare = mourn, clamare = call)
4. Evolution of the consonant cluster -CT- to -CH- (e.g., factum = fact, noctes = night)
5. Transformation of groups C'L and G'L to J (e.g., apicula = bee, speculum = mirror)
6. Palatalization of LL + J (e.g., mulieres = female)
7. Voicing of intervocalic voiceless consonants.

The lexeme is formed with sequences of phonemes (sounds). For example: Barque /bark/ (meaning: a type of boat).

Lexemes are used to form simple words (e.g., run, runner, running).

The basic building blocks from a lexeme, morphemes, need not be inflectional.

Pure Lexemes

These are sufficient on their own. They are often words that end in consonants.

• Pan
• Sol
• Mar
• Caracol

Search for sound sequences that share the same concept.

The same sound sequence can have different meanings (e.g., leche (milk) and lechuguino (dandy/fop)).

Morphemes

Inflectional Morphemes

• They never create a new word.
• We can find inflected morphemes in:
  • Simple words
  • Derived words
  • Compound words
  • Parasinthetic words
• Many times, they are integrated into suffixes.

Zero Morpheme (Zero Mark)

A zero morpheme represents unmarked grammatical information; we identify it by the absence of a contrasting form. Some grammatical information does not correspond to a distinct morpheme.

Example: NIN-O → Morpheme for masculine gender. (We know it is singular because it is not plural.)

Derivational Morphemes (Affixes)

They are used for forming new words from existing ones.

• Prefixes: Those that appear before the lexeme.
• Suffixes: Those that are positioned after the lexeme.

In a single word, we may find sequences of several consecutive prefixes or suffixes.

Suffixes used to create adjectives or nouns from verbs often include a thematic vowel, which indicates the verb's conjugation.

• A: 1st Conjugation
• I: 2nd and 3rd Conjugation

Each prefix or suffix typically has a base form, with the exception of parasynthesis, which involves simultaneous prefixation and suffixation.