Talk:Lemma (morphology)

'lemma' in computational linguistics
It seems to me that 'lemma' is also used as an alternative term for 'lexeme' in computational linguistics and corpus linguistics. That is, 'lemma' could also be an abstract unit of the lexicon, comprising all inflected word-forms that form an inflectional paradigm. See also the discussion "Corpora: lemma vs lexeme" from November 1999 on corpora list (http://torvald.aksis.uib.no/corpora/1999-4/). Maybe that's meant by the blurry last paragraph of the article? ("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.") -- Mumpitz 11:02, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

"qal"?
What is "qal"? That word is used to describe verb lemmas in Hebrew. Perhaps it sholud be a link to an explanation of some sort? Dfeuer 15:43, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

According to an online Hebrew program:
 * Qal is the most frequently used verb pattern. It expresses the "simple" or "causal" action of the root in the active voice.
 * Examples:
 * he sat, he ate, he went, he said, he rose, he bought
 * This form accounts for 66.7% of the verbs parsed.

60.242.13.87 (talk) 02:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeeehhhh, except it is the simple action of the HEBREW verb - makes no sense to give English examples. Qal is mentioned on another article with red-link, so maybe it's time to create a stub for it, but I don't have time to write a proper article. --Doric Loon (talk) 19:43, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Also on the point of Hebrew, I am not convinced at all that the claim made here is correct, in my experience there is a lack of agreement and various forms are used in dictionaries of different sorts, including the "qal" form past, the "qal" form present, the (usualy triliteral) root, or the base form ("maqor") - so this paragraph should definitely be improved and based on proper sources. AmirOnWiki (talk) 18:36, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Arabic
For dictionary entries, the hypothetical root is used, which is eventually similar to the form described in the article. This should be corrected.--Connection 13:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Greek forms
Just to explain why I've done what I've done: a form like φιλέω phileō is in fact not hypothetical, as it is attested in some dialects; I've therefore removed the word "hypothetical" and the asterisk on the uncontracted form. Petrouchka 04:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Citation form as a synonym for Lemma
I don't like the simple equation of the terms "citation form" and "lemma". I am not saying they deserve separate articles, but the citation form of an English verb begins with the word "to", whereas the lemma does not. If citation form does not include "to", what do we call that form for citing verbs and phrases which starts with "to" (eg, "to get one's goat")? If lemma includes "to", show me an English dictionary with all the verbs (but not auxiliaries) under "T". — Randall Bart 18:48, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The article incorrectly states that "must" is a bare infinitive. "Must" has no infinitive, bare or otherwise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.74.120 (talk) 01:48, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Lemmas in language production
I'm rather confused to see this article devoted solely to lemmas as citation forms. What about the lemmas as an abstract representation of a word that is syntactically, but not phonologically, specified? Is there a reason why this isn't covered here? It would seem, after all, to be the more significant use of the word, since it does something that 'citation form' or 'unmarked form' doesn't. I'll edit it when I have time, but I can't help feeling that the article should be primarily devoted to the lemma in language production models. What do people think? garik 20:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * There are many WP articles that are narrower than they ought to be. If you know more about lemmata, write about them. — Randall Bart 23:52, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well I'm not an expert &mdash; I think I know enough to put something in though. I really wanted to sound people out here because the absence of any mention of lemmata in this context is odd enough I thought there might be a reason for it.  I'll assume there isn't, but I'm surprised. garik 10:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I've made a fair few changes. garik 11:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Two headwords one article
The page currently describes two completely different concepts in two related but distinct scientific fields. I believe there should be two separate articles for these two headwords. If nobody objects, I'm going to one week from now. The disambiguation page is already in place and would accommodate this very naturally. I will clean up the obsolete incoming links; it won't be unmanageably many. Noym (talk) 08:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * move part about the lemma in psycholinguistics stuff to Lemma (psycholinguistics),
 * move the rest of the article to Lemma (morphology) for clarity.


 * Done. Noym (talk) 03:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Merge - Headword
This article is replicated under its Headword synonym, per the suggestion on that page, any objections to a merge? A.j.roberts (talk) 14:10, 5 April 2022 (UTC)


 * @A.j.roberts, yes, please go ahead and merge. At present this is in any case a bit muddled, as the main part is divided into "morphology" and "lexicography", but the former includes a lot about dictionaries, so some more rationalization is required. Doric Loon (talk) 18:17, 5 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Merged, but in need of a rewrite. A.j.roberts (talk) 09:53, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Headwords
Please can someone clarify what a headword is in this article. I am not a linguist so don't feel qualified to edit the article.

The current example is not clear. Based on my research “Broke” and “broken” are different forms of the same lexeme “break”. They belong to the same lemma “break” and are indexed under it in a dictionary. Therefore, they do not have separate headwords in a dictionary. (Thanks AI - but this is fairly meaningless to me!).

The reason for my looking is that I am trying to work out which language has the most words. No clear answer it seems!! Richardwallwork (talk) 12:07, 30 January 2024 (UTC)