Lexémák

Lexémák, or lexemes, are the abstract units of meaning that underlie words in a language. In linguistics, a lexeme represents the conceptual content of a word and all its related forms, rather than any single surface form. The set of all inflected or otherwise related forms that realize a single lexeme is called its paradigm.

Lexemes are stored in the mental lexicon and in dictionaries as entries that describe a single unit of meaning. The surface forms that realize a lexeme in speech and writing are called word forms or inflected forms. The same lexeme can have multiple forms depending on tense, number, person, mood, case, and other grammatical categories. For example, the English lexeme eat comprises the forms eat, eats, eating, ate; the lemma, or canonical dictionary form, is usually eat, while ate is a past tense inflection of the same lexeme.

The concept helps distinguish meaning from form. A lexeme is not tied to a single spelling or pronunciation; it is the underlying unit of meaning that can appear in different morphosyntactic shapes. In many languages with rich morphology, a single lexeme can generate many word forms across a broad paradigm.

Some lexemes are multiword expressions, functioning as a single unit of meaning despite consisting of several words, such as give up or kick the bucket. Lexemes are central to lexicography and natural language processing, where tasks like lemmatization and morphological analysis group surface forms under their underlying lexemes. The term lexémák is the plural form used in Hungarian to refer to these underlying units of meaning.