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world. Lyon 1968 adds that a number of philosophers use the term meaning to describe sense. Thus, he proposes that meaning and sense are the same. Sense can
refer to cognitive or descriptive meaning. As mentioned previously, Leech 1981 uses the term
“sense” for conceptual meaning or meaning in the narrower sense. Saeed 2001 also treats
meaning and sense as the same term especially in distinguishing sense and reference. Following those previous researchers consideration, the term
“meaning” and “sense” in this study will be referred as the same term.
d. Word and Lexeme
Word is the smallest unit of language. Words are symbols in language that express meanings whether they are as an individual word or when they are
combined with other words to compose a phrase or a sentence. Generally, words are recognized by their orthographic symbols in writing and the levels of
phonological in speaking Saeed, 2001. Lipka 1992 defines three senses of the term
“word” as phonologicalorthographic word-form, abstract unit lexeme, and grammatical word.
However, there are difficulties when the term “word” is used in the study
of meaning Lyon, 1977a; Carter, 1988. The forms talk, talks, talking, and talked can be considered as some different words although from the semantics view they
merely define the same word talk. Another difficulty is in defining the multi- words forms such as phrasal verbs and idioms that consist of several words but
belong to a single unit of meaning Crystal, 1987. Thus, some linguists such as Lyon 1977a, Lipka 1992, Carter 1998, Saeed 2001 and Riemer 2010
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propose a term “lexeme” when referring to the term “word” in the study of
meaning to solve the ambiguity of the term “word”.
A lexeme is the abstract unit Lipka, 1992; Carter, 1998; Riemer, 2010 or the basic unit Kreidler, 1998; Crystal, 1987 that underlies the variants of the
word-form. Thus, the forms talk, talks, talking, and talked are the variant forms of a single lexeme talk. The words listed in the dictionary are lexemes Lyon, 1977a;
1995. Lipka 1992 covers the definition of lexeme in three senses: 1
A complete sign on a particular linguistic level, namely the lexicon; 2
A class of variants, namely word-forms; 3
An abstract unit of the language system Furthermore, Lipka states that a lexeme may be simple or complex. A
simple lexeme is a single lexeme with its variant forms. A complex lexeme can be a phrase a phrasal lexeme or idioms. Consequently, phrasal verbs and idioms are
considered as a single lexeme as well Carter, 1998; Keidler, 1998; Saeed, 2001; Crystal, 1987; Riemer, 2010. The notion of lexeme will help to deal with the
phenomena of multiple meanings such as polysemy and homonymy Lyon, 1977a; Carter, 1998; Saeed, 2001. In this study, the term
“lexeme” will also refer to the term
“word”.
e. Lexical Entry
