What Does Lexical Mean?

Question

What Does Lexical Mean?

2 Answers

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Answer 1

If simply put, a lexicon means a dictionary. The word has a Greek origin which implies "a vocabulary". The lexicon consists of words or group of words which convey a meaning and make grammatical sense. Linguists who delve into the interesting world of lexicon study the language, the word structure, history and development of words, relationship between words etc.

The lexicon contains words listed in an alphabetic order with information about them.

A lexicon is also known to enhance the mental vocabulary of a person. It strives to arrange the vocabulary of a language according to certain standards and then even tries to produce new and simple words according to certain lexical rules. For example, the suffix "able" can be added to "laugh" to make "laugh-able" but it cannot be added to lie to make "lie-able".

Answer 2

The word "lexical" is the adjective form of the noun "lexicon." Lexicon is a synonym for "dictionary." Lexical words are nouns that represent names of persons, places, animals or things. The lexical words can be proper nouns, concrete nouns and abstract nouns. Proper nouns refer to a particular object or person. Concrete nouns are used in reference with physical objects and abstract nouns pertain to concepts, feelings and ideas.

Lexical words point to a certain category of things, like for instance animals or trees. They can also refer to abstract concepts like laughter, anger, guilt etc. Lexical items or the items in a dictionary can consist of words, collocations (compound words like central bank, mercantile bank, river bank, etc), expressions etc. In other words, all the word forms which have a meaning or making grammatical sense are termed as "lexical."