Morphology ~ Basic Terms

[unayko]

I've got some problems with the basic terms in the field of morphology. This may sound silly but i got problems with the differences between lexemes, stems, bases and roots.

afaik:

Lexemes are abstract units in the mental lexicon. (not flected).
Stems are the basis for inflected words (pretty much identical with lexemes)
Roots are he smallest units

Comments

English & Spanish

[torasama]

Wordreference says:

Lexeme - n. a minimal unit (as a word or stem) in the lexicon of a language; `go' and `went' and `gone' and `going' are all members of the English lexeme `go'

Stem - n. (linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed; "thematic vowels are part of the stem"

Root - n. (linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed; "thematic vowels are part of the stem"

Base - n. (linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed; "thematic vowels are part of the stem"

So, according to them, the last three are the same, while a lexeme is the basic word that all the variations are based on.

So, for example, in Spanish verbs with roots and suffixes:

Hablar - to talk/speak/say (Present tense)

Yo (I) Hablo
Tú (You, familiar) Hablas
Usted/él/ella (You, formal/he/she/[it]) Habla
Nosotros (We) Hablamos
Ustedes/ellos/ellas (Plural forms of usted/él/ella) Hablan

Habl- is the root, while Hablar would be the lexeme

[tonique]

I think a lexeme isn't identical to the stem. I can't resist giving an example about Finnish, where there can be several different stems depending on the word.

For nouns (and adjectives and numbers):

käsi 'hand' has different stems depending on the suffix:
käde-n (genitive, of/'s, used with postpositions)
käte-nä (essive, as)
kät-tä (partitive; used often as an object, lots of other uses too)
käsi-llä (adessive plural: eg. instrumental meaning or location 'on something'; the stem with the plurar marker is, in this case, identical with the nominative singular)

But eg. "tyyny" 'cushion' has fewer stems:
tyyny-n
tyyny-nä
tyyny-ä (different suffix from above)
tyynyi-llä

Derivative words can use different "bases" or "stems". From "käsi": "kätevä" 'handy', "käsine" 'glove', "kädellinen" 'primate', "-kätinen" '-handed'.

My non-native English finds "root" refers mostly to reconstructed forms like Indo-European roots.