lexis

Definition:

A term in linguistics for the vocabulary of a language. Adjective: lexical.

See also:

• Language Change
• Lexeme
• Lexical Set
• Lexicon
• Morphology
• Word

Etymology:

From the Greek, "word, speech"

Examples and Observations:

• "[R]esearch, particularly over the last fifteen years or so, is beginning to demonstrate more and more clearly that the relationship between grammar and lexis is much closer than [we used to think]: in making sentences we may start with the grammar, but the final shape of a sentence is determined by the words which make up the sentence. Let us take a simple example. These are both likely sentences of English:

  I laughed.
  She bought it.

  But the following are not likely sentences of English.

  She put it away.
  She put it.

  The verb put is incomplete unless it is followed by both a direct object, such as it, and also an adverbial of place like here or away:

  I put it on the shelf.
  She put it.

  Taking three different verbs, laugh, buy and put, as starting points results in sentences which are quite different in structure. . . .
  
  "The lexis and the grammar, the words and the sentence, proceed hand in hand."
  (Dave Willis, Rules, Patterns and Words: Grammar and Lexis in English Language Teaching. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004)



• "[T]here is a general trend toward lexically oriented approaches to language in which what was formerly regarded as syntactic phenomena has increasingly come to be viewed as projections of lexical properties. . . .
  
  "Lexis has undergone a dramatic transformation and come out less autonomous, more open to other layers of language, notably grammar, composed of both single words and multi-word units and entering into a complex network of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations."
  (Bengt Altenberg and Sylviane Granger, "Recent Trends in Cross-Linguistic Lexical Studies." Lexis in Contrast: Corpus-Based Approaches. John Benjamins, 2002)