Editing Lexeme (section)

== Description ==
The notion of the lexeme is central to [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]],<ref name="bonamietal">{{Cite book
| veditors =  Bonami O, Boyé G, Dal G, Giraudo H, Namer F
| title = The lexeme in descriptive and theoretical morphology 
| location = Berlin
| publisher = Language Science Press
| year = 2018
| format = pdf
| url = http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/165
| doi = 10.5281/zenodo.1402520 
| doi-access=free
| isbn = 978-3-96110-110-8 
| last1 = Bonami 
| first1 = Olivier 
| last2 = Boyé 
| first2 = Gilles 
| last3 = Dal 
| first3 = Georgette 
| last4 = Giraudo 
| first4 = Hélène 
| last5 = Namer 
| first5 = Fiammetta 
}}
</ref> the basis for defining other concepts in that field. For example, the difference between [[inflection]] and [[Morphological derivation|derivation]] can be stated in terms of lexemes:
* Inflectional rules relate a lexeme to its forms.
* Derivational rules relate a lexeme to another lexeme.

A lexeme belongs to a particular [[syntactic category]], has a certain [[Meaning (linguistic)|meaning]] ([[Semantics|semantic value]]), and in inflecting languages, has a corresponding [[Inflection|inflectional paradigm]]. That is, a lexeme in many languages will have many different forms. For example, the lexeme <span style="font-variant:small-caps; text-transform:lowercase;">RUN</span> has a present [[Grammatical person|third person]] [[Grammatical number|singular]] form ''runs'', a present non-third-person singular form ''run'' (which also functions as the [[past participle]] and [[Non-finite verb|non-finite]] form), a past form ''ran'', and a present [[participle]] ''running''. (It does not include ''runner, runners, runnable'' etc.) The use of the forms of a lexeme is governed by rules of [[grammar]]. In the case of English verbs such as <span style="font-variant:small-caps; text-transform:lowercase;">RUN</span>, they include subject–[[verb]] agreement and compound [[Grammatical tense|tense]] rules, which determine the form of a verb that can be used in a given [[Sentence (linguistics)|sentence]].

In many [[Theoretical linguistics|formal]] theories of [[language]], lexemes have [[subcategorization frame]]s to account for the number and types of complements. They occur within [[Sentence (linguistics)|sentences]] and other [[syntax|syntactic structures]].