Editing Lexicon (section)

== Second-language lexicon ==
{{Main|Bilingual lexical access}}

The term "lexicon" is generally used in the context of a single language. Therefore, multi-lingual speakers are generally thought to have multiple lexicons. Speakers of language variants ([[Brazilian Portuguese]] and [[European Portuguese]], for example) may be considered to possess a single lexicon. Thus a ''[[wikt:cash dispenser|cash dispenser]]'' (British English) as well as an  [[wikt:automatic teller machine|automatic teller machine]] or [[wikt:ATM|ATM]] in American English would be understood by both American and British speakers, despite each group using different dialects.

When linguists study a lexicon, they consider such things as what constitutes a word; the word/[[concept]] relationship; [[lexical access]] and lexical access failure; how a word's [[phonology]], [[syntax]], and meaning intersect; the [[Morphology (linguistics)|morphology]]-word relationship; vocabulary structure within a given language; language use ([[pragmatics]]); [[language acquisition]]; the history and evolution of words ([[etymology]]); and the relationships between words, often studied within [[philosophy of language]].

Various models of how lexicons are organized and how words are retrieved have been proposed in [[psycholinguistics]], [[neurolinguistics]] and [[computational linguistics]].