A grammar, as an account of a speaker's knowledge of language, must include a list of morphemes used in the formation of words This list is similar to a dictionary Information is provided about the the pronunciation and meaning of each morpheme, along with details to avoid about its grammatical features
whether it is a prelix, suffix, root, what part speech a root is) The list of morphemes in a gramma is called a lexicon in order confusion with normal dictionaries that list words rather than morphemes. Each mor- pheme in the lexicon, along with the information about it, is called a lexical entry.
Speakers are clearly able to combine morphemes to produce wo ples involved in such combinations must be stated in any grammar that is a true represen- tation of the linguistic competence of the speaker. Thus, in addition to a lexicon,
a grammar contains a set of rules that descrnbe the ways in which morphemes are combined to produce words words, and the princi- Figure 4.7, reate reales created crealive creatively mass masscs massed massivC massively Learning a human language is a very complicated task. and there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that human beings carry out this task and store what they have learned in the simplest possible way Linguists seck to account for word formation in the simplest possible way because they hypothesize that people do so This hypothesis is in complete accord with the principles that guide all scientific investigation the simplest solutkon. or description, is the preferred uae Simplicity is achueved through maximum use of generalizations. Thus,
the grammar a linguist writes will contain as many rules and as few separate lexical entries as possible There is no reason to suppose that speakers of 8 English store in their minds a separate lexical entry for cach of the words listed in Figure 4 7 Instead, the linguist works on the assumption that the lexicon of the speaker, and therefore of the grammar, contains the morphemes create, mass, s, d, we and ly.
1 grammar also contains general rules to account for the ways in which these six morphemes conbine to produce the ten words given With the addition to the lexicon of even one more item, such as destroy.
five additional words can be dernved by the rules. If both destroy and respect are added to the lexicon, the grammar will contain the same rules and he mcsF 41