The argument to be pursued here is that, under the definition of lexical itemz as a unit stored in long-term memory,
- Lexical items may be larger or smaller than grammatical words.
- Not all grammatical words are lexical items.
- There are complex lexical items that contain no phonological material.
In pursuing these points more deeply, we will arrive at two further points that in effect turn the standard theory of
grammar“inside out”:
- Most of what have previously been called“rules of grammar”also turn out to be lexical items.
- UG can be formulated as a collection of abstract lexical items that“seed”language acquisition.
To begin the argument, let me just briefly mention two basic problems with the stereotype of lexical items as words.
First, consider languages with massively productive morphology, say Turkish or Navajo. In such languages, a
grammatical word consists of a stem plus potentially a sizable number of affixes. Thus on one hand the number of
grammatical words is vast, possibly too large to store in long-term memory; on the other hand it is possible to
construct most grammatical words online from units thatarestored in long-term memory: the independent stems and
affixes. These elements are smaller than grammatical words, and cannot be produced in isolation.
Second, consider the treatment of an idiom such askick the bucket. This is a unit larger than a grammatical word—in
this case, apparently a VP. Because it means something different from its constituent parts, it must be stored in long-
ter m me mory as a unit, in this case a lexical VP. There have been proposals to treatkick the bucketand the like as
grammatical verbs, and for this particular idiom such a treatment might be plausible. But it is far less plausible for
idioms such asthe cat's got his tongueand(now) I've got you where I want you. These are full sentences and so it is hardly
plausibletotreatthe mas verbs. Wethus mustconsider thepossibilityof lexicallylistedphrasesofvarioussizes. Infact,
in the strict sense of lexicon proposed here, we should be able to treat longer memorized linguistic passages as lexical
items as well.
We take these two cases in order, then turn to more abstract cases.
6.2 Lexical items smaller than words
As stressed in Chapter3, thefundamental principle behind generative syntax is thecombination of grammatical words
into phrases by productive rules of phrasal combination, i.e.“syntax.”However, in many“lexicalist”approaches