lexeme

A lexeme is a basic unit of meaning in a language. It constitutively requires language — without language, a lexeme cannot exist or operate. This is present-tense necessity per Law 8.

Law 9 specific to nearest accepted kind; Law 11d pins both senses against their accepted definitions. lexeme's accepted def carves it as 'the minimal abstract unit of meaning in a language — the dictionary headword that stands behind all its inflected forms' (parameters: an abstract form distinct from any single surface realization; a stable meaning relation holding across morphological variants). word's accepted def carves 'a discrete linguistic unit consisting of one or more morphemes, organized by human convention to carry specific meaning within a language system.' Under the accepted carve, every lexeme is a dictionary headword — a discrete morpheme-constituted unit organized by convention to carry specific meaning, i.e. a word — plus the additional parameters of abstractness and standing behind a paradigm of inflected forms. A competent speaker calls the lexeme of 'ran' (the headword RUN) a word. Nearest-kind check: word's accepted kind-children (etymon, portmanteau, eponym, homophone, catchword) are cross-cutting properties of words, none subsumes lexeme, and no intermediate held kind exists (headword, word-form unheld; the held 'lemma' entry carves a MATHEMATICAL proposition — a different word and sense, no collision). Not a derivable leap: no accepted or pending intermediate rung. Pinned senses: lexeme as dictionary headword carrying a paradigm; word as discrete morpheme-constituted unit of meaning.

Direction tested: reading is newer (0.69) than lexeme (0.15). Removal test: remove lexemes (meaning-bearing units of language) and reading stops operating — reading is the extraction of meaning from written text, and text is composed of lexemes. Without lexemes, reading is merely pattern-matching glyphs without semantic content. Constitutive dependency.

Morphology studies the structure of lexemes — removing lexemes leaves morphology without its subject matter; it cannot operate on word structure where there are no lexemes.