Multiword expressions

Abstract

Languages are made up of words, which combine via morphosyntax to encode meaning in the form of phrases and sentences. While it may appear relatively innocuous, the question of what constitutes a “word” is a surprisingly vexed one. First, are dog and dogs two separate words, or variants of a single word? The traditional view from lexicography and linguistics is to treat them as separate inflected wordforms of the lexeme dog, as any difference in the syntax/semantics of the two words is predictable from the general process of noun pluralization in English. Second, what is the status of expressions like top dog and dog days? A speaker of English who knew top, dog, and day in isolation but had ..