What is "lemma"

main entry word \main entry word\ n. The form of a word that heads a lexical entry and is alphabetized in a dictionary; also called entry word, headword, and lemma.

Syn: citation form, entry word, headword, lemma.

Note: In different languages, different wordforms, such as cases for verbs, may be taken as the main entry word. In English dictionaries, it is the infinitive form, but in latin dictionaries it is usually the first person singular present.

1560s, first in mathematics, from Greek lemma (plural lemmata) "something received or taken; an argument; something taken for granted," from root of lambanein "to take" (see analemma).

n. 1 (context mathematics English) A proposition proved or accepted for immediate use in the proof of some other proposition. 2 (context linguistics usually English) The canonical form of an inflected word; ''i.e.'', the form usually found in dictionaries. 3 (context linguistics less frequently English) A lexeme; all the inflected forms of a term. 4 (context botany English) One of the specialized bracts around the floret in grasses.

1. n. a subsidiary proposition that is assumed to be true in order to prove another proposition

2. the lower and stouter of the two glumes immediately enclosing the floret in most Gramineae [syn: flowering glume]

3. the head of an annotation or gloss

4. [also: lemmata (pl)]

In mathematics, a "helping theorem" or lemma (plural lemmata or lemmas) is a proved proposition which is used as a stepping stone to a larger result rather than as a statement of interest by itself. The word derives from the Ancient Greek λῆμμα ("anything which is received, such as a gift, profit, or a bribe")

Lemma may refer to:

• Lemma (mathematics), a type of proposition
• Lemma (morphology), the canonical or citation form of a word
• Lemma (psycholinguistics), a mental abstraction of a word about to be uttered
• Headword, in lexica
• Lemma (logic), a contention
• Lemma (botany), a part of a grass plant
• Lemma (album), by John Zorn

In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata) is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of words ( headword). In English, for example, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, with run as the lemma. Lexeme, in this context, refers to the set of all the forms that have the same meaning, and lemma refers to the particular form that is chosen by convention to represent the lexeme. In lexicography, this unit is usually also the citation form or headword by which it is indexed. Lemmas have special significance in highly inflected languages such as Arabic, Turkish and Russian. The process of determining the lemma for a given word is called lemmatisation. The lemma can be viewed as the chief of the principal parts, although lemmatisation is at least partly arbitrary.

In informal logic and argument mapping, a lemma is simultaneously a contention for premises below it and a premise for a contention above it. Transitivity: If one has proof that B follows from A and proof of A, then one has proof of B.

Lemma is a phytomorphological term used in botany referring to a part of the spikelet of grasses ( Poaceae). It is the lowermost of two chaff-like bracts enclosing the grass floret. It often bears a long bristle called an awn, and may be similar in form to the glumes - chaffy bracts at the base of each spikelet. It is usually interpreted as a bract but it has also been interpreted as one remnant (the abaxial) of the three members of outer perianth whorl (the palea may represent the other two members, having been joined together).

A lemma's shape, their number of veins, whether they are awned or not, and the presence or absence of hairs are particularly important characters in grass taxonomy.

Category:Plant morphology

Lemma is an album composed by John Zorn and featuring violinists David Fulmer, Chris Otto and Pauline Kim which as recorded in New York City in 2012 and released on the Tzadik label in February 2013.

In psycholinguistics, a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata) is an abstract conceptual form of a word that has been mentally selected for utterance in the early stages of speech production. A lemma represents a specific meaning but does not have any specific sounds that are attached to it.

When we produce a word, we are essentially turning our thoughts into sounds, a process known as lexicalisation. In many psycholinguistic models this is considered to be at least a two-stage process. The first stage deals with semantics and syntax; the result of the first stage is an abstract notion of a word that represents a meaning and contains information about how the word can be used in a sentence. It does not, however, contain information about how the word is pronounced. The second stage deals with the phonology of the word; it attaches information about the sounds that will have to be uttered. The result of the first stage is the lemma in this model; the result of the second stage is referred to as the lexeme.

This two-staged model is the most widely supported theory of speech production in psycholinguistics, although it has been challenged. For example, there is some evidence to indicate that the grammatical gender of a noun is retrieved from the word's phonological form (the lexeme) rather than from the lemma. This can be explained by models that do not assume a distinct level between the semantic and the phonological stages (and so lack a lemma representation).

The concept of lemma is similar to the Sanskrit sphoṭa (6th century), an invariant mental word, of which the sound is a feature.