The Linguist's Shoebox

Native speakers of a language associate lexemes with other words or phrases that are not necessarily morphological derivatives (i.e., do not have a particular root morpheme in common). To explore the meaning of a lexeme systematically within its culturally associated relationships, you need to map networks of meaning in a different "dimension" than structural patterns. Lexical functions (also known as lexical relations) represent semantic relationships between pairs of words or phrases. Using MDF in Shoebox, you can enter them using the following data fields:

• \lx for the "head" of the lexical function (e.g., \lx huma)
• \ge, \gn, and \gr for its glosses, if desired (e.g., \ge house)
• \lf for the lexical function label (e.g., \lf Group)
• \lv for the "value" of the lexical function (e.g., \lv fenlale)
• \le, \ln, and \lr for its glosses, if desired (e.g., \le village)

For more information, read chapter 7 in Making Dictionaries.