Word family

A word family , also known as a type of word or lexeme , is a series of words that are grouped around the same word stem and contain a common lexical morpheme . So they have the same etymon ( etymological root) in common.

Word families in German can contain up to a thousand individual words, although the etymological context is often no longer transparent (for example, Herzog, Zeuge, Zucht , etc., by pulling ).

The word family is mostly described as "synchronous quantity", i. H. Only lexemes are related, the relationship of which is recognizable “for the knowledge of a language community about morphological relationships that was presupposed at a certain time”.

Examples

• School example: tie, tape, bandage, bundle, bundle, bundle, flush, bandage, first aid kit, childbirth, maternity hospital ...

• Example: teach, teacher, taught, docile, unteachable ...

Dictionaries that are more or less structured according to word families include the Bavarian dictionary by Johann Andreas Schmeller , the Swiss Idiotikon , the Old High German vocabulary by Eberhard Gottlieb Graff , the Middle High German dictionary by Georg Friedrich Benecke , Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller and Friedrich Zarncke , the Old High German Dictionary by Jochen Splett and the German Word Family Dictionary by the same author. In terms of the history of lexicography, this is a concept from the Baroque era that was still relevant in the 19th century and has recently been taken up again.

literature

• Volker Harm: Introduction to Lexicology. WBG, Darmstadt 2015 (Introduction to German Studies), ISBN 978-3-534-26384-4 , p. 95 f.
• Dietrich Homberger: Subject dictionary for linguistics (= Reclams Universal Library. Volume 18241.) Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 978-3-15-018241-3 .
• Jochen Splett: German word family dictionary. Analysis of word family structures in contemporary German. At the same time the foundation of a future structural history of the German vocabulary. 18 volumes. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-018320-7 .

Web links

Wiktionary: word family  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Kühn: Lexikologie , 1994, p. 56: The verb draw has about 200 derivatives, the whole family of words over 1000 words.
2. ↑ Volker Harm: Introduction to Lexicology. WBG, Darmstadt 2015 (Introduction to German Studies), ISBN 978-3-534-26384-4 , p. 95 with additional information
3. ↑ Volker Harm: Introduction to Lexicology. WBG, Darmstadt 2015 (Introduction to German Studies), ISBN 978-3-534-26384-4 , p. 95.
4. ^ Peter Ernst : German Linguistics. WUV, Vienna 2008 (UTB; 2541), p. 202.
5. ^ Oskar Reichmann : Historical Lexicography. Ideas, realizations, reflections on examples from German, Dutch and English (=  Studia Linguistica Germanica. Volume 111). de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 451.