In linguistics, the description of a language is split into two parts, the grammar consisting of rules describing correct sentence formation and the lexicon listing words and phrases that can be used in the sentences. The lexicon (or wordstock) of a language is its vocabulary. Statistically, most lexemes contain a single morpheme. Lexemes composed of multiple morpheme also known as compound words such as idiomatic expressions and colocations are also considered part of the lexicon. In practical applications, such as language learning the lexicon is represented by a dictionary, which lists words alphabetically and provides definition.

More formally, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek λεξικόν (lexicon), neuter of λεξικός (lexikos), "of or for words",^[1] from λέξις (lexis), "speech", "word",^[2] and that from λέγω (lego), "to say", "to speak".^[3]

Size and organization[link]

Items in the lexicon are called lexemes or word forms. Lexemes are not atomic elements but contain both phonological and morphological components. When describing the lexicon a reductionist approach is used, trying to remain general while using a minimal description. To describe the size of a lexicon, lexemes are grouped into lemmas. A lemma is a group of lexemes generated by inflectional morphology. Lemmas are represented in dictionaries by headwords which list the citation forms and any irregular forms, since these must be learned to use the words correctly. Lexemes derived from a word by derivation morphology are considered new lemmas. The lexicon is also organized according to open and closed categories. Closed categories, such as determiners or pronouns, rarely get new lexemes and their function is primarily syntactic. Open categories such as nouns and verbs have highly active generation mechanisms and their lexemes are more semantic in nature.

Lexicalization and other Mechanisms in the Lexicon[link]

A central role of the Lexicon is the documenting of established lexical norms and conventions. Lexicalization is the process where new words, having gained into widespread usage, enter in the lexicon. Since lexicalization^[4] may modify lexeme phonologically and morphologically it is possible, that a single etymological source may be borrowed in two or more forms into a single lexicon. These pairs are called doublet are often close semantically. Two examples are aptitude versus attitude, and employ versus imply.^[5]

The mechanisms (not mutually exclusive) are^[6] -

• Innovation^[7] - the planned creation of new roots (often on a large-scale), e.g. slang, branding, .
• Borrowing - of foreign words.
• Compounding also called composition is the combination of lexemes into a single word.
• Abbreviation of compounds.
• Acronyms reduction of compound to their initial letters, e.g.NASA, laser.
• Inflection morphology change with a category - such as number or tense.
• Derivation morphological change resulting in a change of category.
• Agglutination a compounding of morphemes into a single word.
• In complex words constituents may be dropped.

Besides word-formation there are also mechanism of change in an exiting lexeme.

• Lexical Replacement - replacement, either complete or in a word sense.
• Sound Change localised to specific words, phonotactics combination or systemic taking the form of a consonant or a vowel shift.
• Blocking - existing lexical conventions block creation of new words.
• Obsolescence of vocabulary - slang typically have short lifespans.

New Words[link]

Neologism are new lexeme candidates which if they gain wide usage overtime become part of a language's lexicon. Neologism are often introduced by children in a type of kid slip^[8] which is a . Neologism are also introduced by adults in marketing activities such as advertising and branding, and in slang.

Loan Words[link]

Most innovations to a lexicon are either loan words introduced by bilingual speakers during language contact or compound words created from existing morphemes. Once a neologism or a compound is introduced in one languages if successful it will often diffuse across geographical boundaries.

The Role of Morphology[link]

Another mechanism involves generative devices which combine morphemes according to a language's rules. For example, the suffix "-able" can be added to transitive verbs only, so that we get "read-able" but not "cry-able".

Compounding[link]

A compound word is a lexeme composed of several pre-existing morphemes. Because a compound word is composed of established lexeme they are usually easier to acquire than loan words or neologisms. Their meaning is usually just a sum of their constituent parts.

• armed and dangerous (sum of it words)
• armed to the teeth (metaphorical)

Compound that are not the semantical sum of their of its constituents can be interpreted through analogy, common sense and context^[4] Compound words have simple morphological structures, one or no elements requiring inflection for agreement. On the other hand they are subject to the rules of syntax and can contain gaps to hold other lexems on which they operate.

• another nail in someone/something → another nail in the company's coffin
• bring something to someone's attention → bring a problem to your Attention

Once new compounds are successfully established in one language they will often diffuse across geographical boundaries. Examples

• house-wife
• város-háza (Hungarian) "city hall".
• rot-licht (German) "red light".

Compounding tends to produces longer lexemes which may result in lexeme of unwieldy proportion. To compensate for this there are also mechanism which reduce the length of a words

Diachronic Mechanisms[link]

Comparative historical linguistics studies the evolutions languages and takes a diachronic view of the lexicon. The evolution of lexicons in different languages occurs through parallel mechanisms. Over time historical forces work to ^[9] shape the lexicon, making it simpler to acquire and often creating an illusion of great regularity in language.

• Phonological Assimilation - modification of loan words to better fit a new language's sound structure. If a loan word is too foreign sounding inflection or derivation rules may not be able to transform it.
• Analogy - new words undergo inflection and derivation analogous to that of words with a similar sound structure.
• Emphasis - words are modified for effect of emphasis.
• Metaphor - a form of semantic extension.

Second Language Lexicon[link]

The term lexicon is generally used in the context of single language. Therefore, multi-lingual speakers are generally thought to have multiple lexicons. Speakers of language variants (Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, for example) may be considered to possess a single lexicon. Thus a cash dispenser (British English) as well as and automatic teller machine or ATM in (American English) while belonging to speakers of different dialect would be understood by both American and British dialect speakers.

When linguists study the lexicon, they consider such things as what constitutes a word; the word-concept relationship; lexical access and lexical access failure; how a word's phonology, syntax, and meaning intersect; the morphology-word relationship; vocabulary structure within a given language; language use (that is, pragmatics); language acquisition; the history and evolution of words (i.e. etymology); and the relationships between words, often studied within philosophy of language.

In psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics, researchers have proposed various models of how the lexicon is organized and how words are retrieved.

See also[link]

• Grammaticalization
• Lexical Markup Framework

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Aitchison, Jean. Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (September 2010)

This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (September 2010)

Rob Pike
Born	1956
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Software engineer
Employer	Google
Known for	Plan 9 from Bell Labs, Inferno, Limbo, UTF-8
Website
herpolhode.com/rob/

Robert C. Pike (born 1956) is a Canadian software engineer and author. He is best known for his work at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team and was involved in the creation of the Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Inferno operating systems, as well as the Limbo programming language.

He also co-developed the Blit graphical terminal for Unix; before that he wrote the first window system for Unix in 1981. Pike was the applicant for AT&T patent number 4555775 or "backing store patent" that is part of the X graphic system protocol and one of the first software patents. ^[1]

Over the years Pike has written many text editors; sam and acme are the most well known and are still in active use and development.

Pike, with Brian Kernighan, is the co-author of The Practice of Programming and The Unix Programming Environment. With Ken Thompson he is the co-creator of UTF-8. Pike also developed lesser systems such as the vismon program for displaying images of faces of email authors.

Pike also appeared once on Late Night with David Letterman, as a technical assistant to the comedy duo Penn and Teller.

As a joke Pike claims to have won the 1980 Olympic silver medal in Archery;^[2] however, Canada boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics.

Pike is married to Renée French, and currently works for Google, where he was involved in the creation of the programming language Go.

See also[link]

• The Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system.
• Acme: A User Interface for Programmers
• The Plumber
• The Sam text editor
• Mark V Shaney
• The Unix Programming Environment (1984 with Brian Kernighan)
• Go (programming language)
• Sawzall

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Rob Pike

• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy - Slides of his presentation at the commemoration of 1000000000 seconds of the Unix clock.
• Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (aka utah2000) slides
• Pike's personal homepage
• Pike's Google homepage
• Questions and Answers with Rob Pike - by Robin "Roblimo" Miller (published in Slashdot in October 2004)
• Video: Concurrency/message passing Newsqueak (Google Tech Talks May 9, 2007)
• Structural Regular Expressions by Rob Pike slides.
• The history of UTF-8 as told by Rob Pike

3-2-1 Contact is an American science educational television show that aired on PBS from 1980 to 1988, and an adjoining children's magazine. The show, a production of the Children's Television Workshop, teaches scientific principles and their applications. Dr. Edward G. Atkins, who was responsible for much of the scientific content of the show, felt that the TV program wouldn't replace a classroom but would open the viewers to ask questions about the scientific purpose of things.^[1]

History[link]

3-2-1 Contact was the brainchild of Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr., who had been the executive producer of The Electric Company for CTW from 1971 to 1977. (Gibbon actually left CTW before Contact's production began, though he was still credited as "Senior Consultant.")

The first season of 65 programs began airing January 14, 1980 on select PBS member stations; it featured a cast of three college students who discussed science in an on-campus room known as the Workshop. The first season came to an end on April 11, 1980, but funds for more episodes were not sufficient until 1982.

When production resumed for the second season, which premiered on October 17, 1983, the show presented a more realistic appearance, as the new cast convened in a suburban basement (these segments were shot at Reeves Teletape, which also housed Sesame Street at the time). This cast continued until October 18, 1985. Ozzie Alfonso was Contact's new director and Al Hyslop its executive producer.

When the fifth season began on September 22, 1986, a third cast was introduced. However, unlike the previous casts, they did not meet in any specific setting; instead, they appeared in various taped and filmed segments. Episodes continued to be produced through November 1988.

For a time in the mid-1980s, the program was co-produced with the French television network FR3 and featured several new French cast members in addition to the American cast. From 1982 to 1983 the program was aired in Spain with dubbed-over versions of the American original broadcasts, and some local add-ons with four Spanish cast members: Sonia Martínez, Luis Bollain, Fernando Rueda and Marifé Rodríguez.^[2] Another Spanish version of the broadcast was aired from 1990 to 1992.

From September 1, 1991 until May 1, 1992, an edited version of the series titled 3-2-1 Classroom Contact was produced, specifically for in-school viewing.

It was reported in 1984 that 3-2-1 Contact had an audience of over 7 million viewers and was broadcast in 26 countries including West Germany, France, Italy and Spain making their own dubbed-over versions.^[1]

Broadcasters wanted the children to record the episodes without being afraid of infringement of copyright violations.^[1]

Hosts[link]

The Bloodhound Gang[link]

A frequent segment of the show was The Bloodhound Gang, a series about a group of young detectives who used science to solve crimes. Episodes of the series needed to be run in regular sequence for understandable viewing, as many Bloodhound Gang mysteries were cut among two or three Contact episodes.

The magazine[link]

Three months before the show premiered, a print magazine of the same name that also focused on science was released. In 1985, the magazine absorbed some of the content of sibling publication Enter (which went out of print that same year), including reader submissions of computer programs written in the BASIC computer language as well as reviews of popular computer programs. A new feature called "The Slipped Disk Show" appeared in mid-1985, starring a fictional disc jockey who answered computer-related questions submitted by readers.

Beginning in 1987, the magazine also featured content from another CTW production, Square One Television. Such content frequently took the form of a two-page comic strip, often parodying a popular show or movie of the time, with a math-related question at the end.

The Bloodhound Gang mysteries also made the leap to the magazine, but they were subsequently replaced with a series entitled The Time Team in September 1990. These stories found teenage characters Sean Nolan and Jenny Lopez traveling to different time periods in the past and future. Their surroundings and personal encounters were described with great detail, educating readers as to the customs of various cultures throughout history, and – on trips to the future – often pushing present day hot-button issues. For example, a 1993 story saw the duo traveling to what appeared to be a prehistoric forest, but near the end, they found a Brazil flag, a newspaper clipping from 1995, and a bulldozer at work: this was in fact a Brazilian rainforest being levelled.

In 1996, The Time Team was replaced by a comic serial, Cosmic Crew, which focused on the adventures of a group of teenagers and their robot butler in space. Their first story arc (which ran for more than a year) had them trying to figure out a series of riddles relating to places in the solar system in order to claim a treasure (which turned out to be a scholarship fund). Another story arc had a delinquent (who had been a villain in the first arc) join them in order to chase down a gang of other delinquents. Despite being effectively replaced, a few Time Team stories were run whenever there were gaps between installments of Cosmic Crew.

Many of the magazine's cover stories involved current events, such as 1990s oil fires in the Middle East. In addition, the magazine offered a games section in which most of the games were related to the stories in the issue.

In 1996, CTW presumably concluded that faithful readers from the late 1980s and early 1990s had long since moved on, and the magazine began to reprint non-time-sensitive stories from years past. For example, a 1991 article on the geography of the Galápagos Islands – a relatively unchanging subject – could very well re-appear in an identical format a half a decade later.

Under Sesame Workshop the magazine later became Contact Kids, removing the original reference to the television show. Production of the magazine was suspended indefinitely in 2001.

After production[link]

Though the show went off the air in 1988, it appeared in reruns from 1999 to 2003 on the cable television network Noggin, then a joint venture of CTW and Nickelodeon. Occasionally, shows were also rerun on Nickelodeon's Cable in the Classroom time period. For all these Nickelodeon and Noggin airings, the series was rated TV-Y7 (possibly due to the target audience). It also still aired on some PBS stations as reruns from 1989 to 1998 before it was switched to Noggin in 1999. As of 2003, Noggin no longer airs any shows produced by Sesame Workshop. The shows were modified for the shorter running time on these networks to allow for their interstitials.

Sources of funding[link]

Funding for 3-2-1 Contact was provided by the following:^[3]

• National Science Foundation (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• United States Department of Education (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• Corporation for Public Broadcasting (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• IBM Corporation (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• Carnegie Corporation of New York (October 31, 1983-November 18, 1988)

Five sponsors funded the show for its entire run. They were originally supposed to fund for 20 new episodes until 1989.^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

• 3-2-1 Contact at the Internet Movie Database
• 3-2-1 Contact at TV.com