Wikidata:Lexicographical data/Documentation/Lexical categories
The lexical category to which a lexeme belongs is a reference to a Wikidata item for a particular group of words with specific syntactic behavior in a language. This usually corresponds with the "part of speech" of the lexeme: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and so on.
Examples of lexical categories
[edit]Different languages may have different lexical categories: just because English has the concept of a 'preposition', for example, or just because the equivalent of a construction in your language is an English preposition, doesn't mean your language must have preposition lexemes.
The following list is adapted from the organization of volume I, chapter 1 of Language Typology and Syntactic Description:
- Open classes
- Closed classes
- Pro-forms
- Noun adjuncts
- (Verb adjuncts)
- conjunction (Q36484)
- (other)
Lexical categories and P31
[edit]A lexeme's lexical category should be somewhat general, as a broader reflection of how that lexeme behaves syntactically within a language. More fine-grained distinctions, such as plurale tantum (Q138246), weak verb (Q60655), absolute adjective (Q332375), and cardinal numeral (Q1329258)—as specializations of noun (Q1084), verb (Q24905), adjective (Q34698), and numeral (Q63116) respectively—are better added as instance of (P31) values on the lexeme.
Similarly, the lexical category of a lexeme does not need to be re-added as a instance of (P31) statement. (One exception to this is when there is a reference for the statement that a lexeme belongs to a particular lexical category and when that reference is added to that statement.)
Comparison table
[edit]Different languages may necessarily use different lexical categories, but some are frequent enough across languages that a comparison may be made. The following table, when expanded, provides examples of lexemes in each language falling into some of the most common lexical categories across Wikidata lexemes.