Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

Dictionary of language and linguistics 760MohaveHokanMolalaPenutianMonMon-Khmermoneme [Grk mónos ‘solitary, only’]Term introduced by Martinet (1960) for the smallest unit of language consisting ofcontent and phonetic form that cannot be broken down further into smaller meaningfulunits. With regard to function, Martinet distinguishes between the open class of lexicalmonemes, the so-called ‘semantemes,’ whose meaning is codified in the lexicon, and theclosed class of grammatical monemes, which he calls ‘morphemes,’ and further betweenfunctional monemes (prepositions), autonomous monemes (free, nonconjugatable ornondeclinable: today, sadly), and independent monemes (case, tense). Compared with theterminology introduced by American structuralism and now established, Martinet’s‘moneme’ corresponds to the otherwise common term morpheme, his ‘semanteme’ tofree lexical morphemes, his ‘morpheme’ to bound grammatical morphemes.ReferencesMartinet, A. 1960. Elements de linguistique générale. Paris. (2nd rev. and exp. edn 1967.)morphologyMongolianBranch of Altaic with twelve languages and approx. 3 million speakers in central Asia.Classical Mongolian, with a writing tradition dating back to the thirteenth century, is stillused as the written language for these closely related languages.