Учебно-методическое пособие для студентов математического факультета специальности 1-020501 «Информатика. Иностранный язык (английский)»

a set expression, 
or some other semisynonymic names like or 
a phraseological unit, 
or 
an 
idiom. 
It is made up of at least two words, or lexemes, and the meaning of each 
is different from the meaning of the complex unit 
(redtape, baker's dozen).
The difference between these lexical units – morpheme, word and 
phraseological unit – is size, constitutive capacities, autonomy and ability to 
perform a 
naming function, 
one of the most important functions of a language. 
Morphemes 
are the 
smallest 
lexical units, and phraseological units, or 
idioms, are the 
largest 
ones. Morphemes have the greatest constitutive capacity. 
They add much to the generative character of lexicon but they are not 
autonomous in naming concepts as a word or an idiom. Lexical meaning in 
morphemes is of a general, not individual character as in words (though it 
doesn't concern root morphemes that have highly individualized lexical 
meaning). 
Word, 
unlike morpheme, is an 
autonomous 
two-faceted ready-made lexical 
unit, and can be used in isolation to perform a 
naming function. 
Unlike an 
idiom, 
a word is the 
smallest autonomous 
two-faceted ready-made unit with a naming 
function that makes it the basic lexical unit. 
It is assumed that the word includes such components, or types of meaning 
as the most abstract 
part of speech, or functional meaning 
(nouns, for 
example, usually denote «thingness», adjectives – qualities and states), 
grammatical, 
which is recurrent in identical sets of different words 
(she 
goes/works/reads,
 
etc.), and 
lexical, 
which is highly individual and recurs in all 
the grammatical forms of words (for example, the meaning of the verb 
to work
 
«to engage in physical or mental activity» that reveals in all its forms: 
works, 
work, worked, working, will work).
These types of meaning, however, are related. For example, the 
grammatical meaning of plurality may be expressed not only by means of 
grammatical affixes as in 
chicken 
– 
chickens, 
but lexically, too (cf. such 
collective nouns as 
poultry, people, police),
 
and vice versa, lexical meaning 
may be supported by its grammatical forms as in the case of the countable 
noun 
chicken 
that becomes uncountable when it is used in the meaning of «its 
flesh as food».