2.2 Status of definitions Two ways of defining language entities are employed. This means, that phonological aspects are a priori excluded and the spelling conventions of contem- porary German as laid down in dictionaries are accepted as part of the investigated phenomenon, although these.conventions certainly deserve some critical attention and revision. It is the aim of the reported research to define some linguistic properties of German words. Markers are explained later in detail. Investigation of word-class homography was a major goal of the first stage of the project.
Nothing is assumed about the nature of the meaning.
As defined here, semantic meaning does not include grammatical meaning like the inflexional status. A first rough description will yield at least three types of words, here introduced in their traditional terms and with a formula in terms of morphemes. They will be discussed after the data are introduced. As to allostatus, only dictionary forms were available at that stage. There- fore various alloforms of the morphemes were added and marked according to their allostatus.