Vocabulary

Welcome

I thought that the construction of vocabulary files for Singtastic would be so easy - just list the words and hit the AZ sort button. I started with "Mr Darwin".
The first problem I encountered was with de verdes. It just didn't seem right to split the two words, so I kept them together.

Weeks later, when considering the constituent sounds of the Saint in Saint Helena I decided that these two words should stay together too because, on its own Saint is pronounced /saent/, but as part of Saint Helena it is /suhnt/. Saint Helena and de verdes forced me to look again at the whole question of how to present the words in our vocabulary lists.

I consulted the writings of language expert David Crystal and discovered that - having wrestled with the very same issue - he uses the term 'lexeme' in his books.
He defines a lexeme as:

'a unit of lexical meaning, which exists regardless of any inflectional endings it may have or the number of words it may contain.' [Crystal 1995]

So Saint Helena and de verdes are lexemes, units of meaning, as is duck-billed platypus, the idiom sick-as-a-parrot and the abbreviation DNA.

In the Singtastic lists I have decided to treat look, looked and looking as separate items. Strictly speaking only look is a lexeme; looked and looking (with their inflectional endings) are mere variations.

Finally, a note about my use of capital letters and hyphens in the vocabulary lists; after much deliberation, I have decided to use the Chambers Dictionary as my general authority on such matters.

So, without further ado, a very warm welcome to Singtastic vocabulary, which offers complete listings of the words used in Singtastic songs, presented as lexemes, in alphabetical order.

Reference
D. Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Click to open the pdf or word document of your choice.

Songs	PDF	Word	Songs	PDF	Word
All 12 Songs
Mr Darwin Original			Four Billion Years
Taxonomy			Mutate
Living Light			Eras
Hedgehog			Queen Bee
Mr Darwin Botanical Edition			The Great Plant Hunt
Lake			San Diego Science Festival