The Third Fundamental Category Of The Cardiff Grammar: Item

Fawcett (2010: 279):

The third major concept in the present theory of syntax is that of the item. This replaces the concepts of 'word' and 'morpheme' on the "Categories" 'rank scale' of units, these two now being simply types of item. The reasons for this major change are given in Section 10.5 of Chapter 10.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, on the one hand, as previously observed, Fawcett's 'item' confuses two distinct notions of word:

1. word as grammatical constituent (composed of morphemes), and
2. word as lexical item (a synthetic realisation the most delicate lexicogrammatical features).

On the other hand, in treating words and morphemes as types of item, Fawcett misconstrues a meronymic relation as a co-hyponymic relation.