Lexicon
Definition
A lexicon is an individual's personal stockpile of knowledge about words including their meanings, pronunciation, and syntactic roles.
Analogy
Consider your lexicon as your personal library. Each book represents a word you know - its meaning, how it sounds when spoken, and how it fits into sentences. The more books you have, the larger your vocabulary!
Related terms
Vocabulary: Vocabulary refers to all the words known or used by a particular person.
Semantic Memory: Semantic memory is our memory for facts or general knowledge about the world. It includes our knowledge about meanings of words we learned from our lexicon.
Language Acquisition Device (LAD): Proposed by Noam Chomsky, LAD is an innate mechanism or process that facilitates children's learning of grammar and syntax in their native languages.
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