Talk:Citation form

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The concept of citation form described in the article may be found in contexts like speech analysis and the teaching of English, but it's not its usual sense in linguistics and lexicography (which is synonymous with headword or lemma). This other sense can be found for example in this article ("The citation form for nouns (the one normally shown in Latin dictionaries)") and this article ("The Citation form shown is the form most commonly shown in dictionaries"), defined in this online dictionary ("The form of a word that heads a lexical entry and is alphabetized in a dictionary") and described in this pdf ("A lexical item is an abstract unit, and it must always appear in one or another of its various forms. Therefore, we are obliged to choose one of those forms to represent the lexical item when we want to talk about it. The form we choose is called the “citation form” of the lexical item. The citation form (or dictionary form) of a lexical item is the particular grammatical form of it which we use in naming it, talking about it, and entering it in a dictionary"). Uaxuctum 01:43, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The term I've usually heard for a word pronounced in isolation is isolation form rather than citation form. I only know citation form in the lexicographical sense (the citation form of a Latin verb is the first person singular present active indicative; the citation form of a German verb is the infinitive; the citation form of an Irish verb is the second person singular imperative). --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 20:26, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)