A grammeme in

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

is a unit of

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

, just as a lexeme is a lexical unit and a

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...

is a morphological unit. (See

emic unit In linguistics and related fields, an emic unit is a type of abstract object. cited in Kinds of emic units are generally denoted by terms with the suffix ''-eme'', such as ''phoneme'', ''grapheme'', and ''morpheme''. The term "emic unit" is defin ...

.) More specifically, a grammeme is a value of a

grammatical category In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusiv ...

. For example, singular and plural are grammemes of the category of

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

. ''Grammeme'', earlier spelt ''grameme'', was the original term used by

Pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...

's school for what they went on to call the ''

tagmeme A tagmeme is the smallest functional element in the grammatical structure of a language. The term was introduced in the 1930s by the linguist Leonard Bloomfield, who defined it as the smallest meaningful unit of grammatical form (analogous to th ...

''.Pike, K.L. (1958),
On tagmemes, née gramemes
, ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 24(4):273ff.

References

Further reading