The Outside and the Inside of the Lexicon

Derrida makes a good point about words not being the sole locus of meaning. He paraphrases André Martinet approvingly:

[It's a mitzvah] to make [the usage of the concept of the word] more flexible, to associate it with the concepts of smaller or greater units (monemes or syntagams).
–pg. 31

Non-linguists often find it surprising that the meaning-bearing elements of language can be smaller or larger than words. To linguists, however, this is old hat. In a Linguistics 101 class you'll be taught that morphemes (what Martinet appears to be calling "monemes"), not words, are the smallest unit of meaning. Going in the other direction, many linguists will identify certain syntactic constructions (Martinet's "syntagams" I think) as meaning-bearing units. For example, in Foundations of Language Ray Jackendoff argues that structures like "X-ed his way across the room" and "X-ed her heart out" are atomic units of English meaning. Construction Grammar (about which I know little) moves this idea front and center. Linguists often frame this question in terms of what kinds of things belong "in the lexicon".

So, good point about words, but us linguists are already all over it.