the diachronic process by which a complex morphosyntactic structure develops an idiosyncratic meaning, and so comes to form one unit, in the sense of a pairing of a form and a unitary, unanalyzable meaning. Example: the English phrase jack-in-the-pulpit has lexicalized to denote a particular species of plant. There is usually an earlier stage where the elements of the complex predicate have an identifiable meaning, even if the meaning of the whole is idiosyncratic. For example red-winged blackbird describes a specific species of bird, but the phrase is partially analyzable in that the bird is mostly black but has a patch of red on its wings. A lexicalized structure may come to be fixed in the order of its elements, and altered or reduced in form, for example the farewell goodbye which originated in the phrase God be with ye (and has now been further reduced to bye). (Sections 13.1.2, 13.4)