Lexical Families, Semantics, and Word Relationships
Lexical Families and Word Formation
Lexical families: A lexical family is the set of words that use the same base lexeme (e.g., the lexical family terr- (earth) is formed by words like earth, earthy, Terrero, burial).
Affixes: These are grammatical, derivative morphemes that function in the structure of the word as thematic formants (i.e., items that belong to a lexical unit). They are added to a base, modifying and clarifying its general meaning, thus creating a new word from an existing one.
Parasynthesis: This occurs in words that have been created by simultaneously adding a prefix and a suffix to a base, or an affix and another base.
Semantic Description and Meaning
Semantic description: The description of the meaning of words, the structure that these meanings have, and the different relationships that they maintain with each other within the language system.
Sign: Consists of two inseparable entities: the signifier and the signified.
Referent: The object or objects to which the sign represents in a specific formulation.
Word Meaning Variations
Polysemy: The fact that a word has several different meanings. Each of these meanings is called a sense.
Monosemy: A word has a unique meaning.
Homonymy: Two words are homonyms when their forms have coincided due to phonetic evolution or derivation. For example, *banco* (from *jar*: jar) and *banco* (from the English *bank*: bank).
Sema: Distinctive character traits that serve to distinguish one word from another that is semantically close to it.
Semantic Fields and Relationships
Semantic fields: Combinations of words in the same grammatical category that are related in meaning because they have a core of common significance.
Hyperonym: A lexical unit that is called a *gender* in a branching field.
Hyponym: Each of the terms that are included as types of a word within that gender, branching into a field.
Ramified field: A type of semantic field in which words are organized in hierarchical structures. The meaning of some words includes that of others, and these, in turn, include the meaning of more concrete ones, and so on.
Types of Lexical Opposition
Lexical opposition: The relationship of contraposition in meaning that occurs between two particular words, such as *dead/alive*, *truth/lie*, etc. This can be of several types:
- Complementarity: The additional lexical subjects that fully partition reality to appoint, from a linguistic point of view, in such a way that the negation of one necessarily implies the affirmation of the other. For example, *Juan does not live* implies that Juan is inescapably dead.
- Antonymy: The relationship between the prototypical member of a general scalar opposition, i.e., conceived as a scale that makes it possible to differentiate different degrees or levels: *large/small*, *high/low*, *hot/cold*, *good/bad*.
- Inversion: Two words are reversed when describing the same reality from alternative points of view, so that the significance of one involves the other: *father/son*, *sell/buy*, *precede/follow*, etc.
Types of Synonymy
Full Synonyms: Occurs in words whose meanings coincide in all their senses and uses, allowing the two to be interchangeable in all contexts.
Conceptual or cognitive synonymy: Semantic identity of two words that, in a certain sense, have the same denotation and can refer to the same entity. For example, conceptual synonymy exists between *start* and *begin*.
Connotative Synonyms: Different terms with the same denotation that nevertheless share the same connotative values. For example, *red* and *communist*, although they have different denotative meanings, suggest the same ideological values for a speaker politically opposed to the latter. The reverse happens with *Nazi* and *Fascist*.
False synonymy: Lexical units whose denotations bear some similarity but are not truly identical, as in the case of *fog* and *mist*.
Lexical Flow and Word Origins
Lexical flow: The group of words that a language makes available to its speakers. In theory, this is reflected in the dictionary.
Patrimonial words: Those words most frequently used in Castilian, which come from Hispanic voices and have evolved over the centuries.
Cultisms: Words whose evolution stopped at a point very close to that of Latin, such as *glory* (Latin *gloriam*), *charity* (*caritatem*), *spirit* (*spiritum*).
Semicultisms: Words that have undergone some changes but have not fully completed their phonetic evolution, such as *miracle* (from *miraculum*, which should have resulted in *mirajo*), *virgin* (from *virginem*). These are also called cultisms, etc.: words from Latin or Greek that Castilian adopted at a later time, once formed as a language, and without changes or periphrasis.