Lexical Resources, Grammar, Semantics, and Communication

Lexical Resources

Lexical resources are based on establishing semantic relations between words in a text.

  • Lexical Repetition: Repeating a word or words, which usually coincide with the fundamental ideas of the text.
  • Common Semantic Field: Using words or expressions that belong to the same semantic or lexical field.
  • Replacement Synonym: Substituting a term with a synonym or a word with a similar meaning.
  • Hypernyms and Hyponyms: A hypernym is a term with a generic meaning that includes other specific terms called hyponyms.

Grammatical Resources

Grammatical-syntactic relationships affect the establishment of connections between different parts of the text.

  • Pronominalization: Replacing sentence elements with pronouns to avoid repetition.
  • Connectors: Using terms that link words or expressions in the text. Connectors can be of various types (e.g., temporal, order).

Signs and Meaning

Signs convey a message or information and are composed of two levels: form and content.

  • Linguistic Sign: The words we use to communicate, structured with a signifier (the set of sounds or letters) that conveys the content.
  • Meaning: The idea or content associated with a concrete signifier.

Monemes

Monemes are the minimum units of language that have meaning.

  • Lexemes: Provide the basic or lexical content of words.
  • Morphemes: Add nuances that complete the meaning of the word.
    • Free Morphemes: Autonomous and not attached to the lexeme (e.g., determinants, conjunctions, prepositions).
    • Bound Morphemes: Joined to a lexeme to form a word.
      • Inflectional Morphemes: Provide grammatical information (gender, number, person, aspect, tense).
      • Derivational Morphemes: Add lexical information and are used to form derived words (prefixes, suffixes, interfixes).

Phonemes

Phonemes are the smallest units of language *without* meaning; they are indivisible. They are units of oral and written language and have a differentiating function. In Castilian Spanish, there are 24 phonemes, categorized as vowels and consonants.

Word Formation

  • Simple Words: Contain a single lexeme (e.g., “old”).
  • Compound Words: Formed from two or more simple words.
  • Derived Words: Formed by adding derivational morphemes to a lexeme.
    • Prefix: Derivational morpheme preceding the lexeme.
    • Suffix: Derivational morpheme placed after the lexeme.

Prefix and Suffix Functions

  • Prefix Functions: Significant changes (e.g., negation, opposition).
  • Suffix Functions: Vary or specify meaning, change the grammatical category of the primitive word.

Parasynthetic, Acronyms and Abbreviations

  • Parasynthetic Words: Compound and derived words, formed by two lexemes and one or more derivational morphemes.
  • Acronyms: Terms formed by the initial letters of words making up the names of organizations, political parties, etc.
  • Abbreviations: Shortened forms of words or phrases.

Semantic Relationships

  • Synonyms: Words that have the same meaning.
  • Antonyms: Words that have opposite meanings.
    • Reciprocal: Designate realities that imply each other.
    • Complementary: Have a contrary meaning; one’s affirmation is the other’s denial.
  • Polysemic Words: Words that have more than one interrelated meaning.
  • Homonymous Words: Words of different origin that have converged in form but have different meanings.
    • Homographs: Pronounced and written the same.
    • Homophones: Pronounced alike but written differently.
  • Paronyms: Words pronounced similarly, but with different meanings and spellings.

Lexical and Semantic Fields

  • Lexical Field: A set of words that share a common lexeme.
  • Semantic Field: A set of words that share some common features of meaning.

Semantic Change

Semantic change refers to the changes in the meaning of words over time. Causes include:

  • Words falling into disuse because the reality they designate disappears or is no longer used.
  • The meaning of a word changes simply because the designated objects change.

Mechanisms of semantic change include:

  • Metaphor: Attributing the meaning of one element to another due to perceived similarity.
  • Euphemism: Replacing taboo terms with others that have greater social acceptance.

Media and Communication

Mass media are systems used to transmit information to a broad audience. They use language, sound, and images to achieve their objectives. They can be classified into:

  • Audiovisual Communication: Combines audio and visual elements.
  • Written Communication: Relies on written text.
  • Informative Communication: Focuses on current events of general interest.
  • Entertainment: Aims to amuse and entertain (e.g., humor, music).
  • Didactic Communication: Investigates and explores issues in reality for educational purposes.