Understanding English Vocabulary: Structure, Relations, and Creativity
1. The Word as a Linguistic Sign
Let’s delve into the foundational concept of the word as a linguistic sign, drawing upon Saussure’s sign theory. We can consider the word as a free, minimal version of communication, viewed as:
- An Orthographic Entity: The written form of the word.
- A Phonological Entity: The spoken form of the word.
- A Morphological Entity: The structure of the word, including its root, prefixes, and suffixes.
- A Grammatical Entity: The role the word plays in a sentence, such as noun, verb, or adjective.
- A Semantic Entity: The meaning of the word.
2. Lexical and Semantic Fields in the English Language
Grouping words into sets or fields can be a useful way of learning vocabulary. Lexis is a more technical term than vocabulary. To organize them, we can use distinct criteria and thus obtain what we call semantic fields.
A semantic field is an area of meaning that can be delimited from others in a language. The linguist Trier first put forward the theory of semantic fields, who based it on the concept of a “conceptual sphere.”
On the other hand, the organization of semantic or lexical fields is related to our own experiences and socio-cultural values. The theory of semantic fields has also been criticized because it only conceives relationships between paradigmatic words and not syntagmatic ones.
2.1 Semantic Relations Between Words
A) Homonyms
A homonym is “a single word form which has different meanings not closely related.” That is to say, the same spelling but different meanings.
The term homonymy has to be dealt with in contrast with polysemy, which is a word with different but closely related meanings.
Homonyms can be subdivided into:
- Homophones: Words that are pronounced in the same way but are spelled differently.
- Homographs: Words that are written in the same way but have different meanings.
B) Synonyms
Synonymy is the semantic relation in which the same meaning is expressed through several forms. In this case, synonymy could be considered a relation opposite to homonymy and polysemy.
Strictly speaking, two words are synonyms if they can be used interchangeably in all sentence contexts.
We choose a word instead of its synonym depending on:
- The dialectal condition of the speaker
- The register
- Linguistic restrictions
- Connotation
C) Antonyms
Antonymy holds a relation of non-equivalence in meaning; that is to say, two terms are opposite or incompatible according to their meanings.
There are three main types of antonyms:
- Complementaries: They are genuine opposites. If we deny one term, we are effectively implying the other.
- Gradable: This refers to adjectives that have qualities that are gradable.
- Converses: Converseness could be defined as the relationship between two terms in which one of them refers undoubtedly to the other.
2.2 Lexical Creativity
New concepts are introduced every day. Lexical creativity is achieved by means of three mechanisms:
A) Word Formation: A neologism or a new lexical item is created due to human needs.
B) Conversion: By means of conversion, one class of word is changed into another class without the help of affixes.
C) Semantic Transfer: On this occasion, there is a change of meaning, contrary to the syntactic change in conversion, by means of the metaphor (the meaning of one lexical item is replaced by another “similar” to it).