Ways of classifying lexicon. Types of semantic relations of lexical units. Structure of the English vocabulary

1. Ways of classifying lexicon]

The lexicon in a dictionary is usually organized formally - lexical items are listed according to their written characteristics, usually alphabetically. Alphabetical arrangement is the most convenient form of presenting lexical units of a language that has an alphabet.

Yet, the lexicon in language structure is organized around totally different multilateral principles. Thousands of lexical units of all types (affixes, words and conventionalized word combinations as well as their derived senses) make up the lexicon - a structured system with its own principles of organization. And, m its turn, the meaning and value of each lexical unit is determined by its place in the lexicon as a whole.

The earliest (going back to Aristotle) attempt to classify the lexicon is classification of words into parts of speech - big classes having certain functional (part of speech) meaning, a system of grammatical categories characteristic of the class, specific syntactic functions, and specific types of form- and word building means. Words within a part of speech may be subdivided further according to the type of grammatical meaning they possess. Thus, nouns are subdivided into concrete and abstract, countable and uncountable; verbs are subdivided into transitive and intransitive.

Lexicologists classify lexical units of a language according to their lexical parameters: their etymology, their morphological and derivational structure, according to frequency of occurrence in speech, style register and other various formal or structural-semantic characteristics.

Semantic classification of lexical units, and first of all, of words is the most recent and fundamental one for understanding the lexicon. This classification is based on their semantic, or sense relations - different kinds of associative connections that make links between the words predictable.

Here we shall discuss the established principles of semantic classification and organization of words m the English language.

2. Major types of semantic relations of lexical units]

All lexical units m the lexicon display certain types of semantic relations to other lexical units based on common meanings that form a word-net. The principles of these relations have become the object of scientific studies quite recently.

F. de Saussure (1857-1913) was the first to demonstrate two major types of relations between language units - syntagmatic and paradigmatic, and this classification is applicable to description of phonological, morphological, syntactical and lexical units.

Syntagmatic relations are the relations of mutual expectancy of combining elements, whether they are phonemes, morphemes or words. Syntagmatic relations are linear sequence relations of lexical or any other language units in speech that can be presented as a horizontal line:

un-comfort-able; to meet the demand/requirement; strong man/tea;

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