Analysis of semantic classification of vocabulary items

The subject of my paper is the semantic classification of vocabulary items and the object is the analysis of vocabulary items. ...

INTRODUCTION 3
1. SEMANTIC СLASSIFICATION OF VOCABULARY ITEMS 4
1.1 Basic principles of grouping words 4
2. SEMANTIC CLASSES 7
2.1. Synonymy 7
2.2. Euphemisms 9
2.3. Antonymy 9
2.4. Homonyms 11
2.5. The lexical and terminological sets 11
2.6. The lexico-semantic group 12
2.7. The semantic fields 13
CONCLUSION 15
REFERENCES 16

There are many different ways to approach the problems of meaning, since meaning is related to many different functions of language. The meanings of words in a language are interrelated and they are defined in part by their relations with other words in the language. Analyzed in the same semantic domain, words can be classified according to shared and differentiating features.
A lexeme can be analyzed and described in terms of its semantic components, which help to define different lexical relations, grammatical and syntactic processes. The semantic structure of a lexeme is treated as a system of meanings. To some extent, we can define a lexeme by telling what set it belongs to and how it differs from other members of the same set.

[2; p. 46] And it does not present a perfect type of a linguistic category. Moreover, a synonym – is a word of similar or identical meaning to one or more words in the same language. They are no two absolutely identical words because connotations, ways of usage, frequency of an occurrence are different. [15; p. 33] The synonyms’ characteristics is the semantic relations of equivalence or by semantic relations of proximity and the main type of synonyms is full synonyms that are characterized by semantic equivalence but they are extremely rare. Furthermore, it is very important to say that the words may be graded in semantic proximity or we can say about words with a higher degree of semantic proximity which helps to single out synonyms, and words with a lower degree of semantic proximity which helps to unite words in broader and less homogeneous groups. [8; p. 12-14] And there is a classification of synonyms in lexicology, there are several types, which are:Stylistic synonymy implies no interchangeability in context because the underlying situations are different, for example: children – infants, dad – father.Ideographic synonymy presents a still lower degree of semantic proximity and is observed when the connotational and pragmatic aspects are similar, but there are certain differences in the denotational aspect of meaning of two words, for instance: forest – wood, apartment – flat, shape – form.Ideographic-stylistic synonymy is characterized by the lowest degree of semantic proximity, for example: ask – inquire, expect – anticipate. [10; p. 133 – 145] However, it is also important to say about the synonymic dominant. It is a dominant element, which is the most general term potentially containing the specific features rendered by all the other members of the synonymic group, for instance: leave – depart – quit – retire – clear out where the verb leave is a synonymic dominant and it have a neutral meaning. [17; p. 54-56]As a result we can mark that the dominant synonym expresses the notion common to all synonyms of the group in the most general way, without contributing any additional information as to the manner, intensity, duration or any attending feature of the referent. So, any dominant synonym is a typical basic-vocabulary word. Its meaning, which is broad and generalized, more or less covers the meaning of the rest of the synonyms, so that it may be substituted for any of them.Moreover we can provide the following characteristic features of the dominant synonym can be underlined:high frequency of use;broad combinability, for instance, the ability to be used in combinations with various classes of words;broad general meaning. 2.2. EuphemismsEuphemism comes from Greek meaning ‘fair speech’. It is the habit of avoiding an unpleasant or taboo reference by substituting some indirect words or expressions for the blunt and direct ones. Euphemism is the use of a word or phrase as a synonym for another word, which is avoided because of its taboo status or because of its negative political or ideological connotations. [1; p. 133] Euphemism is especially frequent when we must come face to face with the less happy facts of our existence. The word ‘to die’ has the following euphemisms: to expire, to pass away, to depart, to join the majority, to kick the bucket, go to sleep, go on a journey. Also for the word ‘death’ there are the next euphemism: the final sleep. The notion of death is made more tolerable to human consciousness.A great number of euphemisms in English came from words with Latin roots. 2.3. AntonymyThe next semantic category is antonymy. The term antonyms means a class of words grouped together on the basis of the semantic relations of opposition. There are generally three kinds of sense relations, that is, sameness relation, oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation. Antonymy is the name for oppositeness relation. And there are three main types of antonymy, that is, gradable antonymy, complementary antonymy, and converse antonymy. [10; p. 164-168]Speaking about the gradable antonymy it should be said that it is the commonest type of antonymy. The antonym pairs like hot-cold, big-small and tall-short all belong to the gradable antonyms. The gradable antonymy has three main characteristics: first, as the name suggests, they are gradable, that is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree; second, antonyms of this kind are graded against different norms; third, one member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term. The next type of antonyms is complementary such as awake-asleep, married-single, pass-fail, alive-dead and male-female. Complementary antonyms also have three characteristics: first, they divide up the whole of a semantic field completely; second, the norm in this type is absolute; third, there is no cover term for the two members of a pair. The complementary antonyms share a semantic field.And the last type of antonyms is converse. The antonym pairs like husband-wife, doctor-patient, teacher-student, buy-sell, above-below and employer-employee are all converse antonyms and they show a reversal relationship. [7; p. 234-238] These antonym pairs as pairs of words which include such a relationship that one of them cannot be used without suggesting the other. Therefore, we can say that there is a huge difference between converse antonymy and the other two subtypes of antonymy, that is, one should presupposes the other as for the two members that involved in an antonym pair. For instance, we cannot say he is a husband, we must say he is whose husband, because one can not be a husband if he has no wife.Speaking about the semantic classification of antonyms, it is very important to mark that contradictory notions are mutually opposed and denying one another, for instance, alive means ‘not dead’ and impatient means ‘not patient’. Moreover, incompatibles semantic relations of incompatibility exist among the antonyms with the common component of meaning and may be described as the relations of exclusion but not of contradiction: to say ‘morning’ is to say ‘not afternoon, not evening, not night’.2.4. HomonymsFurthermore, it is important to say about the homonyms. These are the words that have different meanings. In the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but have different meanings. There are the examples of homonyms, such as: stalk – ‘part of a plant’ and stalk ‘follow/harass a person’ and the pair left ‘past tense of leave’ and left ‘opposite of right’. [12; p. 69-71]A distinction is sometimes made between ‘true’ homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as skate ‘glide on ice’ and skate ‘the fish’, and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as mouth ‘of a river’ and mouth ‘of an animal’.2.5. The lexical and terminological setsThe next category of semantic grouping of vocabulary is the lexical and terminological sets. In the lexical sets there are words denoting things correlated on extralinguistic groups form: lion, tiger, leopard, puma, cat refer to the lexical set of ‘the animal of the cat family’. Lexical groups may be very extensive and may cover big conceptual areas, for example: space, matter, intellect, and etc. Words making up such semantic fields may belong to different parts of speech. For instance, in semantic field of space we can find nouns: expanse, extent, surface; verbs: extend, spread and etc.; adjectives: broad, roomy, vast, etc.However in the terminological sets there are lexical sets, which acquire a more specialized character, for instance, the names of ‘musical instruments’: piano, organ, violin, drum; the names of ‘parts of the car mechanism’: radiator, motor, handbrake, wheels. [5; p. 250-252] All these words in the terminological sets are grouped due to their attachment to the same semantic group.2.6. The lexico-semantic groupThe next semantic class as lexico-semantic group unites words describing sides of one and the same general notion if:the underlying notion is not too generalized and all-embracing, like notions of ‘time’, ‘space’, ‘life’, ‘process’.the reference to the underlying notion is not just an implication in the meaning of the lexical unit but forms an essential part in its semantics.For example, the verbs of ‘destruction’are: to ruin, to destroy, to explore, to kill. There may be comparatively small lexical groups of words belonging to the same part of speech and linked by a common concept such as: milk, cheese, meat, bread – make up a group with ‘the concept of food’. And these smaller lexical groups consisting of words of the same part of speech are also termed lexico-semantic groups. It is observed that the criterion for joining words together into lexico-semantic groups is the identity of one of the components of their meaning found in all the lexical units making up these lexical groups.