Учебное пособие: Brief course on lexicology

Syntagmatic relations define the meaning the word possesses when it is used in combination with other words in the flow of speech.

Paradigmatic relations are those that exist between individual lexical items which make up one of the subgroups of vocabulary items (sets of synonyms, lexico-semantic groups, etc.).

Syntagmatic relations
Paradigmatic relations	He got a letter. I received a note. She obtained an epistle.

Lecture 4

Context may be regarded in aspects as following:

- linguistic

- lexical

- grammatical

- extra-linguistic (of situation)

Conceptual (semantic) fields.

Hoponymic (hierachia) structures.

Classification of vocabulary into thematic groups is based on common contextual associations (the result of regular co-occurrence of words in similar, repeatedly used contexts).

The main criterion underlying semantic classification of vocabulary items on the paradigmatic axis is type of meaning relationships between words.

The criterion of common concept serves to classify words into semantic fields and lexico-semantic groups.

Semantic relationship of inclusion is the main feature of hyponymic hierarchical structure. Semantic similarity and semantic contrast is the type of relationship which underlies the classification of lexical items into synonymic and antonymic series.

Synonymy and antonymy are correlative and sometimes overlapping notions. Synonymous relationship of the denotational meaning is in many cases combined with the difference in the connotational (mainly stylistic) component.

Synonyms - words different in sound-form but similar in their denotational meaning or meanings and interchangeable at least in some contexts.

Antonyms - words different in sound-form characterized by different types of semantic contrast of the denotational meaning and interchangeable at least in some contexts.

Word-groups – words put together to form lexical units make up phrases or word-groups. Come dew to lexical and grammatical valency of the components.

Lexical valency is the aptness of a word to appear in various collocations. Restriction of the lexical valency are to be accounted for by the inner structure of the vocabulary of the English language.

Different meanings of a polysemantic word may be described through its lexical valency.

Grammatical valency is the aptness of a word to appear in various grammatical structures. Restriction of the grammatical valency are to be accounted for by the grammatical structure of the language. The range of the grammatical valency of the word is delimited by the part of speech the word belongs to.

Structurally, word-groups may be classified by the criterion of distribution into exocentric and endocentric (they according to the head-word are distinguished nominal, adverbial, verbal, adjectival) .

Semantically, word-groups may be classified into motivated and non-motivated (phraseological units)

Lecture 5

Phraseological units – non-motivated word-groups that cannot be freely made up in speech but are reproduced as ready made units.

Classification: