Теоретические основы лексической семантики

Дисциплина: Введение в лексическую семантику Раздел 1: Теоретические основы лексической семантики Автор: Амирова Оксана Георгиевна, к.филол.н., доцент кафедры английского языка Обязательно к изучению по Направлению 44.04.01 Педагогическое образование (уровень магистратуры), Направленности (профилю) «Языковое образование (английский язык)» (с использованием дистанционных технологий) OUTLINE OF LECTURE BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 INTRODUCTION 4 1. Lexical Semantics as a Linguistic Discipline 4 1.1. The Subject of Lexical Semantics 4 1.2. Lexical Semantics and Linguistics Curricula 5 1.3. Lexical Semantics and Other Linguistic Disciplines 7 1.4. Lexical Semantic Theories 9 1.5. Teaching through Student-led Research 11 2. The History of Lexical Semantics 13 2.1. The Theoretical Scope of Lexical Semantics 13 2.1.1 Pre-structuralist Historical Semantics 13 2.1.2 Structuralist Semantics 14 2.1.3 Generativist Semantics 14 2.1.4 Logical Semantics 15 2.1.5 Cognitive Semantics 15 3. The Empirical Scope of Lexical Semantics 23 3.1. Semasiology vs Onomasiology 23 3.2. Qualitative vs Quantitative Aspects of Lexical Semantics 24 4. Lexical Semantic Relations 25 4.1. The List of Major Semantic Relations 25 4.2. Hierarchical Relations in Semantics 30 4.3. Non-Hierarchical Relations in Semantics 31 GLOSSARY 37 BIBLIOGRAPHY Normative Legal Acts 1. Федеральный закон от 299.12.2012 № 273-ФЗ (ред. От 30.12.2015) «Об образовании в Российской Федерации» – Режим доступа: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_law_140174/ 2. Федеральный закон от 27.07.2006 № 149-ФЗ «Об информации, информационных технологиях и защите информации» – Режим доступа: http://base.consultant.ru?cons?cgi?online.cgi?req=doc;base=LAW;n=183056 3. Приказ Министерства образования и науки от 09.01.2014 №2 «Об утверждении Порядка применения организациями, осуществляющими образовательную деятельность, электронного обучения, дистанционных образовательных технологий при реализации образовательных программ» – Режим доступа: http://base.garant.ru?70634148/ 4. Федеральные государственные образовательные стандарты. – Режим доступа: http://fgosvo.ru/ Main List: 5. Brinton J. Laurel The Structure of Modern English: a Linguistic Introduction [Электронный ресурс] – John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010. Режим доступа: https://benjamins.com/catalog/z.94 6. Geeraerts Dirk Theories of Lexical Semantics [Электронный ресурс] – Oxford University Press, 2010. Режим доступа: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/dirkg.htm Optional List: 7. Кобозева И.М. Лингвистическая семантика [Текст] – М.: УРСС, 2000. – 352 с. 8. Апресян Ю.Б. Избранные труды. Т. 1. Лексическая семантика. Синонимические средства языка [Текст] – М.: Школа языка русской культуры, 1995. – 472 с. 9. Падучева Е.В. Семантические исследования. Семантика времени и вида в русском языке. Семантика нарратива [Текст] – М., 1996. – 464 с. Introduction The term semantics comes from Ancient Greek: σημαντικός sēmantikós, with the meaning of significant. It is generally defined as the study of meaning in language, formal logics, and semiotics. It focuses on the relationship between signifiers - like words, phrases, signs, and symbols - and what they stand for, their denotation. In international scientific vocabulary semantics is also called semasiology. The word semantics was first used by Michel Bréal, a French philologist. It denotes a range of ideas - from the popular to the highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language for denoting a problem of understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation. This problem of understanding has been the subject of many formal enquiries, over a long period of time, especially in the field of formal semantics. In linguistics, it is the study of the interpretation of signs or symbols used in agents or communities within particular circumstances and contexts. Within this view, sounds, facial expressions, body language, and proxemics have semantic (meaningful) content, and each comprises several branches of study. In written language, things like paragraph structure and punctuation bear semantic content; other forms of language bear other semantic content. 1. Lexical Semantics as a Linguistic Discipline 1.1. The Subject of Lexical Semantics The formal study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry, including lexicology, syntax, pragmatics, etymology and others. Independently, semantics is also a well-defined field in its own right, often with synthetic properties. In the philosophy of language, semantics and reference are closely connected. Further related fields include philology, communication, and semiotics. The formal study of semantics can therefore be manifold and complex. Semantics contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorics of units of a language (without reference to their meaning), and pragmatics, the study of the relationships between the symbols of a language, their meaning, and the users of the language. Semantics as a field of study also has significant ties to various representational theories of meaning including truth theories of meaning, coherence theories of meaning, and correspondence theories of meaning. Each of these is related to the general philosophical study of reality and the representation of meaning. On balance lexical semantics could be defined as the “study of word meaning”, but in practice it is often more specifically concerned with the study of lexical (i.e. content) word meaning, as opposed to the meanings of grammatical (or function) words. This means that lexical semanticists is most interested in the open classes of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions discriminating lexical meaning to some extent. Lexical semantics focuses on content words, but such words cannot be studied in an agrammatical vacuum. Some lexical properties, like verbal properties, have effects throughout the sentence. So, for instance, a difference between the verbs spot and see can be described in terms of aspectual properties of the verbs: spot describes a punctual event, while see does not. This in turn affects which tense and aspect markers can be present in the same clause and how such markers are interpreted. So, I saw the bird all day long can describe a continuous seeing event, while I spotted the bird all day long must be interpreted as repeated instances of spotting events. Thus, the suggested approach taken below is to offer a broad range of lexical semantic topics. 1.2. Lexical Semantics and Linguistics Curricula Lexical semantics fits into linguistics curricula in various ways. Some of the most common ways are: - as a sub-module in a semantics course (often lower-mid level in degree) - as part of a course on vocabulary/lexicology - including morphology, etymology, lexicography as well as semantics (often lower-mid level) - as a free-standing course (often upper level) Plainly, what one covers is determined by the type of course, the number of sessions devoted to lexical semantics, the level of the students and what has been presented already in other courses. The following table presents an outline of key topics in lexical semantics. The rightmost column suggests issues that could be studied in more depth in courses that can presuppose or develop more background information. This is not intended as a week-by-week syllabus, but as a list of major concepts and areas of investigation, which may be presented in a different order, different combinations and different levels of depth than presented here. The key topics in lexical semantics are the following: 1. What is a lexicon? (notions related to lexicon, mental lexicon, lexis, lexical item, lexical entry, lexicon/grammar) 2. What is a word? (notions related to the definitions of word/lexeme and word classes) 3. What is meaning? (notions related to the aspects of meaning: denotation, connotation, social meaning, sense/reference, ambiguity/vagueness, polysemy/homonymy) 4. What are meaning components? (notions related to componential and prototype approaches) 5. What are the alternatives to classical theory? (notions related to modern componential approaches, conceptual semantics, natural semantic metalanguage) 6. What are the semantic relations? (notions related to synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, semantic field analysis) 7. Topics in verb meaning ontological categories 8. Topics in noun meaning ontological categories 9. Topics in adjective meaning ontological categories Topics 1-4 (basic issues) should be covered in any linguistics degree, and may be covered in courses other than lexical semantics. Topics 3-4 and 6 are covered in most short lexical semantics modules (e.g. within a general semantics course). Coverage of topics 5 and 7-9 is more uneven across departments, but at least some aspects of these would normally be covered in an upper-level lexical semantics course. 1.3. Lexical Semantics and Other Linguistic Disciplines  Stand-alone lexical semantics courses are fairly unusual, but aspects of lexical semantics can be taught within a range of other disciplinary and cross-disciplinary courses. As already mentioned, this most commonly happens in general semantics courses, and can also be part of lexicography or lexicology courses. The latter, under various names, have become more common lately, particularly as introductory linguistics courses - as words provide an accessible gateway to many linguistic concepts. Lexical semantics courses can incorporate other interdisciplinary interests. Courses in other sub-disciplines, including the following, can benefit from inclusion of some lexical semantic topics: Pragmatics – No semantics course can help but to tread on the toes of pragmatics, and some theoretical approaches (particularly Cognitive Linguistics) have done away with the distinction between semantic and pragmatic competence. Still, one of the first challenges in learning about lexical semantics is to be able to make the distinction between a word’s contribution to the meaning of an utterance and the contributions of context (pragmatics) and co-text (the phrasal context). Pragmatic accounts have been proposed for many lexical semantic issues, such as polysemy (e.g. Nunberg 1979, Blutner 1998) and semantic relations (Murphy 2003). Morphology – Just as there are many interfaces between syntax and sentential semantics, so there are between morphology and lexical semantics. One is the question of whether word class is semantically determined (see Table 1, topic 2). The semantics of derivational morphemes and derived words also provides fertile thinking ground. Kreidler’s Introducing English semantics (1998) has an accessible chapter for beginners, while Lieber (2004) provides a theoretical account that fits with Jackendoff’s Conceptual Semantics. Psycholinguistics – Most lexical semantic issues can be addressed from a psycholinguistic perspective, and psycholinguistic methods offer evidence concerning how words and meanings are organised in the mind. Aitchison (2002) provides an introduction to many of these issues. Reeves (1998) outlines some of the experimental methods used in investigating the mental lexicon, some of which can be replicated in the classroom. Anthropological linguistics, field linguistics, typology – Cross-linguistic lexical comparison has a long history in anthropology, particularly with reference to kinship terms, biological classification and colour (Berlin and Kay 1969). Lexical-semantic typology (e.g. Talmy 1985) and contrastive lexical semantics (e.g. Weigand 1998) raise issues that are relevant to language courses as well. Linguistic relativity, the idea that the language one knows can affect one’s means of thinking, is enjoying some reconsideration (e.g. Gumperz & Levinson 1996). Some of the more promising avenues for such study involve morphological categories, such as gender. The converse idea, that lexis is affected by culture, has been explored in depth in Anna Wierzbicka’s work (particularly 1992 and 1997). These issues are usually very popular with students. Computational linguistics – Much lexical semantic work nowadays is done in computational linguistics/natural language processing (NLP), including much work on polysemy/ambiguity resolution and the development of semantic networks. WordNet (Fellbaum 1998) has enjoyed particular success as an NLP tool and model of lexical structure. There is a large body of work on ambiguity resolution, and Pustejovsky’s (1995) Generative Lexicon Theory (see below) has arisen though and been applied to such NLP concerns. 1.4. Lexical Semantic Theories Whether to teach a particular theoretical perspective on lexical semantics is a tricky question, since in a sense, there’s no such thing as a free-standing ‘lexical semantic theory’, but instead there are semantic theories that pay more or less attention to representation at the lexical level. If one were to try to cover the topics listed in Table 1 with reference to a single theory, it is unlikely that even coverage of the topics would be possible, since different theoretical perspectives have taken different starting points. For first-year courses, a pre-theoretical approach is usually most attractive. This can be done, for instance, by taking a lexicographical approach - i.e. what are the issues that one needs to understand in order to write dictionary entries? Jackson’s textbook Words and their meaning (1988) took this kind of approach. Hudson’s workbook Word meaning (1995) introduces basic lexical semantic concepts with minimal theoretical discussion, and Cruse’s Meaning in language (2000b) is heavily focused on lexical issues. In addition, there are lexicology textbooks (Jackson and Zé Amvela 2000, Singleton 2000) that are suitable for lower-level courses. These are generally more suitable for courses that intend an ‘introduction to linguistics through words’, since their treatments of basic semantic issues, such as polysemy, are rather cursory. In more advanced courses, theoretical approaches are appropriate, but which ones should be tackled is to some degree a matter of taste and of the rest of the curriculum - in that it could be confusing to teach a theory for lexical semantics that is incompatible with the theories taught in the department for general semantics and grammar. That said, while general semantics courses are often taught from a formal, model-theoretic perspective, lexical semantics teaching is generally approached from non-formal stances. The most widely accepted approach is to contrast different theoretical views to a particular topic (without presenting formalisms that require knowledge of particular logical languages) - but this presents particular challenges. First, the approaches to be contrasted may have very different basic assumptions about the nature of meaning or the lexicon, and thus a fair amount of background to the theories must be presented. Second, they may not be trying to answer exactly the same questions or to cover the same set of phenomena. There are at least three ways of getting around these issues. One is to present from the beginning two general types of approach (e.g., componential vs image-schematic), examining in detail first their basic assumptions, and then investigating how the contrasting theories have (or would) approach particular phenomena. We can call this the ‘comparative approach’. Because one is dealing with ‘families’ of theories in this way, it can be possible to examine a range of problems from contrasting perspectives. Still, it does require some theoretical juggling. (This is the approach of Murphy, forthcoming.) Another possibility is to take an ‘envelope-pushing’ approach, in which a particular theory is taken as a starting point, but then challenged to account for issues that have been discussed from purely descriptive or other theoretical approaches. This is most suitable to upper-level courses, in which the students are ready to develop their own theoretical accounts. The final option is to simply teach a theory as it is presented in its fundamental literature. However, while this last option may be appealingly straightforward, it is the least promising for instilling critical thinking skills or a broad perspective on the field. The comparative and envelope-pushing approaches can also be valuable for inspiring further research projects, for example in a final-year dissertation. One of the greatest challenges for teaching semantics from a theoretical standpoint is the lack of theory-specific textbooks for the undergraduate level. The only current texts in this vein are Goddard’s Semantic Analysis (1998), which introduces mostly lexical issues in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework, and Cognitive Linguistics texts (most of which are not limited to lexical semantic issues). Some general semantics textbooks (e.g. Löbner 2002, Saeed 2003) give comparative overviews of some theoretical approaches, but for the most part, it can be difficult to find textbooks that are suitable to non-formal theories. Frawley’s Linguistic Semantics (1992) covers many issues of lexical interest at some level of comparative theoretical detail. Another option is to develop a reading pack, based on shorter primary materials, including book chapters, journal articles and encyclopedic overviews. Some relevant, mostly current theoretical approaches are listed below, with citation of their foundational literature or (where possible) textbooks - marked here by T. In general, they can be divided into two types: componential and schematic. Componential approaches rely on a language-like system of meaning representation involving a limited number of primitive symbols in some kind of grammar - the classic example being the model in Katz and Fodor 1963. Schematic approaches take the position that word meaning must be approached within more complex conceptual structures, often relying on a more image-driven representational form, such as the ‘image schemas’ of Lakoff 1987. Componential approaches are more generally associated with the goals of generative linguistics, and schematic ones with cognitive linguistics, although there is a wide range of variation among all these approaches. 1.5. Teaching through Student-led Research Words provide self-contained packets of language about which many types of investigation can be carried out. Teaching lexical semantics is thus particularly exciting for the opportunities that it allows for student-led, original research. Students can research word meaning using a variety of tools, including introspection, fieldwork, dictionaries, corpora and (where appropriate) psycholinguistic experimentation, as discussed in turn below. Introspection: Asking oneself how one uses language is the classic linguistic method, and it should be used throughout a lexical semantics course. Beginning students usually need some guidance to bring them from “what does this word mean to me?” (a question answer of which may not be reliable) to finding answers for the question “how can I test the semantic properties of this word?” For students whose native language is not the language of the course, introspection is usually not a suitable main means of discovery. Therefore students may be allowed to treat any assignment that calls for introspection as also allowing ‘field methods’. Field methods: Where native intuitions are not available or where they may vary, one may instead (or in addition) quiz native-speaker informants about the acceptability of a word in various contexts (or about the boundaries of the word’s sense, etc.). Here, a little more training is needed, in part to avoid wasting informants’ time and patience. This can be achieved by modeling field methods practice in the classroom and then asking the students to devise a list of questions/examples that they will ask their informants about. For any assignment that is the same for all students on the course, we can enforce a rule that their informants cannot be members of the class, nor other Linguistics students, so that the ‘field methods’ cannot be mistaken for ‘collusion’. Dictionaries: Dictionary definitions can provide a good starting point for thinking about a word’s meaning, the nature of polysemy and the relation between descriptive and prescriptive attitudes to language. Advanced learners’ dictionaries often provide more ‘grammatical’ information about words, including information about collocations and more specific grammatical categories (e.g. count/mass nouns), which can be valuable for both non-native and native speakers. The Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, provides plenty of etymological information and examples of usage. Both types can be valuable for different kinds of activities. Some activities using dictionaries include: using a number of dictionaries to map the sense boundaries of a particular word, comparing actual uses of words to their dictionary definitions and determining the principles underlying the organization of information in a thesaurus. Corpora: Corpus linguistics offers a means to supplement and/or challenge introspective evidence. The problem for any lexical semantics course, however, is whether the facilities and time are available to provide students with access to a corpus, corpus software and the appropriate skills to use them. Once students know a bit about corpora, they can have a hand in designing the methodology for a particular corpus investigation, with the tutor or technician still charged with executing it. If the question to be put to the corpus is simply “can one say X in English?”, it is quite sufficient to have students search for exact phrases on the internet using a standard search engine. Experiments: Most lexical semantics courses will not have the time/facilities to teach experimental methods, nor to teach students to use the types of software usually used in psycholinguistic experimentation. Some experiments, however, like some used by Eleanor Rosch (1978) to demonstrate prototype effects, can be carried out with pen and paper and extended to different words/categories. 2. The History of Lexical Semantics A schematic overview of the history of lexical semantics is based on different theoretical approaches which are related by lines of similarity as well as mutual apposition. The five stages that it seems necessary to distinguish are the following: - prestructuralist historical-philological semantics; - structuralist semantics; - generativist semantics; - logical or neostructuralist semantics; - cognitive semantics. 2.1. The Theoretical Scope of Lexical Semantics 2.1.1 Pre-structuralist Historical Semantics Prestructuralist historical-philological semantics dominated the scene from roughly 1870 to 1930 since only by the middle of the 19th century the research into word meaning establishes itself as a distinct subdiscipline of a new science of linguistics. At the level of individual researchers prestructuralist semantics is represented by Breal, Paul, Nyrop, Stem. At the methodological level that type of semantic research may be characterized by the following three features. First, the orientation of research is a diachronic one: what semantics is interested in, is change of meaning. Second, change of meaning is narrowed down to change of word meaning. Third, the conception of meaning is predominantly psychological being associated with such psychological entities as thoughts and ideas. 2.1.2 Structuralist Semantics The origins of structuralist semantics are mainly attributed to Trier since his monograph of 1931 was indeed the fist major descriptive work in structuralist semantics which criticizes the prestructuralist approach on the following points. The study of meaning, in the first place, should not be confined to the meaning of separate lexemes but, on the contrary, should be concerned with semantic structures. Second, it should be synchronic instead of diachronic. And third, semantics should deal with language structures directly, regardless of the way they may be present in the individual’s mind. Let’s consider the following example: to be afraid of doing smth / to be afraid to do smth. On the one side, if we analyze the meaning of the lexeme afraid in isolation, in both constructions it remains the same. On the other side, if we analyze the meaning of the constructions under study, we see that the gerundial construction adds the semantic feature of probability, while the infinitive construction presents the situation as a real fact. The realization of the attempt to develop a synchronic non-psychological, structural theory of semantics depended on the way the notion of semantic structure was conceived. In actual practice the following three kinds of structural relations among lexical items were singled out as methodological basis of lexical semantics. First, there is the relationship of semantic similarity that forms the bedrock of semantic field analysis, initiated by Trier, leading to componential analysis. Second, there are paradigmatic lexical relations such as synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy which were for the first time systematically selected as the methodological basis of structural semantics by Lyons (1963). Third, syntagmatic lexical relations were identified by Porzig (1934). This type of relations later was incorporated into generative grammar by Kats and Fodor (1963). 2.1.3 Generativist Semantics All through the second half of the 1960s and the major part of the 1970s the generativist model of lexico-semantic description formed a reference point for studies in lexical semantics. Katzian methodology was based on a rigidly formalized linguistic analysis borrowed from the Chomskyan requirements of generative grammar. From the point of view of the object of study, Katzian semantics brought together the three types of semantic relations of structuralist semantic theories. In short, this approach to lexical-semantic research was a singular combination of a basic structural semantic methodology, a mentalist philosophy of language and a formalized descriptive terminology. The further development of lexical semantics was characterized by trend towards the logical approaches to meaning analysis and cognitive orientations in semantic studies. 2.1.4 Logical Semantics In the context of an overview of the methodological history of lexical semantics, the evolution to wards logical semantics basically means a shift of emphasis from lexical semantics to sentential semantics. It means that the meaning of the sentence is not equal o the combination of meanings of different words composing it. In other words there are some intersegmental semantic elements that play a crucial role in identifying the meaning of the sentence. Let’s consider the following examples: The book is on the table. / There is a book on the table. In the cited examples the combination of notional items is the same, but the interpositional elements either stress the location of the object (in the 1st example) or the object itself (in the 2nd example). Still, logical approach to lexical semantics is somewhat of a minor tradition since it analyses properties of propositions not of individual words. Its descriptive contribution to lexical semantics is confined to the analysis of lexical items corresponding to logical operators (such as quantifiers and connectives) and the analysis of the syntactic meaning of word classes. 2.1.5 Cognitive Semantics The cognitive approach to the semantic studies is based on the experimental evidence. At present cognitive semantics takes mainly three forms. First, the prototypical theory of categorical structure developed in psycholinguistics by Rosch is taken as the basis for models of the internal structure of natural language categories; second, the decompositional theory based on the experimental data is widely applied in differentiation of overlapping meanings; third, a renewed interest in metaphor has led to a new wave of research of cognitive models and their experimental background (Lakoff, Johnson). Since cognitive semantics dominates the research domain we are going to discuss this stage in the development of lexical semantics in an ample way. Being a part of cognitive linguistics cognitive semantics holds that language is part of a more general human cognitive ability, and can therefore only describe the world as people conceive it. It is implicit that there is some difference between this conceptual world and the real world. The main tenets of cognitive semantics are: • That grammar manifests a conception of the world held in a culture; • That knowledge of language is acquired and contextual; • That the ability to use language draws upon general cognitive resources and not a special language module. As part of the field of cognitive linguistics, the cognitive semantics approach rejects the traditional separation of linguistics into phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, etc. Instead, it divides semantics into meaning-construction and knowledge representation. Therefore, cognitive semantics studies much of the area traditionally devoted to pragmatics as well as semantics. The techniques native to cognitive semantics are typically used in lexical studies such as those put forth by Leonard Talmy, George Lakoff, Dirk Geeraerts, and Bruce Wayne Hawkins. Some cognitive semantic frameworks, such as that developed by Talmy, take into account syntactic structures as well. Classic theories in semantics (in the tradition of Alfred Tarski and Donald Davidson) have tended to explain the meaning of parts in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, sentences in terms of truth-conditions, and composition in terms of propositional functions. Each of these positions is tightly related to the others. According to these traditional theories, the meaning of a particular sentence may be understood as the conditions under which the proposition conveyed by the sentence hold true. For instance, the expression “snow is white” is true if and only if snow is, in fact, white. Lexical units can be understood as holding meaning either by virtue of set of things they may apply to (called the “extension” of the word), or in terms of the common properties that hold between these things (called its “intension”). The intension provides an interlocutor with the necessary and sufficient conditions that let a thing qualify as a member of some lexical unit's extension. Roughly, propositional functions are those abstract instructions that guide the interpreter in taking the free variables in an open sentence and filling them in, resulting in a correct understanding of the sentence as a whole. Meanwhile, cognitive semantic theories are typically built on the argument that lexical meaning is conceptual. That is, meaning is not necessarily reference to the entity or relation in some real or possible world. Instead, meaning corresponds with a concept held in the mind based on personal understanding. As a result, semantic facts like “All bachelors are unmarried males” are not treated as special facts about our language practices; rather, these facts are not distinct from encyclopedic knowledge. In treating linguistic knowledge as being a piece with everyday knowledge, the question is raised: how can cognitive semantics explain paradigmatically semantic phenomena, like category structure? Set to the challenge, researchers have drawn upon theories from related fields, like cognitive psychology and cognitive anthropology. One proposal is to treat in order to explain category structure in terms of nodes in a knowledge network. One example of a theory from cognitive science that has made its way into the cognitive semantic mainstream is the theory of prototypes, which cognitive semanticists generally argue is the cause of polysemy. Cognitive semanticists argue that truth-conditional semantics is unduly limited in its account of full sentence meaning. While they are not on the whole hostile to truth-conditional semantics, they point out that it has limited explanatory power. That is to say, it is limited to indicative sentences, and does not seem to offer any straightforward or intuitive way of treating (say) commands or expressions. By contrast, cognitive semantics seeks to capture the full range of grammatical moods by also making use of the notions of framing and mental spaces. Another trait of cognitive semantics is the recognition that meaning is not fixed but a matter of construal and conventionalization. The processes of linguistic construal, it is argued, are the same psychological processes involved in the processing of encyclopedic knowledge and in perception. This view has implications for the problem of compositionality. An account in cognitive semantics called the dynamic construal theory makes the claim that words themselves are without meaning: they have, at best, “default construals,” which are really just ways of using words. Along these lines, cognitive semantics argues that compositionality can only be intelligible if pragmatic elements like context and intention are taken into consideration. Cognitive semantics has sought to challenge traditional theories in two ways: first, by providing an account of the meaning of sentences by going beyond truth-conditional accounts; and second, by attempting to go beyond accounts of word meaning that appeal to necessary and sufficient conditions. It accomplishes both by examining the structure of concepts. Frame semantics, developed by Charles J. Fillmore, attempts to explain meaning in terms of their relation to general understanding, not just in the terms laid out by truth-conditional semantics. Fillmore explains meaning in general (including the meaning of lexemes) in terms of "frames". By “frame” any concept is meant that can only be understood if a larger system of concepts is also understood. Many pieces of linguistic evidence motivate the frame-semantic project. First, it has been noted that word meaning is an extension of our bodily and cultural experiences. For example, the notion of restaurant is associated with a series of concepts, like food, service, waiters, tables, and eating. These rich-but-contingent associations cannot be captured by an analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, yet they still seem to be intimately related to our understanding of restaurant. Second, and more seriously, these conditions are not enough to account for asymmetries in the ways that words are used. According to a semantic feature analysis, there is nothing more to the meanings of boy and girl than: 1. BOY [+MALE], [+YOUNG] 2. GIRL [+FEMALE], [+YOUNG] And there is surely some truth to this proposal. Indeed, cognitive semanticists understand the instances of the concept held by a given certain word may be said to exist in a schematic relation with the concept itself. And this is regarded as a legitimate approach to semantic analysis, so far as it goes. However, linguists have found that language users regularly apply the terms boy and girl in ways that go beyond mere semantic features. That is, for instance, people tend to be more likely to consider a young female a girl (as opposed to woman), than they are to consider a borderline-young male a boy (as opposed to man). This fact suggests that there is a latent frame, made up of cultural attitudes, expectations, and background assumptions, which is part of word meaning. These background assumptions go up and beyond those necessary and sufficient conditions that correspond to a semantic feature account. Frame semantics, then, seeks to account for these puzzling features of lexical items in some systematic way. Third, cognitive semanticists argue that truth-conditional semantics is incapable of dealing adequately with some aspects of the meanings at the level of the sentence. Take the following: You didn't spare me a day at the seaside; you deprived me of one. In this case, the truth-conditions of the claim expressed by the antecedent in the sentence are not being denied by the proposition expressed after the clause. Instead, what is being denied is the way that the antecedent is framed. Finally, with the frame-semantic paradigm's analytical tools, the linguist is able to explain a wider range of semantic phenomena than they would be able to with only necessary and sufficient conditions. Some words have the same definitions or intensions, and the same extensions, but have subtly different domains. For example, the lexemes land and ground are synonyms, yet they naturally contrast with different things - sea and air, respectively. As we have seen, the frame semantic account is by no means limited to the study of lexemes - with it, researchers may examine expressions at more complex levels, including the level of the sentence (or, more precisely, the utterance). The notion of framing is regarded as being of the same cast as the pragmatic notion of background assumptions. Philosopher of language John Searle explains the latter by asking readers to consider sentences like: The cat is on the mat. For such a sentence to make any sense, the interpreter makes a series of assumptions: i.e., that there is gravity, the cat is parallel to the mat, and the two touch. For the sentence to be intelligible, the speaker supposes that the interpreter has an idealized or default frame in mind. An alternate strain of Fillmore's analysis can be found in the work of Ronald Langacker, who makes a distinction between the notions of profile and base. The profile is the concept symbolized by the word itself, while the base is the encyclopedic knowledge that the concept presupposes. For example, let the definition of radius be a line segment that joins the center of a circle with any point on its circumference. If all we know of the concept radius is its profile, then we simply know that it is a line segment that is attached to something called the circumference in some greater whole called the circle. That is to say, our understanding is fragmentary until the base concept of circle is firmly grasped. When a single base supports a number of different profiles, then it can be called a domain. For instance, the concept profiles of arc, center, and circumference are all in the domain of circle, because each uses the concept of circle as a base. We are then in a position to characterize the notion of a frame as being either the base of the concept profile, or (more generally) the domain that the profile is a part of. A major divide in the approaches to cognitive semantics lies in the puzzle surrounding the nature of category structure. Prototype theories, investigated by Eleanor Rosch, have given some reason to suppose that many natural lexical category structures are graded, i.e., they have prototypical members that are considered to be “better fit” the category than other examples. For instance, robins are generally viewed as better examples of the category bird than, say, penguins. If this view of category structure is the case, then categories can be understood to have central and peripheral members, and not just be evaluated in terms of members and non-members. In a related vein, George Lakoff noted that some categories are only connected to one another by way of family resemblances. While some classical categories may exist, i.e., which are structured by necessary and sufficient conditions, there are at least two other kinds: generative and radial. Generative categories can be formed by taking central cases and applying certain principles to designate category membership. The principle of similarity is one example of a rule that might generate a broader category from given prototypes. Radial categories are categories motivated by conventions, but not predictable from rules. The concept of mother, for example, may be explained in terms of a variety of conditions that may or may not be sufficient. Those conditions may include: being married, has always been female, gave birth to the child, supplied half the child's genes, is a caregiver, is married to the genetic father, is one generation older than the child, and is the legal guardian. Any one of the above conditions might not be met: for instance, a single mother does not need to be married, and a surrogate mother does not necessarily provide nurturance. When these aspects collectively cluster together, they form a prototypical case of what it means to be a mother, but nevertheless they fail to outline the category crisply. Variations upon the central meaning are established by convention by the community of language users. For Lakoff, prototype effects can be explained in large part due to the effects of idealized cognitive models. That is, domains are organized with an ideal notion of the world that may or may not fit reality. For example, the word bachelor is commonly defined as unmarried adult male. However, this concept has been created with a particular ideal of what a bachelor is like: an adult, independent, socialized, and promiscuous. Reality might either strain the expectations of the concept, or create false positives. That is, people typically want to widen the meaning of bachelor to include exceptions like a sexually active twenty-to-thirty-year-old who lives alone and owns his own firm, and this can be considered a kind of straining of the definition. Moreover, speakers would tend to want to exclude from the concept of bachelor certain false positives, such as those adult unmarried males that don't bear much resemblance to the ideal: i.e., the Pope, or Tarzan. Prototype effects may also be explained as a function of either basic-level categorization and typicality, closeness to an ideal, or stereotyping. So viewed, prototype theory seems to give an account of category structure. However, there are a number of criticisms of this interpretation of the data. Indeed, Rosch and Lakoff, themselves chief advocates of prototype theory, have emphasized in their later works that the findings of prototype theory do not necessarily tell us anything about category structure. Some theorists in the cognitive semantics tradition have challenged both classical and prototype accounts of category structure by proposing the dynamic construal account, where category structure is always created “on-line” - and so, that categories have no structure outside of the context of use. As we have seen, cognitive semantics gives a treatment of issues in the construction of meaning both at the level of the sentence and the level of the lexeme in terms of the structure of concepts. However, it is not entirely clear what cognitive processes are at work in these accounts. Moreover, it is not clear how we might go about explaining the ways that concepts are actively employed in conversation. It appears to be the case that, if our project is to look at how linguistic strings convey different semantic content, we must first catalogue what cognitive processes are being used to do it. Researchers can satisfy both requirements by attending to the construal operations involved in language processing - that is to say, by investigating the ways that people structure their experiences through language. Language is full of conventions that allow for subtle conveyances of experience. To use an example that is readily at hand, framing is all-pervasive, and it may extend across the full breadth of linguistic data, extending from the most complex utterances, to tone, to word choice, to expressions derived from the composition of morphemes. Another example is image-schemata, which are ways that we structure and understand the elements of our experience driven by any given sense. According to linguists William Croft and D. Alan Cruse, there are four broad cognitive abilities that play an active part in the construction of construals. They are: attention/salience, judgment/comparison, situatedness, and constitution. Each general category contains a number of subprocesses, each of which helps to explain the ways we encode experience into language in some unique way. Now, given this brief overview of the traditions that have dominated the course of development of lexical semantics, we may say that the appearance of the structuralist semantics is a reaction to the prestructuralist semantics since in many respects they stand in opposition to each other. The field of structuralist semantics research overlaps the field of generativist semantics research, while the logical semantics and cognitive semantics may be treated as a natural development of structuralist semantics, an attempt to take, respectively, the formalized and the mentalist character of generativist semantics. 3. The Empirical Scope of Lexical Semantics 3.1. Semasiology vs Onomasiology The empirical scope of lexical semantics covers different fields of linguistics, such as semasiology and onomasiology both structural and pragmatic, qualitative and quantitative, diachronic and synchronic. Let us have a closer look at each of the above mentioned disciplines. Semasiology considers the isolated word and the way its meanings are manifested, while onomasiology looks at the designations of a particular concept. In other words, the distinction between semasiology and onomasiology equals the distinction between meaning and naming: semasiology takes its starting point in the word as a form and studies the meanings that the word can occur with; onomasiology takes its starting point in a concept and investigates different expressions the concept can be named by. The traditional structuralist conception of onomasiology deals with the study of semantically related expressions (to look – to glance – to have a glance) and basically answers the question: what are the relations among the alternative expressions. The pragmatic conception of onomasiology deals with the actual choices made from among the set of related expressions and basically answers the question: what factors determine the choice for one or the other alternative? So the distinction between structural and pragmatic onomasiology can be defined as the distinction between an investigation of structure and the investigation of use. 3.2. Qualitative vs Quantitative Aspects of Lexical Semantics The difference between the qualitative and quantitative aspects lexical semantics can be explained in the following way. Within the framework of semasiology qualitative aspect of investigation involves the following questions: which meanings does a word have, and how are they semantically related? The outcome is an investigation into polysemy and the relationships of metonymy and metaphor, which hold between the various readings of an item. Quantitative aspect of lexical structure, on the other hand, involves the question whether all the readings of an item carry the same structural weight. The outcome, obviously, is an investigation into prototypicality effect of various kinds. Needless to say, that the qualitative perspective is much more traditional than the quantitative one, which was taken systematically only recently with the birth and development of prototype theory. The distinction between qualitative and quantitative aspects of semantic structure can be extrapolated to onomasiology. The qualitative aspect then takes the following form: what kind of semantic relations hold between the lexical items in a lexicon? The outcome, clearly, is an investigation into various kinds of lexical structuring: field relationships, antonymy, synonymy. The quantitative question takes the following onomasiological form: are there any differences in the probability that one word rather than another one will be chosen for designating things of reality. In conclusion it’s necessary to underline that different theoretical approaches to the lexical semantics are connected with particular empirical fields of research. To begin with, the pre-structuralist tradition of diachronic semantics deals predominantly with the qualitative aspects of semasiology – with processes like metaphor and metonymy. Structuralist semantics, on the other hand, focuses on qualitative phenomena of an onomasiological kind, such as field relations and lexical relations like antonymy. In cognitive semantics semasiological and onomasiological research is based on the principle of prototype theory. On the other hand, one should remember that irrespective of emphasis shifts the meaning of lexical units of different syntagmatic status remains the main object of lexical semantics research. 4. Lexical Semantic Relations 4.1. The List of Major Semantic Relations Lexical semantic relations play an essential role in lexical semantics and intervene at many levels in natural language comprehension and production. They are also a central element in the organization of semantic knowledge bases. As speakers of the language, we all have an implicit understanding of a number of semantic relationships that hold between either words or sentences in the language. Let us examine briefly the technical terms that linguists use to describe different types of relationships. 1. Paraphrase: one sentence is a paraphrase of another one when it has the same meaning, e.g. Philip purchased an automobile is a paraphrase of Philip bought a car. 2. Entailment, or implication: one statement entails another one when the second is a logically necessary consequence of the first, e.g. Alan lives in Toronto entails that Alan lives in Canada. Note that the relationship of entailment, unlike that of paraphrase, is one-way: it is not the case that Alan lives in Canada entails Alan lives in Toronto. 3. Inclusion: one statement includes another, e.g. I like fruit includes I like apples. Again, this relationship is one-directional. 4. Contradiction: statements are mutually contradictory if one of them is true and the other one is false, e.g. I came in time contradicts I overslept. 5. Anomaly: a sentence has no meaning relating to everyday world; it violates semantic rules, e.g. He swallowed his dream. The rock giggled. Anomaly often leads to figurative language, namely, cases of metaphor or metonymy. 6. Lexical ambiguity: a word allows more than one meaning in context, such as a large bill which may denote a large beak of a bird or a large check at a restaurant. Lexical ambiguity in its turn is a creative source for such stylistic device as pun. 7. Denotation / connotation: words have literal or referential meanings (denotation) but also evoke feelings, attitudes, or opinions (connotations). The following words, the denotations of which are similar if not identical, carry different connotations, either good or bad: plump – fat; generous – extravagant. For example, some air blowing through a window is called a draft when it is cold and undesired, but a breeze when it is cool and desired; a plan points to careful foresight while a scheme suggests some manipulation. 8. Polysemy: a word has more than one meaning out of context; the meanings are related to one another, e.g. bug – insect, enthusiast, defect in a computer. 9. Homonymy: Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in one of these aspects, but different in meaning. The term is derived from Greek "homos", meaning similar and "onoma", meaning name. For example, sound – noise, free from defect; swallow – to ingest, a type of a bird; band – a thin strip, a group of people. English vocabulary is rich in such pairs and even groups of words. Their identical forms are mostly accidental. Joke: • Waiter! • Yes, sir. • What's this? • It's bean soup, sir. • Never mind what it has been. I want to know what it is now. The most widely accepted classification is that recognizing homonyms proper, homophones and homographs. Homonyms proper are homonyms which have the same pronunciation and spelling, but differ in meaning, e.g., sound (solid and strong, in good health, free from mistakes). Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning, e.g., buy, bye, by; piece, peace; scent, cent, sent; write, right, rite. Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling, e.g., lead (v), lead (n); wind (n), wind (v); row (n), row (n). The subdivision of homonyms into homonyms proper, homophones and homographs is not precise enough and doesn't reflect certain important features of these words. Homonyms may belong both to the same or to different parts of speech. That’s why the classification of homonyms should reflect this distinctive feature as well. Thus, Professor Smirmtsky classified homonyms into two large classes: full homonyms and partial homonyms. Full lexical homonyms are words which represent the same category of part of speech and have the same paradigm, e.g., match, match. Partial homonyms are subdivided into three subgroups: simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms, complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms, partial lexical homonyms. Simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words which be­long to the same category of parts of speech. Their paradigms have one iden­tical form, but it's never the same form, e.g., to found, found (to find). Complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words of differ­ent categories of parts of speech which have one identical form in their para­digms, e.g., one, won; maid, made; rose, rose. Partial lexical homonyms are words of the same category of parts of speech which are identical only in their corresponding forms, e.g., to lie (lay, lain); to lie (lied, lied); can (could); to can (canned, canned). Linguists discriminate the following sources of homonymy: phonetic change, borrowings, word-building. Phonetic change - words undergo changes in the course of their histori­cal development. As a result of such changes, two or more words which were originally pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and be­come homonymous, e.g., night, knight in OE were not homonymous, as the initial [k] was pronounced, in ME the initial [k] is not pronounced. Borrowings can be considered to be one more source of borrowings. A borrowed word in the final stage of its phonetic adaptation may duplicate in form either a native word or another borrowing, e.g., write - native; right -native; rite - Latin. Word-building (conversion, shortening, sound-imitation) also contrib­utes significantly to the growth of homonymy. The most productive type here is conversion, e.g., comb - to comb, pale - to pale, aupair — to aupair. Hom­onyms of this type are the same in sound and spelling but refer to different cat­egories of parts of speech. Shortening also increases the number of homonyms, e.g., fan - enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc; fan (Latin borrowing) - an implement for waving lightly to produce a cool cur­rent of air. Sound-imitation forms pairs of homonyms with other words, e.g., bang - a loud, sudden, explosive noise; bang - a fringe of hair. Homonyms represent different entries in a dictionary while different meanings of a polysemantic word are listed under a single entry. However, without consulting a dictionary, it is often difficult to distinguish between polysemy and homonymy. In case of polysemy meanings are related (either literally or figuratively), though the connection between different meanings may sometimes be difficult to perceive. Moreover, in the course of historical development they may have become so far apart that an original single word is divided into two dictionary entries (as in a pupil – a student and the opening in the centre of the iris of the eye). 10. Presupposition: what is assumed beforehand by an utterance, or what is taken for granted, is said to be presupposed. For example: Have another cup of tea presupposes that the addressee has already had a cup of tea. You should hit him back presupposes that somebody has hit the addressee. I resumed drawing presupposes that the speaker was drawing in the time preceding the moment of speaking. All the above mentioned relations may be narrowed to four fundamental types: relations of proximity, relations of opposition, relations of inclusion and relations of equivalence. Firstly, words are seldom the same semantically that is they are not identical in meaning. They show both a certain semantic difference and similarity. Similarity in meaning is nearly always partial which makes it possible to speak about the semantic proximity of words. Let’s compare the adjectives used for describing a female appearance: Beautiful – extremely good-looking, much more so than most women Pretty – good-looking in an ordinary way but not really beautiful or sexually exciting Attractive – good-looking, especially in a way that makes you feel sexually interested. It is obvious that these adjectives are characterized by certain features of semantic dissimilarity which indicates that they are not absolutely identical in meaning. It may be inferred that semantic proximity implies that two or more words however different may enter the semantic relations of proximity if they share some semantic features, e.g., the words red and green share the semantic features of “colour”, “rainbow colour”, etc. The words may be graded in semantic proximity: 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. Secondly, the contrast of semantic features helps to establish the semantic relation of opposition. The meaning of the word black is in contrast to the meaning of the word white. The relation of opposition implies the exclusion of the meaning of one word by another. Thus, black is opposed to white, but it is not opposed to either green or yellow. In the latter case we can speak about the contrast of meaning, but not the semantic relation of opposition. The semantic relations of opposition are based on the semantic feature uniting two words by antonymous relations. Thirdly, inclusion as another type of semantic relations exists between two words if the meaning of one word contains the semantic features constituting the meaning of the other word. Such kind of relations is called hyponymic relations. We will see this point in detail further. Finally, semantic equivalence means full similarity of meaning of two or more words. Semantic equivalence can seldom be observed in the words and is met much oftener in sentences, e.g. Mary lives in London is semantically equivalent to Mary lives in the capital of Great Britain. Semantic equivalence in words is highly unstable, thus, it tends to turn into the relation of semantic proximity. This tendency may be regarded as a realization of the economy principle of the language system which do not need words different in form but absolutely similar in meaning. These four fundamental types of relations Cruse discusses under the following terms: relations of identity; relations of inclusion; relations of overlapping; relations of disjunction. 4.2. Hierarchical Relations in Semantics Now let us consider hierarchical relations. There are basically three major types of hierarchical relations: taxonomies, meronomies and proportional series. The taxonomy, or hyponymy, relation associates an entity of a certain type (hyponym) to another entity of a more general type (hyperonym). In other words, taxonomy introduces a type/subtype relation which may have up to 7 levels of generality. Hierarchy of Fish Hyponyms fish pike trout bass herring salmon Chinook Spring Coho King Sockeye However, taxonomies of technical terms may be much deeper. The main property of a taxonomy is transitivity of properties from the type to the subtype, which can also be viewed as a criterion for taxonomies. Meronomies describe the part-whole relation. Winston distinguishes 6 kinds of meronomies which differ according to the functionalities, spatial cohesion nd degree of dissimilarity between the parts and their whole. They are: • component / integral object: there is a clear structural and functional relation between the whole and its parts, e.g. handle / cup, phonology / linguistics; • member / set or group: parts do not necessarily have a structural or functional relation with respect to the whole, parts are distinct to each other, e.g. tree / forest, student / class; • portion / mass; there is a complete similarity between the parts and between the parts and the whole; parts do not have any specific function a priori with respect to the whole, e.g. slice / bread, centimeter / meter; • object / material: this type of relation describes the materials from which an object is constructed or created, e.g. alcohol / wine, steel / car; • subactivity / activity or process: describes different subactivities that form an activity in a structured way, for example in a temporally organized way, e.g. give exams / teach; • precise place / area: parts do not really contribute to the whole in a functional way, this type of relations expresses spatiality, e.g. Alps / Europe. Similarly to taxonomies, the meronomies cannot really be conceived between two elements, but only with respect to the set of all the parts forming the whole. Alongside to the above mentioned hierarchies, there exist the so called non-branching hierarchies of the following kinds: • a continuous hierarchy where boundaries between elements are somewhat fuzzy: e.g. frozen – cold – mild – hot; small – average – large; • a non-continuous hierarchy or non-gradable hierarchy, which in general is not based on any measurable property: e.g. sentence – phrase – word – morpheme; • a non-continuous and gradable hierarchy, organized according to a given dimension: e.g. meter – centimeter. 4.3. Non-Hierarchical Relations in Semantics Among non-hierarchical relations we mainly distinguish synonymy and antonymy. The concept of synonymy is, of course, well-known and obvious, e.g. sad – unhappy, correct – right, prisoner – convict, flourish – thrive. Two words (or phrases) are synonyms when they have the same or nearly the same meaning. For example, The WordNet database differentiates two meanings of the word “computer”. The first meaning is “a machine for performing calculations automatically”. For this meaning is on January 2016 the following six synonyms are listed: • computer, • computing machine, • computing device, • data processor, • electronic computer and • information processing system.  Webster's new dictionary of synonyms discusses the concept at length and provides the following definition: “A synonym, in this dictionary, will always mean one of two or more words in the English language which have the same or very nearly the same essential meaning... Synonyms, therefore, are only such words as may be defined wholly, or almost wholly, in the same terms. Usually they are distinguished from one another by an added implication or connotation, or they may differ in their idiomatic use or in their application.” In reality words are seldom or never full synonyms. In WordNet the following definition is given: synonymy is the semantic relation that holds between two words that can (in a given context) express the same meaning. The condition: in a given context is an important reservation. In other words, synonymy is context-dependent: pedigree refers only to machinery or animals. Two words may have the same meaning in a particular context, but not necessarily in all contexts. For example, pale and light are synonymous in: The shirt is pale (light) in colour. But not in: The book is light (*pale) in weight. Synonymy ignores the connotations of words and recognizes only denotations. In fact, many synonyms differ only in respect to their connotations, e.g. horse – jade. Synonyms may also differ in degree or intensity, e.g. downpour - rain – shower – sprinkle. Synonymy also ignores stylistic aspects – the colloquial or formal register of the word – or its social or geographic dialect distribution, e.g. privy – loo – WC – bath/rest/washroom – toilet. Thus, synonyms are characterized by either the semantic relations of equivalence or by the semantic relations of proximity. As the degree of semantic proximity may be different, different types of synonyms can be singled out. Full (total) synonyms, i.e. words characterized by semantic equivalence, are extremely rare. Lyons (1995) defines two expressions as full synonymous if the following conditions are met: all their meanings are identical, they are synonyms in all contexts, they are semantic equivalent in all aspects of their meaning. The degree of semantic proximity is best of all estimated in terms of the aspects of meaning, i.e. the denotational, the emotional, and the pragmatic aspect. The highest degree of proximity is observed in synonyms which have similar denotational aspects but differ either in the connotational (1) or the pragmatic (2) aspect of meaning. The difference in connotation may be illustrated by the words famous meaning 'known widely, having fame' and the word notorious which is defined as 'widely known because of smth. bad, for example for being criminal, violent, immoral'. Thus, the word famous implies a positive emotive evaluation, and the word notorious ~ negative. The difference in the pragmatic value of words is found in a far greater number of words than the difference in the connotational aspect. It can be observed in synonymic pairs consisting of a native and a borrowed word. In most cases the native word is more informal, whereas the foreign word has a learned or abstract air, cf: brotherly – fraternal, bodily – corporal. Taking into account the difference of synonyms by the three aspects of their meaning they may be classified into stylistic, ideographic and ideographic-stylistic synonyms. Stylistic synonymy implies no interchangeability in context because the underlying situations are different, e.g. children – infants, dad – father. Stylistic synonyms are similar in the denotational aspect of meaning, but different in the pragmatic (and connotational) aspect. Substituting one stylistic synonym for another results in an inadequate presentation of the situation of communication. Ideographic synonymy presents a still lower degree of semantic proximity and is observed when the connotational and the pragmatic aspects are similar, but there are certain differences in the denotational aspect of meaning of two words, e.g. forest – wood, apartment – flat, shape – form. Though ideographic synonyms correspond to one and the same referential area, i. e. denote the same thing or a set of closely related things, they are different in the denotational aspect of their meanings and their interchange would result in a slight change of the phrase they are used in. Ideographic-stylistic synonymy is characterized by the lowest degree of semantic proximity. This type of synonyms includes synonyms which differ both in the denotational and the connotational and/or the pragmatic aspects of meaning, e.g. ask – inquire, expect – anticipate. If the synonyms in question have the same patterns of grammatical and lexical valency, they can still hardly be considered interchangeable in context. Each synonymic group comprises a dominant element. This synonymic dominant is the most general term potentially containing the specific features rendered by all the other members of the synonymic group. In the set leave – depart – quit – retire – clear out the verb leave, being general and both stylistically and emotionally neutral, can stand for each of the other four terms. The other four can replace leave only when some specific semantic component prevails over the general notion. For example, when it is necessary to stress the idea of giving up employment and stopping work quit is preferable because in this word this particular notion dominates over the more general idea common to the whole group. Antonyms and opposites cover a very large variety of phenomena, more or less clearly defined. A basic definition could be that words are considered to be antonyms or opposites if they have most semantic characteristics in common but if they differ in a significant way on at least one essential semantic dimension. In other words, antonyms are usually defined as a class of words grouped together on the basis of the semantic relations of opposition. Antonyms are words belonging to one part of speech sharing certain common semantic characteristics and in this respect they are similar to such semantic classes as synonyms, lexical sets, lexico-semantic groups. There exist different classifications of antonyms. Structurally, antonyms can be divided into antonyms of the same root, e.g. to do – to undo, cheerful – cheerless; and antonyms of different roots (2), e.g. day – night, rich – poor. Semantically, antonyms may be classified into contradictories, contraries and incompatibles. Contradictories represent the type of semantic relations that exist between pairs like, for example, dead – alive, single – married. Contradictory antonyms are mutually opposed, they deny one another. Contradictories form a privative binary opposition, they are members of two-term sets. To use one of the words is to contradict the other and to use 'not' before one of them is to make it semantically equivalent to the other: not dead = alive, not single = married. Contraries are antonyms that can be arranged into a series according to the increasing difference in one of their qualities. The most distant elements of this series will be classified as contrary notions. Contraries are gradable antonyms; they are polar members of a gradual opposition which may have intermediate elements. This may be observed in cold – hot and cool – warm which are intermediate members. Thus, we may regard as antonyms not only cold and hot but also cold and warm. Contrary antonyms may also be considered in terms of degrees of the quality involved. Thus, water may be cold or very cold, and water in one glass may be colder than in another glass. Incompatibles are antonyms which are characterized by the relations of exclusion. Semantic relations of incompatibility exist among antonyms with a common component of meaning and may be described as the reverse of hyponymy. For example, to say morning is to say not afternoon, not evening, not night. The use of one member of this set implies the exclusion of the other members of the set. Incompatibles differ from contradictories as incompatibles are members of the multiple-term sets while contradictories are members of two-term sets. A relation of incompatibility may be also observed between colour terms since the choice of red, for example, entails the exclusion of black, blue, yellow, etc. Lyons recognizes three different types of opposites. First, complementarities (or binary antonymy) are relationships of contradiction, in which the denial of one term is the assertion of its complementary term, e.g. single – married, dead – alive, asleep – awake, true – false. Note that there are sometimes separate lexical items to express the complementary terms with the help of negative prefixes: legal – illegal, important – unimportant, belief – disbelief. In some cases it may be possible to find an intermediary item, e.g. divorced (which is not strictly married or single), but these are not usual. Since complementary terms denote some kind of extremes, it is abnormal to combine them with items like more or less, though we may do so for humorous purposes: At the time she is more married than ever. A second relationship of opposites is gradable antonymy which may be explicitly or implicitly compared, e.g. big – small, rich – poor, sweet – bitter. In the use of these adjectives, there is always a kind of comparison to a norm, which varies from context to context, e.g. A small elephant is a large animal / A big mouse is a small animal. Or: warm beer and cold coffee may be the same temperature since the temperature norms for beer and coffee differ. Unlike complementary pairs, antonymous pairs, making points on a scale, typically permit intermediary stages; thus, between often and seldom we find occasionally, sometimes, from time to time; between love and hate we find like or dislike; between hot and cold we find warm and cool. A third relationship of opposites is converseness, which denotes a kind of reversal. Certain verb pairs, such as buy – sell, rent – lease, lend – borrow are converse as well as kinship terms such as husband – wife, brother – sister. All converse terms permit reversal, for example: Andy bought a car from Christy entails that Christy sold the car to Andy. Other cases of converseness are terms expressing professional relationships (employer – employee, host – guest, lawyer - client) and terms expressing position in time and space (in front of – behind, north of – south of, outside - inside). Thus, lexical semantic relations represent a vast domain of semasiological and onomasiological studies of referential and non-referential lexicon of the English language. To acquire further information I would strongly recommend to acquaint yourselves with the glossary on the subject under consideration and refer to the list of literature provided. Thank you for your attention. GLOSSARY № Term Definition Reference 1 actant semic group that includes a case seme http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 2 argument roles a semantic ‘slot’ associated with sentence-level constructions such as verb argument constructions including agent and patient and contrasting with the more specific construct of participant roles https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 3 argument structure the number of arguments, that is participants or entities, that a word-level relational predication such as a verb may be combined with https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 4 complementary antonyms expressions which come in pairs and which, between them, exhaust all the relevant possibilities http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 5 constituent semantic feature; there are two types of constituent, semes and primitives http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 6 content plane of the text comprised by the totality of signifiers http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 7 context for a given semantic unit, the totality of units that have an influence on it (active context), and on which it has an influence (passive context) http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 8 cognition the notion relating to all aspects of conscious and unconscious mental function https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 9 cognitive lexical semantics an approach to lexical semantics (word-meaning) that assumes the guiding principles of cognitive semantics https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 10 cognitive lexical semantics an approach to lexical semantics (word-meaning) that assumes the guiding principles of cognitive semantics https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 11 cognitive linguistics an approach to the study of language and the mind rather than a single articulated theoretical framework. It is informed by two overarching principles or commitments: the generalization commitment and the cognitive commitment https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 12 cognitive semantics the area of study concerned with investigating the relationship between experience, the conceptual system and the semantic structure encoded by language https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 13 concept the fundamental unit of knowledge central to categorization and conceptualization https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 14 context the totality of the semiotic phenomena associated with a linguistic sequence http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 15 converses expressions which express a relationship between two things such that one of the expressions conveys the relationship in one order and the other expression conveys the relationship in the opposite order http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 16 domain a conceptual entity posited in Cognitive Grammar constituting a coherent knowledge structure possessing, in principle, any level of complexity or organization https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 17 gradable antonyms expressions are gradable antonyms if they are at opposite ends of a continuous scale of values (a scale which can vary according to the context of use) http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 18 hyponymy the relationship between expressions such that the meaning of one expression is included in the meaning of the other http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 19 lexicography branch of applied linguistics that is concerned with the compiling, editing, and writing of dictionaries http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 20 lexicology  the linguistic study of the lexicon http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 21 linguistic unit a general term for the fundamental unit of language employed in cognitive linguistics in place of theory specific terms such as symbolic assembly and construction https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 22 meaning  content of a linguistic unit, defined in terms that are relative to its context and communicational situation http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 23 meronymy  the relationship of a part to a whole: nose is a meronym of face http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 24 morpheme the minimal sign, indecomposable in a given synchronic state http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 25 non-binary antonyms (incompatible sets) expressions in sets of more then two members which are incompatible in talking about the same thing. All the terms in the given set are incompatible and together all the members of the set cover the entire semantic area   http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 26 opposites the relationship of being opposite in meaning http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 27 paradigmatic order order of codified association; a semantic unit acquires its value only in relation to others that can be substituted for it and that form its definitional paradigm http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 28 prototype a relatively abstract mental representation that assembles the key attributes or features that best represent instances of a given category. https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 29 prototype structure relates to the occurrence of repeated attributes across distinct members, or exemplars, of a particular category which gives rise to a prototype https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 30 reference the relationship between a word or expression and the things in the world represented by those words or expressions  http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 31 referent  a specific thing that the word or expression refers to http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 32 relevance activation of a seme; there exist three types of relevance (linguistic, generic or situational), depending on whether the activation is prescribed by the functional system of language, the textual genre, or the practice involved http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 33 role elementary dialectic valence of an actor; each function confers a role to each of the actors participating in that function  http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 34 semantic case a primitive semantic relation between actants; being semantic primitives of method, they are not to be confused with morpho syntactic functions http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 35 semantics study of linguistic meaning http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 36 semantic structure the form that conceptual structure takes for purposes of being encoded and externalized via language https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Evans%20-%20A%20Glossary%20of%20Cognitive%20Linguistics%20-%202007.pdf 37 seme element of a sememe, defined as the extreme of a binary relational function between sememes; the seme is the smallest unit of signification defined by analysis http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 38 sememe  signified of a morpheme http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 39 seme cluster stable grouping of semes, not necessarily lexicalized, or whose lexicalization can vary (a “theme”, when it can be defined semantically, is nothing more than a seme cluster) http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 40 signification   signified of a linguistic unit defined by abstracting context and communicational situation; any given signification is an artefact http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 41 signified content of a linguistic unit http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 42 specific seme element of the semanteme which sets the sememe in opposition to one or more sememes of the taxeme to which it belongs http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html 43 synonymy the relationship between two expressions that have the same sense; synonyms, therefore, are expressions which share a sense; perfect synonyms would share all their senses http://public.wsu.edu/~gordonl/S04/256/semantic_terms.htm 44 syntagmatic order order of the linearization of language, in a spatial and/or temporal dimension; it accounts for positional relations and functional relations http://www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html