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UNIT 11. THE ENGLISH LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC STRUCTURE: NECESSARY LEXIS FOR…

- - - - We have to look at the context in which it is used and it meaning in relation to other words.
      - Linguists prefer to talk about lexemes, which consists of one word or more.
      - We have to distinguish:
        
        Semantic fields: it is an area of meaning containing words with related sense.
        
        Semantic components: a further way to study lexical meaning is by analyzing lexemes as a series of components.
        
        Sense relationships:
        
        He argued that words consisted of two elements: a sound image (signifier) and a meanind or sense, named signified.
        
        Following Saussure, the word represents the world in a symbolic way.
        
        The sense relationships between signifieds can be:
        
        Antonymy: the relationship between words which are opposite in meaning or sense.
        
        Incompatibility: this is a set of lexemes that are mutually exclusive members of the same superordinate category.
        
        Hyponymy: This is a hierarchical relationship that exist between two terms in which the sense of one is included in the other. Hyponymy is fundamental to the way in which we classify items.
        
        Polisemy: a word has acquired more than one meaning
        
        Synonymy: this is a relationship that exist between words that have a similar meaning.
        
        Homonymy: this is a relationship between words that have the same phonological form. Ex: write/right (homophones); lead (of a dog), lead (of a pencil) are homographics.
        
        It is related to the concept of word as signs
        
        Associate meaning:
        
        The meaning of words can be changed by how they are used.
        
        This can happen in four different ways:
        
        Collocation refers to the tendency for particular words to occur together. The distribution of a word within a language is called collocational range.
        
        Stylistic meaning words have more or less, of a degree of formality within the language.
        
        Connotation: it has to do with social attitude. In spoken language, the presence of connotation is often signaled by intonation.
        
        Metaphor: refers to a process which one semantic field is transformed to another.
      - Words are the traditional use for semantic units.
    - - The way a sentence is used can vary its meaning:
        
        Pragmatic meaning: the function performed by the sentence within a discourse needs to be considered. The sentence will be interpreted differently depending on the situation.
        
        Social meaning: the choice of a sentence may affect the social relationship between the participants. A sentence may convey politeness, rudeness or distance.
        
        Prosodic meaning: the way a sentence is said can alter its meaning: MY CAR is red (not my bicycle), or my car is RED (not yellow)
        
        Propositional meaning: a proposition is the unit of meaning that identifies the subject matter of a statement .Propositions are more abstract than sentences.
      - Contemporary semantics are concerned with the analysis of sentence meaning.
      - Traditional semantics focused on studying vocabulary
      - Knowing a word means more than knowing its meaning, since meaning includes sense relations and context.
- - - - Oral activities:
        
        Guessing games
        
        Picture dictations
        
        Memory games
      - Written activities:
        
        Afterwards, they will practice the writing form of those words
        
        Matching words and pictures, labelling pictures, bingo, dominoes, classifying words in different categories, spelling games, dictations...
        
        First, the children will do activities in which they read the words
        
        After oral practice, the teacher can introduce the written form
  - - - Opposites: for example, we can explain the meaning of big by contrasting with small.
      - Mime, action and gestures.
      - Guessing from contexts
      - Pictures: bringing a pen to the classroom is easy, however, bringing a cat is not.
      - Eliciting: the teacher can ask the students for the words.
      - Realia: it's an attractive and motivating way of presenting new words by showing the real object.
      - Translation: if none of the techniques work, the teacher can translate the word.
  - - - Use of dictionaries
      - Vocabulary cards
      - Class dictionary
      - Researching
      - Making personal dictionaries
  - - - Within a context
      - Authentic
      - Unpredictable
      - Developes within a relaxed atmosphere
      - Interactive
    - - Problem-solving
      - Following instructions
      - Role-play
      - Describing personal experiences
      - Information gap activities
      - Communicative games
      - Reaching consensus activities
    - - Questionnaires
      - Imaginary diaries
      - Short letters to penfriends
      - Filling in forms
      - Short messages
      - Communicative games
      - Writing instructions
      - Project work