Introduction

When you learn a new word it is not enough simply to know how it is spelt and pronounced. You need to know what it means, what it means in one context but not in another, and how this meaning relates to other words and other meanings. This unit looks at ways of classifying words in terms of their meaning.

Tasks

1 Non-standard lexical choices

Identify the lexical choices that depart from standard usage in these examples from learners’ writing. What is the problem – the right choice of word but the wrong form of the word (e.g. he *teached us instead of he taught us); or the wrong choice of word for the intended meaning (e.g. he *learned us instead of he taught us)?

How would you explain the correction to the students?

• a He liked to climb some tryes and to play witch his dog.

• b I have a short family. In my family are two brothers and one sister.

• c It’s a very good new that your sister is getting married.

• d I have been working hardly and it was impossible to get any time to write.

• e Marilyn Monroe was very famous. She did films as The Men Like Fairs.

• f I have chosen to describe Stephen Hawking, a notorious cientific of our century.

• g We climbed the rocks, slept in the tent, swam in the beautiful lake and fed insects.

• h By chance, from October first, I’ll get rid of my present job.

• i The rain increased and we were obligated to stay in bedroom until it dwindled.

2 Semantic meaning

Words are often defined in terms of their relationship with other words. For example, take two words, X and Y:

• • If X means the same as Y, they are synonyms.

• • If X is the opposite of Y, they are antonyms.

• • If X and Y are kinds of Z, they are co-hyponyms, with Z as the superordinate term.

• • If X and Y are the same word but have completely different meanings, they are homonyms.

• • If X and Y are the same word but have two distinguishable but related meanings, they are polysemes.