What is the difference between semantic field and lexical field

Unread post by scarlet » Sat Sep 16, pm. Unread post by Rat07 » Tue Oct 03, am. Unread post by Fathy » Tue Oct 03, pm.

Privacy Terms. Quick links. For general discussion between ESL teachers. Unread post by scarlet » Sat Sep 16, pm Could you please tell me what a lexical field is? According to what i have learned, "Lexical" comes from the word Lexicography. Each word delimits the meaning of the next word in the field and is delimited by it; that is, it marks off an area or range within the semantic domain.

However, there may be a fair amount of overlap in meaning between words in a domain, and it is often difficult to find mutually delimiting terms.

Within a domain, some words are marked, while some are unmarked; the unmarked members are more frequent, more basic, broader in meaning, easier to learn and remember, not metaphorical, and typically one morpheme or single lexical item. The marked members often consist of more than one lexical item and may denote a subtype of the unmarked member. Let's consider some examples of lexical fields.

This may range from very general groupings, eg s ome of the words associated with Gardening would be : sow, prune, dig, plant, seedling, shears, trowel, compost, fertiliser, weedkiller, caterpillar etc etc to words which have a more specific relationship such as synonymy, antonymy , hyponymy , meronymy or collocation , towards belonging to the same " word family " and usually distinguished by affixation - friend, friendly, unfriendly, befriend, friendliness, friendship etc.

When you want to sort out which of the terms covers which of the relationships however, well - unfortunately, it depends who you read. For example, semantic field and lexical field are sometimes used with different meanings - semantic field referring to abstract mental concepts and lexical field referring to the words that expressed those concepts. McCarthy states :. Other writers, however, use the terms synonymously.

Lyons uses the term semantic network a term originally coming from psychology for the "abstract concepts" and semantic field for the lexical relationships. As Corson points out : Since semantic field is only a lexical category, it is identical with the term lexical field as Lyons expresses it.

McCarthy also suggests that lexical field and lexical set differ in meaning. Discussing hyponymy and giving examples of co-hyponyms of the superordinate vehicle he states : The whole list of co-hyponyms "car", "lorry", "bus", "motorcyle" etc is called a lexical set.