English lexical semantic field 'jewellery' as a fragment of professional image of the world

Abstract

The article outlines the level of presentation and the peculiarities of the definitions of jewellery nominations in the English encyclopedias. The notions of the lexical semantic field, concrete vocabulary have been determined and the thematic classification has been given in the article.The volume of investigated material is 300 nominations, obtained by consecutive selection. Under lexical semantic field we understand a group of words united by a common feature in their lexical meaning. This common feature is known as the integral seme. In our case the word combination “a piece of jewellery” serves as the integral seme which unites the constituents of the given field. The following thematic groups have been singled out and studied basing on the somatic features: hands and arms jewellery, head jewellery, neck jewellery, body jewellery, feet and legs jewellery.