SEMANTIC BOUNDARIES OF PROFESSIONAL NAMES IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN THE CONTEXT OF A SECONDARY SCHOOL

Abstract

The article deals with lexical semantic aspect of English and French as a foreign language in contradistinction to learning context. The aim of the article is to enquire lexical semantic boarders in English and French within topic profession and to analyze how lexical transparency from French influence English word form orthographic representation in students’ consciousness. Theories about lexis processing in mental lexicon are used to for words lexical semantic analysis: French psycholinguist Daniel Gaonach’s (Daniel Gaonac’h) conclusions about cognitive action in access to lexis and its semantic reference, memory representation models (Judith Kroll & Erika Stewart 1994) as well as lexical network model in bilingual situation (Annette de Groot 1998). Altogether 46 professions were selected from 1000 most frequently used word lists and theoretically compared semantic structure consistency of words in English and French. It is concluded that from 46 selected words, 30 words are formally similar and 16 are semantically close but graphically different. As a result of analysis of lexical semantic structures a practical research was carried out, to diagnose English and French crosslinguistic influence. The research was carried out in two schools, and altogether 40 students were involved in the research. Students were asked to do three tasks. One of the tasks is to determine the language of the given professions by their graphic representations. The aim of the task is to find out if students are able to separate already in English mastered professions from equivalents in French and if they are able to recognise the words which are the same in both languages – English and French. The second task was to write a suitable name in English for 10 already given professions in French. The third task was to write three suitable adjectives in English for the given professions. In the research it was concluded that more than a half of students tend to fully separate words in English or in French, although some of the words formally and as well as semantically comply in both languages. Reproduction of professions artist, doctor, chef and officer in English does not make any difficulties but some words’ incorrect reproduction (minister, judge, professor and soldier) can be explained by interference of French and Latvian as well as insufficient knowledge of English orthography and semantics of words in French. Finally, it is concluded that for expansion of vocabulary, very important is input of collocations in both languages separately. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.6.3