Lexical Pairs Research Articles

«Люди в черном»: семантизация понятий сектант и баптист в антирелигиозной кампании 1958—1964 годов

In the post-revolutionary era, the population's adoption of a new political vocabulary demanded the Soviet authorities to play the role of the interpretant. They engaged in the pro­cess of assigning meanings to new concepts through mass media and fiction. Simultaneously, established concepts had to undergo reshaping to align with the new worldview of the 'Soviet citizen’. The transformation of the semantic structure of religious vocabulary, ideologically marked, reflected the shift in the fundamental values of Soviet society. This article, employing component and contextual analyses, explores the target semantization process of key concepts during Khrushchev's 1958—1964 anti-religious campaign, specifically focusing on 'sektant' and 'baptist'. Through mass media and propaganda literature, a set of semantic features for these terms was imposed on the children's audience in ideological contexts. The analysis of linguistic material from numerous sources such as the newspaper Pionerskaya Pravda, Pioner and Koster children's magazines, and selected works of children's literature reveals that the target audience — school children — led to the emergence of semantic primitives. This in­vol­ved significantly narrowing the semantics of the words 'sektant' and 'baptist.' Linguistic tools such as new lexical pairs ('sectarian-Baptist,' 'fanatics and bigots,' 'subversives and villains') and linguistic markers related to colour, sound, appearance, age, and location were employed. These tools helped develop a negative image of a Protestant believer and ultimately transformed the concepts of ‘sectant’ and ‘baptist’ into political labels.

Exploring the referential range of etymologically-related lexical pairs in the language of the Qur’an: A cognitive-semantic approach

The present study conducts a cognitive-semantic analysis of etymologically-related lexical pairs in the language of the Qur’an. Based on objective selection criteria, the lexical pair rīĥ (a singular form literally meaning wind) and riyāĥ (a plural form literally meaning winds) has been claimed to be representative of the final data set, which includes 20 lexical pairs. Building on the theoretical underpinnings of descriptive semantics and frame semantics, the analysis sought to fulfill three main objectives: (a) identifying the referential range of the pair rīĥ and riyāĥ and its central reference point; (b) explaining the way the historical and theological context helps to mark the connotations associated with each sense in the referential range; and (c) sorting the discourse functions communicated through the cognitive frame(s) evoked by such a lexical pair. Findings showed that the central cognitive frame of both lexical items is that of moving air. However, rīĥ has developed, through metaphorical extension, two other senses that are not applicable to riyāĥ: power/predominance and smell. Finally, both lexical items have been proven to have positive, negative, and neutral connotations that have been divinely manipulated to perform various discourse functions.

Polish Archaisms against their Equivalents in Bulgarian

The subject are Polish archaic words whose equivalents are in active use in modern Bulgarian. The aim is to reveal the composition of this group of archaisms and to show the main reasons that led to the Polish-Bulgarian asymmetry in terms of archaism. The conducted research shows that about 140 lexemes that have been archaized in Polish are present in Bulgarian. Among them, lexical and semantic archaisms prevail, while archaic words are in a smaller number. The thematically studied archaisms belong mainly to categories related to human, for example, to physical and mental characteristics, to everyday life or to interpersonal relations. By origin, archaisms are both native and borrowed words. From a formal point of view, Polish archaic words and their modern Bulgarian counterparts are identical, with minimal or more divergence. From the point of view of semantics, most Polish-Bulgarian lexical pairs have the same meaning, there are also pairs with a greater or lesser meaning divergence consisting in broadening or narrowing the semantics of the Bulgarian word compared to the Polish one. The reasons that contributed to the occurrence of the Polish-Bulgarian asymmetry in the field of the archaization of lexis are not strictly linguistic in nature, but represent the social, historical and political aspect of the language. They reflect the way in which scientific terminology was developed, social attitudes towards influences from foreign languages, the specificity of social relations and the process of shaping the standard language in both countries.

Lexical solidarities

In the present study, developing Walter Porzig's ideas about essential semantic relations, Eugeniu Coseriu examines in depth the dependence of meaning that exists between certain words that form lexical pairs. It shows how a certain class, a certain archilexem or lexeme is included in the content of the word as a differential or integrative feature (lexem: archilexem, class: clasem). E. Coseriu regards these oriented semantic relations as solidarity. Lexical solidarity is defined as a semantic determination of the word using class, archilexem or lexeme. Deepening the study, E. Coseriu differentiates between several types of lexical solidarity.

О функционально-семантической корреляции членов пар типа внимательно – с вниманием

О функционально-семантической корреляции членов пар типа внимательно – с вниманием The article is devoted to the functional-semantic correlation between the qualitative adverbs and the forms of the substantive built by the model of “the preposition c (with) + a noun in the instrumental case”, which have denotative similarity and root (derivational) affinity. It is established that explanato­ry dictionaries don’t give an answer to the question of how these linguistic means differ. It is revealed that members of such lexical pairs can have specific lexical and grammatical semantics, differ in their syntactic compatibility and as a result express the same attribute with varying degrees of detail.

Synonymous pairs of lexical units

In the article, the author considers pairs of such vocabulary units, which in lexicology are usually defined as doublet forms, absolute or complete synonyms. The main idea of the publication is that, by examining such lexical pairs, to show such functional properties of their members, which would make it possible to abandon the characterization of such units as absolutely identical, doublet. On the material of English nouns, marked in special publications and dictionaries as absolute synonyms, we show that in many cases there is a differentiation of members of lexical pairs, leading them beyond the limits of doublet units. It turns out that in the process of functioning, many absolute synonyms not only do not disintegrate, as linguists predict, due to the semantic and formal redundancy of such linguistic forms, but exist for a long time without experiencing a desire for transformation. Apparently, there are factors (reasons) in the language that contribute to the functioning of absolute synonyms. Analysis shows that the set of doublet forms of factors supporting the existence is specific for units of a terminological character, on the one hand, and for absolute synonyms of a commonly used character, on the other.

Authorial compatibility of words in I.A. Goncharov’s novels: 
 comparative stylometry

The following article deals with peculiarities of unique lexical compatibility in classical prose of the XIX century and contains preliminary results of the cross-disciplinary corpus research performed by group of scientists of the Ural Federal University. This project suggests creation of individual syntagmatic profiles for the famous Russian writers. With works of I.A. Goncharov as an example and compared to the texts of other authors special context surrounding for words zhizn (life) and zhit (live) is systematized. Initial material is extracted through comparative statistical analysis of bigrams lexical pairs, when used in the same phrase context. Lexems zhizn (life) and zhit (live) are one of the most frequent words in Russian language, however, each author tends to use them in his own, special context surrounding. Novels by I.A. Goncharov (A Common Story, Oblomov, The Precipice, Frigate Pallada) provide relatively more issues of authors individual lexical compatibility for these words, than texts created by others; in addition a full list of syntagmatically active words for Goncharovs texts is represented in this article. Context analysis is conducted to show, how semantic connections between words in contexts reflect conceptual characteristics of Goncharovs idiostyle. Comments on the individual use of words zhizn (life) and zhit (live) by other writers A.P. Chekhov, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev and F.M. Dostoevsky are given. Conclusions are drawn about perspectives of performing comparative statistical analysis of lexical syntagmatics in modern philology

Вербализация концепта ЖЕНЩИНА (на материале женского диалектного дискурса)

This article is devoted to the development of a linguistic model for describing the concept WOMAN. The material is women’s dialect discourse. The sources of the material are the Tomsk dialect corpus which includes materials of expeditions organized by dialectologists of Tomsk State University from 1946 to the present days on the territory of Middle Ob dialects spread. In the article we used modeling method based on the idea of the nominative field of a concept, as well as an interpretation technique relying on analysis of contexts, and a method of quantitative calculations used in relation to units that represent the concept. Lexical and phraseological units that make up the nominative field of the concept were revealed during the research. These units were divided into the following lexical-semantic groups: 1) the general nominations of a female person; 2) age and status in marriage; 4) status in the family hierarchy; 5) anatomical and biological characteristics; 6) character traits and behavior; 7) appearance characteristics; 8) profession and work processes. Elements of different layers of the concept are revealed in each lexical- semantic group. All of them give a general picture of ideas about women. So, the basis for identifying of gender conceptualizations and stereotypes is the presence of linguistic oppositions of male and female; the presence of a large number of lexical units that reflect the status of marriage (girl, bride, young woman, wife, mistress, old woman, widow, old girl, brooch and so on); lexical pairs that are opposed to each other on the basis of evaluation “positive” – “negative” (clean, clean – dirty, mistress – disheveled, etc.). A large number of words that negatively assess certain qualities and behavior of women (gossip girl, market woman, stramovka, etc.) indicate the high requirements imposed on the woman, the condemnation of deviations from social norms. The content of the concept of WOMAN depends on the specifics of rural existence, which is based on work, the presence of patriarchal gender stereotypes, social and historical events and processes. The significance of the research is determined by the possibility of using its results for development of a new interdisciplinary scientific field – gender dialectology that studies the gender characteristics of the dialect.

Verbal Number in Lo–Toga and Hiw: The Emergence of a Lexical Paradigm

AbstractSeveral languages around the world encode number through a regular alternation between verb roots, in a pattern sometimes called ‘verbal number suppletion’ (Veselinova 2006). Lo–Toga and Hiw, two Oceanic languages of Vanuatu (Torres Islands), thus alternate certain verbs according to their absolutive argument's number – e.g. Hiw tō ‘go:Sing’ vs. vën ‘go:Plural’. The pattern affects 17 verb pairs in Lo–Toga, 33 in Hiw. This rich system is a local innovation in the Torres Islands, not found elsewhere in Oceanic.This structure is here analysed for the first time. Verbal number is not just agreement: its principles and categories differ from nominal number. Despite its similarity with suppletion, the structure really involves separate words, organised into a ‘lexical paradigm’ – a structured set of lexical pairs, contrasting individual vs. collective events. The comparative method helps reconstruct the system's development. A former circumfix encoding pluractionality was the source for the number alternation; yet most verbs encoded the contrast lexically, as near‐synonyms were harnessed into the emergent paradigm. Crucially, even after it was recruited into the number paradigm, each verb remained an autonomous lexeme. While nominal number belongs to the morphology, the paradigm of verbal number in the Torres languages pertains entirely to the lexicon.

The TRAP-BATH split in RP: A linguistic index for English learners

Abstract Received Pronunciation (RP) holds prestige not only in the UK, but also in many Outer and Expanding Circle countries and, even in the US, but the TRAP-BATH split (TBS) in RP, which refers to the shift from the vowel /a/ to /ɑː/, has still remained ambiguous because this sound shift contains inconsistent realizations that occur in identical codas, as illustrated in such lexical pairs as class but gas, path but math, last but enthusiast. What makes this sound feature more complicated is sociolinguistic variation. Although earlier discoveries have enhanced our understanding of the TBS, neither a definitive word list nor lexical frequency are provided for learners to enunciate BATH words. To provide RP learners with a linguistic index to learn BATH lexical set, this study expanded Wells’s study by including additional 16 phonetic environments, which generated a total of 304 relevant words for examining their pronunciation defined by dictionaries. The findings show that 13 out of the 30 environments can trigger the TBS more than 50% of the time. In particular, seven of them can completely predict the TBS (over 91%), and one of them can fully do so (83%). This feature appears as a regular conditioned sound pattern if well-defined by its phonetic environments.

Pares léxicos en el léxico disponible de estudiantes italianos

The application of lexical availability studies to the field of psycholinguistics continues to produce interesting outcomes. Recent research, in fact, employs data from this kind of studies in order to qualitatively analyze the lexical-semantic relations that informants establish between words. Our study will analyze a type of minimal clusters or lexical pairs, such as perro - gato or carne - pescado , in two semantic areas ( Alimentos y bebidas and Animales ); in doing so, it seeks to contribute to current discussion by proposing new data to show that words will be organized in more structured semantic networks as proficiency of foreign students increases. This hypothesis is based on recent studies on lexical acquisition. Our study analyzes the lexical pairs established by Italian students of Spanish, distributed in two groups according to their academic level, and employs data collected from their availablewords.

ЗА БЪЛГАРО-ПОЛСКАТА АСИМЕТРИЯ В ОБЛАСТТА НА АРХАИЧНАТА ЛЕКСИКА

The study uses as its basis a collection of 237 words categorised as archaic in Bulgarian which are nevertheless actively used in Modern Polish. The aim of the research is to determine the origin of these units and the degrees of similarity between Bulgarian and Polish words regarding their lexical form and semantic properties. The analysis demonstrates that the examined material is mainly of the Slavic origin, but it also includes words of French, Latin, Italian, Romanian, German and English origins. Three Bulgarian-Polish lexical pairs can be distinguished with relation to their form: 1) identical pairs, 2) pairs of minimum difference, 3) pairs of larger formal difference. By investigating their semantic properties, the lexical pairs can be grouped into: 1) words with identical or similar meaning, 2) words with distant semantic similarities, 3) words with no semantic similarities. Research on the Bulgarian-Polish lexical asymmetry regarding lexical archaisation contributes to an in-depth description of the factors that determine the lifespan of a word – i.e. whether it remains in use or wanes in time. These factors may be of linguistic or extra-linguistic nature and are specific to each of the reported cases.

Use of Cohesive Devices in Children and Regular Literature: Conjunctions and Lexical Cohesion

Cohesion is an indispensable linguistic feature in any discourse. Lexical Cohesion and conjunction as two crucial elements to textual cohesion and comprehension have been the focus of a wide range of studies up to now. Yet the relationship between the open register and cohesive devices has not been thoroughly investigated in discourse studies. This study concentrates on the potential similarities and differences between literature for children and adult level (regular) with respect to the frequency of lexical cohesive markers and conjunctions. To this end, selected excerpts of two contemporary famous novels were analyzed and codified for the use of different kinds of lexical cohesion (reiteration and collocation), conjunctions (elaboration, extension and enhancement) and their subcategories. The results of Chi square tests showed that the children and regular novel texts were significantly different in terms of reiteration and collocation as the main categories of lexical cohesion as well as total frequency of lexical cohesive pairs. Also, the use of conjunctions, elaboration and extension showed significant difference. Yet, the difference was non-significant for enhancement. The findings of this study add to the existing literature of research on cohesion and inspire researchers in discourse studies, child language studies, and English teaching and learning of young children. Keywords : Cohesive devices, Conjunctions, Lexical Cohesion, Children, Literature

Factors to Consider When Making Lexical Comparisons of Sign Languages: Notes from an Ongoing Comparison of German Sign Language and Swiss German Sign Language

This article discusses some of the methodological factors taken into consideration in a first, and still ongoing, study of lexical similarity between German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS) and Swiss German Sign Language (Deutschschweizerische Gebärdensprache, DSGS). For our investigation we followed the approach of Xu (2006) and Su and Tai (2009) by taking iconicity into account. However, whereas these earlier studies operated on the general concept of iconic motivation, we have added a more specific method of labeling both the image-producing techniques and (when possible) the underlying image and/or motivating elements (Langer 2005), which we believe are necessary for a more precise understanding of how lexical pairs from the two languages compare with regard to identity, similarity, and difference.

WHETHER DOUBLETS-SYNONYMS ARE IDENTICAL OR NOT

The article considers pairs of lexical units, which in lexicology are defined as doublets or absolute synonyms. The main idea of the article is to show functional features of doublet units which would allow not to consider such units as absolutely identical. Based on the analysis of Russian nouns, noted in special publications and dictionaries as absolute synonyms, we show that there is often differentiation of elements of lexical pairs. It appears that many absolute synonyms do not disintegrate in the process of their functioning, as linguists predict (due to semantic and formal redundancy of such verbal forms), but many absolute synonyms do exist for a long time without any apparent transformation because there are factors (reasons) in the language that promote their functioning. The analysis shows that a set of factors supporting the existence of doublet forms is specific for the units of terminological character on the one hand, and for generally used absolute synonyms on the other hand.

WHETHER DOUBLETS-SYNONYMS ARE IDENTICAL OR NOT

The article considers pairs of lexical units, which in lexicology are defined as doublets or absolute synonyms. The main idea of the article is to show functional features of doublet units which would allow not to consider such units as absolutely identical. Based on the analysis of Russian nouns, noted in special publications and dictionaries as absolute synonyms, we show that there is often differentiation of elements of lexical pairs. It appears that many absolute synonyms do not disintegrate in the process of their functioning, as linguists predict (due to semantic and formal redundancy of such verbal forms), but many absolute synonyms do exist for a long time without any apparent transformation because there are factors (reasons) in the language that promote their functioning. The analysis shows that a set of factors supporting the existence of doublet forms is specific for the units of terminological character on the one hand, and for generally used absolute synonyms on the other hand.

The Perception of Primary Stress in Initially Extended Simple Sentences: A Demonstration by Computer in Foreign Language Teacher Training

The intelligibility of speech strongly depends on the placement of primary stress, which is a suprasegmetal phoneme. Pedagogically speaking, in ESL, EFL, SLA, and foreign language teacher education, the teaching of pronunciation and intonation of extended sentences to nonnative speakers (NNSs) has always been advocated to improve the intelligibility of their speech. Primary stress is a form of prominence, a degree of force with a syllable in a word, phrase, clause, and sentence is uttered, changing the meaning of utterances in spoken language. Primary stress can play a phonemic role, contrasting lexical pairs verb/noun/adjective. Acquisition of the correct pronunciation of the English words by hearing from the authentic texts is extremely difficult for foreign students, even the teachers, because English has several degrees of word stress like, primary, secondary, tertiary, and weak stresses, which are by nature are all suprasegmental phonemes. In this research, 25 initially extended simple sentences will be downloaded via Audacity program in 44100Hz from the Longman English Dictionary (2008) which will be orally given to 58 English Language Education Freshmen in a multiple choice test. The participants will listen to each extended simple sentence three times within 5-second intervals. They will be asked to pin down the primarily stressed words both in the extended part and the main clause. This way, their perception of the place of the primary stress in relation to standard English utterances will be evaluated.

Nommer les structures rurales entre fin de l’Antiquité et Haut Moyen Âge : le répertoire lexical gréco-latin et ses avatars modernes (2de partie)

The way in which historians and archaeologists specialised in the study of the higher Middle Ages most frequently interpretet and use the graeco-Roman lexicon of earlier centuries makes it necessary to enlarge that of the 6th to 12th centuries given in the terminological enquiry presented in the first part of the curent issue: either to check how valid may be the meaning which they assign to terms inherited from Antiquity or try to situate the semantic discontinuities which occurred in the continuative use of Latin in the western world or Greek in the eastern one. With this view in mind we shall tackle successively such problems as the semantic itinerary of the word villa, of the lexical pairs castellum / castrum, villa-village, vicus and village, kômè-chorion, of the trio castellum / castrum / village, etc. When doing this, we shall take into account the great diversity in the local situations, the unequal rythm of transformation among the various language levels - learned or familiar, juridical or historiographical, etc. -, and the frequently met with difficulty of equating the language of the texts with the archaeological structures. On the other hand, we shall try to evaluate how much the meaning assigned by modern scientists to such or such resilient Latin word could determine the choice in favour of such or such theoretical model, with special regard to “villa to village” or “incastellamento” models. This will allow, more generally, the acknowledgement of the current state of archaeological reflexion regarding rural structures and how adequate the terminology used may be to field data. Our conclusions are mainly concerned with the interpretation of the words villa and castrum when found in the higher medieval sources.

Indexing in fairy tales: Evidence for the role fairy tales play in children’s concept formation

Starting from the basic premises of Schank's (1998) notion of indexing in story telling and the representational approach of language (Saeed 1996, 2003), this paper investigates whether fairy tales create initial indexes for children, that may (not) be re-indexed later in adult life, by reshaping their pre-existing experiences. More specifically, it focuses on the way fairy tales present several concepts already familiar to children, and whether this representation matches children’s pre-existing experiences. The data collected comes from several of Grimm Brothers' fairy tales and consists of a corpus of 62839 word tokens. The fairy tales included were thematically related to general areas of everyday experience: femininity, blackness, whiteness, day, night, being young, ageing. The following semantically contradictory lexical pairs (listed with their text frequency) were examined in the expanded concordance, in relation to their collocations and semantic associations: ( 143) old - (58) young, (134) woman - (71) maiden, (116) day - (40) night, (63) white - (83) black. These were then compared with an adults’ and a children’s dictionary to check whether the collocations, semantic associations of the selected words as portrayed in the data, matched the societally accepted meanings found in dictionaries. The comparison indicated that, although the connotative meanings were included in the majority of denotative meanings that make up words' definitions in the adult dictionary examined, only five of them matched the connotative meanings of the words examined in the data. On the other hand, the way the above concepts/words were presented in the children’s dictionary, was very simple, probably reflecting children’s experiences. It seems, thus, that the concepts - at least some of them - presented in the fairy tales examined, do not “officially” relate to children's but to adults' experiences, functioning as an index that re-shapes children’s pre-existing concepts.

The Problem of Doubleting in Austronesian Languages

Historical linguists are familiar with the concept of doubleting, which comes in two causally distinct types. In the first type, here called “contact-induced doubleting,” borrowing from a related language or dialect gives rise to lexical pairs like English shirt : skirt or wine : vine. In the second type, called “system-internal doubleting,” traces of earlier morphology that have become synchronically opaque distinguish lexical pairs like English grass : graze , glass : glaze , weave : weft , or earlier stress contrasts produce lexical pairs like English one : an . In most cases, the result is a set of two phonologically and semantically similar forms that have the same etymology, but differ in meaning. Austronesian languages contain numerous examples of both contact-induced and system-internal doubleting. The former type closely resembles the phenomenon in other language families, but the latter is strikingly different, as it involves “word-families” with two, three, four, or in some cases more than four variants, nearly all of which appear to be semantically identical. How these variants arose remains a major theoretical challenge.