NGỮ NGHĨA HỌC TỪ VỰNG
ENGLISH LEXICAL SEMANTICS

LE QUANG DUNG, PH.D

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LEXICAL SEMANTICS
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Name: Lexical Semantics
Code: 047CQ2bTVNN
Credits: 02
Objectives: basic understanding of
– Word origins (etymology)
– Word formation (morphology)
– Word meaning (lexical semantics)
– Phrase meaning (phraseology)
– Ambiguity & Disambiguation
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LEXICAL SEMANTICS
• Assessments:
– Attendance: 10%
– In-class test: 10%
– Mid-term tests: 20%
– End-term test: 60%

• Lecturer: Le Quang Dung
– Phone: 0913547905
– E-mail: lequangdung251174@gmail.com
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COURSE OUTLINE
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Unit 1: Introduction to Lexical Semantics
Unit 2: Morphology
Unit 3: Semantic Relations
Unit 4: Semantic Features
Unit 5: Semantic Roles
Unit 6: Polysemy and Homonymy
Unit 7: Lexical Ambiguity and Disambiguation
Unit 8: Revision
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UNIT 1
AN INTRODUCTION TO
LEXICAL SEMANTICS

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Lexicology v.s Lexical semantics
• The branch of linguistics that studies words, their meanings
and relations (lexical fields), and changes in their form and
meaning through time is known as Lexicology
• The lexicological study draws on research from other
linguistic disciplines:
– Lexical morphology studies the internal structure of words and
word-building processes;
– Lexical semantics examines word meaning and fixed word
combinations (phraseology);
– Lexicography deals with the writing or compilation of lexicons
or dictionaries.
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WHAT IS LEXICAL SEMANTIC?
• Lexical semantics is the branch of linguistics which is
concerned with the systematic study of word meanings
• Two most fundamental questions addressed by lexical
semanticists
• How to describe the meanings of words?
• How to account for the variability of meaning from context to
context?

Cruse, D.A., (2001). International Encyclopedia of the Social
& Behavioral Sciences. James, D. Wright
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WHAT IS LEXICAL SEMANTICS?
• Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning
• Lexical semantics is the study of the meaning properties
of individual words (lexical items) in isolation.
• Sentence semantics is the study of the meaning
properties of a sentence, of the semantic relationships
among the parts of sentence.
• Discourse (utterance) semantics is the study of the
meaning of extended discourse (spoken or written).
Laurel J. Brinton (2010). P.143-144
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AREAS OF WORD STUDIES
WORD

STRUCTURE

FUNCTION

SIMPLE WORDS

MEANING

COMPLEX WORDS

SET PHRASES

LEXICAL SEMANTICS

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Semantic
Perspective

Morphological
Perspective

Syntactic
Perspective
WORD

Phonological
Perspective

Orthographic
Perspective
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What is a word?
• From phonological perspective
– words are the smallest segments of sound (a speech
sound or a series of speech sounds) which have the
function of phonemes
– Words usually have one main stress, marked by an acute
accent: téxtbook, análysis, understánd.

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What is a word?
• From orthographic-graphemic perspective
– words are uninterrupted string of letters, preceded by a
blank space and followed either by a blank space or by a
punctuation mark in writing or print,
– For example
• His sister, Jane, arrived late.

– There are five words and three punctuation marks in the
sentence.

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What is a word?
• From morphological perspective
– words are characterized as basic linguistic units
consisting of morphemes.
– Words have morphological structure; they are made up
of a base with various derivational and/or inflectional
elements.
– For instance, the word players consists of three
morphemes PLAY + -ER + -S.
– Words can be described as the result of applying specific
rules of word-formation
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What is a word?
• From syntactic perspective
– Words are the smallest permutable and substitutable
units of a sentence.
– Words are considered to be 'syntactic atoms,' i.e. the
smallest elements of the sentence.
– Words occur in certain positions in the sentence, which
are determined by the syntactic rules of the language.

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What is a word?
• From (lexical) semantic perspective
– Words are the smallest, relatively independent carriers
of meaning that are codified in the lexicon.
– The word expresses a semantic concept, for
instance a boy is 'a young male human,' a house is 'a
building.'
– The technical term used to indicate the smallest unit of
meaning is lexeme (AKA. lexical item)

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LEXICAL SEMANTIC PERSPECTIVE
Teacher

STRUCTURE
teach

-er

FUNCTION

MEANING

doer/operator

A person who receives
respect from others

SYNTACTIC PERSPECTIVE
Teacher
STRUCTURE

FUNCTION

MEANING

A single noun

subject

A person who does the
teaching for someone
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