Education is a complex and important process which the future not just of only one person but the whole nation depends on, hence, it is an important factor of the progress in modern world

Exercise 6

Read the extract and find words which belong to the same lexical field:

“…Gainan unwittingly shouted them out in a toneless, constrained and meaningless manner, as soldiers always reply to officers while standing in the ranks. That was that unconscious habit that grew deep into him from the first days of his recruitment and highly likely it will remain with him forever”.

Conclusion

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguists (experts in linguistics) work on specific languages, but their primary goal is to understand the nature of language. The main goal of linguistics, like all other intellectual disciplines, is to increase our knowledge and understanding of the world. Since language is universal and fundamental to all human interactions, the knowledge attained in linguistics has many practical applications³².

Language is a phenomenon with many layers, from the sounds that speakers produce to the meanings that those sounds express. The field of linguistics is comprised of several sub-fields. The major ones are: phonetics that deals with sounds of the language, lexicology which deals with vocabulary units, and syntax that deals with sentence-building in the language. Lexicology is considered to be the central level as it is interconnected with all other fields.

Generalizing the information given in the paper about lexicology, it will be fair to mention that lexicology is a branch of linguistics, that deals with all kinds of vocabulary units: words, fusions, collocations, phrasemes idioms and etc. the main aim of lexicology is to sort vocabulary units so it would be easier to understand the language itself, as vocabulary of any language consists of enormous quantity of items.

One of the approaches to word classification is a “field” approach that was suggested by I.A. Boduen de Kurtene and F. de Saussure in previous century. However, different scholars understand it in different ways. Hence, there are three main directions of the field approach. The first direction is represented by G. Ipsen and J. Trier, who insist that lexical fields appears due to the common concept underlying the meaning of words. The scholar O. Dukhachek shares this idea, but he establishes two main types of fields: verbal where words are classified according to their morphological structure and conceptual fields that consist of words with common conception underlying their meaning. The second direction is guided by German scientist L. Weisgerber, who divided items among fields basing in their structural models of sentences. Hence, there were fields of imperative mood, interrogation and other grammar construction. The third approach is named as functional-system approach which is represented by A.V. Bondarko, and its classification is based on the sphere where words are used. The initial notion of the term “lexical field” is widely spread worldwide and admitted by many other scholars.

Lexical fields have their own characteristics. First of all, classification of the words happens on the base of the common notion underlying meaning of words. Second, members of lexical fields are not synonymous, but meaning of each word in the field determines existing of other words. Another point is that words may not have the same grammatical paradigm, but there might be lexico-semantic groups of the words of the one part of speech. However, words in lexical fields are interdependent and limit each other

Lexico-semantic grouping is based on hyper-hyponymy approach. It is close to O. Dukhachek conception of conceptual fields subdivided into elementary (I) and complex (II) fields. This approach means that there must be one general notion that will include many minor notions, that are equally relate to the main concept.

The most important issue in lexical fields is componential analysis. A lexical field is a closely organized sector of the vocabulary, whose elements fit together and delimits each other like pieces in a mosaic. In each field some sphere of experience is analyzed, divided up and classified in a unique way. In this sense, the vocabulary of every language embodies a peculiar vision of the universe; it implies a definite philosophy of life and hierarchy of values which is handed down from one generation to another³³.

Componential analysis is an attempt to provide field theory with a solid theoretical and methodological basis. The most interesting fact of componential analysis is its potential possibility to determine universal meaning components across different languages.

In this course paper peculiarities of lexical fields were uncovered. Different approaches to understanding what lexical field is, affect on description of its notion. The theoretical part of the paper was provided fully. Hence, theoretical side of the question reveals the whole picture of the importance of the topic for linguistic study, and all its complexity for lexicology. Also the notion of “lexical field” was discussed a lot, there is yet enough arguable issues to explore in this question.

Practical value of this paper is presented in lexicological analysis of the passage. It was observed in analysis how words change in the course of time, how new words integrate a language and in which way the meaning or function of words, particularly of those which are the feature of a certain period of time change. It is very important to mention paradigmatic issue of the words as being affected by conversion, the paradigm of a word is changing as it becomes another part of speech, and hence, inherits its paradigmatic features. Another important point in relation to meaning is polysemantic feature of English words, or co-existence of interrelated meanings of words, as polysemy allows words to function in different contexts and obtain new meaning. This point of analysis is interconnected with lexical fields, and make it possible to observe on practice the situation when one and the same word may refer to different lexical groups because of polysemy.

All in all, the paper fulfills the requirements of actuality, topicality and novelty mentioned in the introductory part. The work satisfies issues of theoretical and practical values, as it provides with the theory related to the topic and lexicological analysis, that allow to see how this theory works in practice.