Lexical Relations and Communication in Technical Texts

Lexical Relations

1. Synonymy

Words with similar meanings can arise due to various factors:

• Archaisms: Words falling into disuse.
• Dialectical variations.
• Technological advancements.
• Colloquialisms: Informal language use.
• Standard lexicon: General vs. specific terms.

2. Antonymy

Words with opposite meanings can be categorized as:

• Complementary: One term negates the other (e.g., single-married).
• Gradual: Opposition on a scale (e.g., big-small).
• Reciprocal: One term implies the other (e.g., buying-selling).

3. Hyponymy and Hypernymy

These describe hierarchical relationships between words:

• Hyponymy: A more specific term (e.g., pink, purple are hyponyms of color).
• Hypernymy: A more general term (e.g., color is a hypernym of pink, purple).
• Co-hyponyms: Terms sharing the same hypernym (e.g., tulip and rose are co-hyponyms of flower).

4. Homonymy

Words with the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings:

• Homographs: Same spelling, different meaning (e.g., deploy - to position, deploy - a period of time).
• Homophones: Same pronunciation, different spelling (e.g., talking - softening).

5. Polysemy

One word with multiple related meanings.

6. Monosemy

One word with a single meaning.

Communication in Technical Texts

Elements of Communication

• Issuer: A specialist in the field.
• Receiver: The target audience (scientific community, students, general public).
• Channel: Primarily written, but can be oral.
• Message: Typically expository and argumentative, but can also include description and narration.
• Code: Characterized by universality, objectivity, precision, and economy.

Language Functions

• Referential
• Emotive
• Conative
• Phatic
• Metalinguistic
• Poetic

Other Lexical Concepts

8. Cultisms

Loanwords from classical languages, often retaining their original form.

9. Neologisms

Newly coined words, often from Greek or Latin roots.

10. Lexeme

The root of a word.

11. Morphemes

The smallest meaningful units of language:

• Independent: Determiners, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns.
• Dependent:
  • Inflectional: Number, gender, person, tense, mode, aspect.
  • Derivational: Prefixes, suffixes, infixes (rarely used).
    • Prefixes: Added to the beginning of a word.
    • Infixes: Inserted within a word.
    • Suffixes: Added to the end of a word (nominalizers, verbalizers, adjectivizers, adverbializers).