Vocabulary is a very important part of language science. She studies the words and their meanings. It's no secret: the richer the language stock of a person, the more beautiful and imaginative his speech. Most of the new words can be learned by reading. It often happens that a new word is found in a book or magazine, in which case a dictionary of lexical meanings will help, it is also called sensible. The most common are those issued by V.I. Dahl and S.I. Ozhegov. It is they who are trusted by the modern science of language.
Vocabulary wealth of the Russian language
Language, including Russian, is a developing phenomenon. New cultures, inventions of science and technology appear, one civilization replaces another. Of course, all this is reflected in the language. Some words appear, some disappear. It is vocabulary that reacts vividly to these changes. All this makes up the richness of the language. K. Paustovsky gave a very colorful explanation of the totality of words, saying that for every surrounding phenomenon or object there is a corresponding “good” word, or even more than one.
Scientists have proven that for one person to understand the other it is enough to have 4-5 thousand words in stock, but this is not enough for a beautiful, imaginative speech. The Russian language is one of the most beautiful, so using its wealth is simply necessary. Moreover, knowledge of individual words with their interpretations is not enough (for this you can just learn the dictionary of lexical meanings). It is much more important to know the words related in meaning, their figurative meaning, to understand and use antonyms, to use homonymous units.
The lexical meaning of the word
The word is the most important unit of any language. It is from them that combinations and subsequently sentences are made, by which people communicate with each other. How to distinguish one word from another? Using phonetic design. The lexical meaning will also help. This distinguishes between words. They can denote, for example, objects, people, or living things ( table, teacher, wolf ); natural phenomena ( wind, frost ), actions ( run, watch ), signs ( beautiful, pink ).
Over the centuries, words can change their lexical meaning. Take for example the word garden . Until the 20th century, this word also denoted a garden. In modern times, the lexical meaning has changed: the garden is now a fenced place where vegetables are grown.
There are words in which the lexical meaning is a certain image that is easy to imagine and portray: a tree, a closet, a flower . For others, it is very abstract: love, grammar, music . The lexical meaning of the Russian language is generalized in explanatory dictionaries. There are several ways of interpreting: the same meaning words. For example, the path is the road . Some dictionaries offer a detailed explanation: the path is a specific place in the space along which they move.
Why you need to know the lexical meaning
It is very important to know the lexical meaning - this will save you from some spelling mistakes. For instance:
- Trying on wedding dresses is a tedious but enjoyable process.
- She always succeeded in reconciling enemies.
In the first example, the word “try on” is used to mean “try on,” so you should write e in the root. The second sentence deals with peace, therefore, a letter is also required in the root.
The lexical meaning distinguishes not only words, but also morphemes. So, the prefix at - is used when it comes to incomplete action, immediate proximity, approximation or accession; pre - in cases where the highest degree of something is meant ( fun - very funny , but: push (join), sit down (incomplete), seaside (close to the sea).
There are also roots that have different lexical meanings. These are such as - poppy - / - mock -; - equal - / - exactly -. If the word means immersion in liquid, it should be written - poppy - ( dunk cookies in milk ), another thing is the value "skip, absorb liquid", in this case it is necessary to write - mok - ( wet feet ). The root - equal - should be written when it comes to equality ( equation ); - smooth - used in the meaning of something smooth, even ( trim bangs ).
Unambiguous and ambiguous words
The richness of the words of the Russian language are those units that have several or just one lexical meaning. These are unambiguous and ambiguous words. The former have only one interpretation: birch, scalpel, Moscow, pizza . As can be seen from the examples, the group of unambiguous words includes proper names, recently emerged or foreign words, also narrowly targeted. These are all kinds of terms, names of professions, names of animals.
There are much more ambiguous words in the language, that is, those that have several meanings. As a rule, interpretations unfold around a specific attribute or meaning. An explanatory dictionary will tell you that the word is ambiguous. The values of such tokens are listed below the numbers. Let’s take an example of the word “earth”. He has several interpretations:
- One of the planets of the solar system.
- Land is a contrast to the concepts of "water" and "sky."
- Soil is a fertile layer that allows you to grow all kinds of crops.
- Territory owned by anyone.
- For some countries, a federal unit.
Literal and figurative meaning of the word
All ambiguous words can contain a direct or figurative interpretation. If the task “Explain the lexical meaning of words” is encountered, you need to look into the explanatory dictionary. There, next to the value, it will be indicated whether it is direct or figurative. The first is basic; the second was formed on the basis of the basic principle of similarity.
For example, consider the word “hat”. First, its main significance is a hat with small margins. On the basis of the similarity, a figurative interpretation was formed: the upper part of an object, expanded and flat - a mushroom or nail head.
It is figurative meanings that give speech a special imagery, on their basis such paths were created as a metaphor (hidden comparison: a sheaf of hair ), metonymy (adjacency of signs: table silver ) and a synecdoch (a part was used instead of the whole: the peasant was actually a slave ).
Sometimes there are times when only a figurative meaning appears in a language, and to complete a task such as “Define the lexical meaning of words”, you will need not only an explanatory, but also an etymological dictionary. For example, this was the case with the adjective "red". Its direct meaning “beautiful” is preserved only in ancient toponyms (“Red Square”) or folklore (proverbs).
Homonyms
The meanings of words can be compared, contrasted. The program for the 5-6th grade studies such relations. The lexical meaning of homonyms, synonyms and antonyms is very interesting. Consider all these kinds of words.
Homonyms are those words that are identical in pronunciation or spelling, but their meaning is completely different. So, the words carnations (flowers) and carnations (pointed rods for fastening materials) are spelled the same way and pronounced differently. Another example: a braid is a type of hairstyle, and a braid is an agricultural tool. Homonyms can be grammatical. So, in the phrases "flood the stove" and "bake pies." The word oven is a noun in the first case and a verb in the second. The concepts of homonymy and polysemy should not be confused . The first does not imply any similarity between the concepts, while the second is based on the principle of similarity of any attribute.
Synonyms
Synonyms are words with identical lexical meaning. For example, the words "friend, buddy, comrade, shirt-guy" have the meaning of a close, trusted person. However, synonyms still differ in shades of meaning. A friend , for example, means a particularly close person.
Synonyms have a different stylistic coloring. So, a shirt-guy is used in colloquial speech. As a rule, synonyms are words of one part of speech, however, they can be stable combinations. Knowledge of the phenomenon of synonymy helps to avoid spelling errors. So, in order to find out the correct spelling of a particle not with nouns or adjectives, it is necessary to follow the algorithm: "define the lexical meaning and try to find a synonym without no : the enemy is the enemy ."
Antonyms
Antonyms are words diametrically different in lexical meaning: friend is an enemy; to go - to run; deep - shallow; up - down . As you can see, the phenomenon of antonymy is characteristic of any part of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. The use of such words gives the speech special expressiveness, helps convey especially important thoughts to the listener or reader, therefore very often the words that are opposite in meaning are found in popular sayings - proverbs. For example, "Gently soft, but hard to sleep." In this case, "soft - hard" - antonyms.
As you can see, the Russian language is very diverse, so the topic of word interpretation has been studied for several years. In addition, she was taken to the main school exams, where, for example, the task “Explain the lexical meaning of words” or “Choose a synonym / antonym / homonym for a word” and so on is found.