Lexis 1

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Lexis 1
Summary
In this first input on lexis we will begin by considering its place within English language
teaching from a current perspective. We will go on to look at what is meant exactly by lexis
and then what systems can be identified within it. An awareness of these systems should
provide insights into organising the teaching and learning of vocabulary.

Objectives
By the end of this input you should be able to:

 Recognise, understand and use appropriate terminology to describe concepts relevant

to the teaching and learning of lexis.

 Recognise and demonstrate an understanding of some of the significant systemic

features (such as lexical fields, word families, and so on) of English lexis and of some of
the differences between English and other languages.

 Demonstrate awareness of the importance of lexis as part of learning a language and

familiarity with current views on this topic.

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Contents
1. Current Perspectives

1.1. Lexicographical Research

1.2. The Lexical Approach

2. What is Lexis?

3. Lexis as a System: Sense Relations

3.1. Topic / Situation / Lexical Field

3.2. Hyponymy: The Relationship of Inclusion

3.3. Synonymy

3.4. Homonymy and Polysemy

3.5. Collocation

4. Comparing English with Other Languages

5. Words and their Forms

5.1. Word Families

5.2. Prefixes and Suffixes (Affixes)

5.3. Pronunciation

6. Conclusion

7. Terminology review

Reading

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1. Current Perspectives
In language teaching today, lexis occupies a much more important position than it did in the
past.

Media Box Running time 3mins

Jack Richards speak about the Role of Vocabulary in Language Teaching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT2S5IrjUzU

Lexicographical Research
Lexicographical research began in the 1980s and marked a turning point in communicative
syllabus design and in language teaching. It led many to rethink the nature of language and
the role of vocabulary. John Sinclair, whose work initiated the COBUILD (Collins/Birmingham
University International Language Database) project, predicted before the corpus work was
begun that it would have a profound effect on teaching and what was taught.

An early lexically-driven coursebook, The COBUILD English Course by Dave and Jane Willis
published in 1988 and consisting of three levels, also came out of the COBUILD corpus. The
units were built around topics and language areas which systematically encouraged the
learning of lexis. By the end of the third level the students were supposed to have built up a
lexicon of about 2500 keywords. The book also took a task-based approach and perhaps
because of this, and its new kind of lexical syllabus, the course was not widely adopted. It
was ahead of its time, perhaps not entirely well conceived in terms of content and teachers
found it difficult to use in the classroom. The underlying principles though, of a lexical
syllabus and a task based approach are now being more widely advocated.

In the 1990s, other coursebooks started to incorporate lexis in a more systematic way,
introducing a lexical syllabus alongside structure, functions and skills, that is, as part of a
multi-layered syllabus. Vocabulary was usually organised by topic.

Previously, vocabulary had mainly been perceived as ‘words’ but work in computational
linguistics and corpus analysis led to considerable interest in chunks of language. These have
variously been called lexical items, lexical phrases or pre-fabricated units and have been
identified as central to a description of the way language works. This means that the
traditional view of word boundaries has been challenged and that learners need to perceive
and use patterns of lexis and collocation. It suggests that, rather than Chomsky’s rule
governed process, language use consists at least partly of a process of retrieval of larger
phrasal units from memory. Nattinger and De Carrico (1992) identified a central role for
multiword chunks and Michael Lewis, a better known figure in ELT, has asserted that
‘Language consists of grammatical lexis - not lexicalised grammar’ (1993:89) He became well
known for his books on the Lexical Approach.

The Lexical Approach

You have already looked at the Lexical Approach in Methods and trends in ELT and you are
probably aware that the person most strongly associated with it is Michael Lewis. Here are
some further quotes from his book, The Lexical Approach.

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Lexis is the core or heart of language but in language teaching has always been the
Cinderella. (Chapter 5, p89)

Modern linguistic analysis…. suggests that language is not made up of structure +

vocabulary, but of different kinds of lexical phrase. (Chapter 8, p145)

An important part of language acquisition is the ability to produce lexical phrases as

unanalysed wholes or chunks. (Chapter 5, p95).

He advocates the teaching of lexical chunks (collocations, fixed and semi-fixed expressions
etc), for it is these that facilitate language production. He advocates certain practices such as
a lot of listening and awareness raising activities as well as a delay in teaching ‘extensive’
writing.

2. What is Lexis?
Lexis is the vocabulary of a language in contrast to its grammar. Traditionally, vocabulary or
lexis was viewed as consisting mainly of single word items with possibly a few expressions or
multiword items such as idioms or phrasal verbs in there too. Now, however, the distinction
between lexis and grammar has become more blurred.

The current view is that lexis consists of single words and multi-word units or lexical phrases.

Words are the most familiar type of lexical item. They are free-standing items of language
that have meaning.

Words may be:

 Roots: single free morphemes that cannot be further subdivided e.g. rain.

 Derived words: roots with bound morphemes attached at the beginning or the end e.g.
deformed (de-form-ed).

 Compound words: items that consist of more than one root but have a single concept or
identity e.g. wastepaper bin.

 Multi-word units (or lexical phrases): these are recurring fixed forms that consist of
more than one word. A multi-word unit may look like a clause with a verb and object but
the meaning cannot be worked out by cutting it up and the form is fixed to varying
degrees. Multi-word units include:

o Idioms: e.g. ‘to pass the buck’

o Binomials: e.g. ‘to and fro’

o Trinomials: e.g. ‘tall, dark and handsome’

o Other Fixed phrases: e.g. ‘Let’s face it’

Michael Lewis classifies things slightly differently. He refers to:

 Words and polywords: these include compound words, idioms, binomials and
trinomials.

 Collocations or word partnerships: these combinations of words occur with varying

degrees of predictability e.g. ‘strong coffee’, ‘heavy rain’, ‘to address the problem’.

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 Institutionalised expressions or fixed expressions (usually spoken): e.g. ‘Not yet’, ‘I’ll
see what I can do.’

 Sentence heads or frames: these are often used for organising discourse e.g. ‘The thing
is.’, ‘Firstly....Secondly...’

Note that his classification changes slightly in different publications.

We have then four types of lexical item: the first two categories concerned principally with
referential meaning, the latter two with pragmatic meaning. .... Broadly the categories
equate to the traditional ones of Vocabulary (now Words and Collocations) and Function
(now Institutionalised Utterance and Sentence Frame).

(Lewis, M. Pedagogical implications of the lexical approach in Coady, J and Huckin, T

Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition, p259)

The presence of multi-word units in natural data is so common that it has led one linguist,
Sinclair (1987) to suggest that what he calls ‘the idiom principle’, the use of ready-made
chunks such as those we have been examining, may well be the basic organising principle in
language production.

(McCarthy, M. 1990 Vocabulary CUP p11)

It is therefore difficult to find universal agreement when it comes to the categorisation of

lexical items and lexical items will often straddle more than one category. For example, just
because something is a binomial it does not mean that it cannot be fixed phrase. When it
comes to teaching, whether we call these items lexical phrases, multi-word units or
functions is almost irrelevant. However, it does seem a good idea to teach them since they
are clearly commonly occurring (according to genre) in native speaker language. They should
aid fluency in speaking and writing, make learners use language more naturally and make
comprehension of text easier since chunking, the ability to recognise groups of words, eases
the load for the reader or listener.

3. Lexis as a System: Sense Relations

The traditional perception is that grammar organises the chaos of the lexicon.

(Michael Lewis, Implementing the Lexical Approach p67)

As a system, grammar has been viewed as easy to describe. Perhaps one reason for ignoring
vocabulary in the past in language teaching was that it was less easy to present as a system.
Language as a rule-governed system or as displaying repetitive patterns (grammatical
structures) makes it seem a more restricted thing, therefore much more easily teachable
and learnable. In the grammar translation method, learners were confronted with a lot of
vocabulary, but it was presented randomly, for example when it came up in a text the
students were reading. In later methods and approaches, vocabulary was viewed as much
less important than structure and was kept to a minimum, particularly at lower levels. It was
believed it could be best slotted in once the grammatical rules of the language had been
grasped. Now lexis is definitely considered more important and to avoid simply presenting
learners with lists of unrelated words, we need to think about organising principles in our
teaching programmes. A starting point for this is looking at what kind of relationships and
patterns we can identify in the lexicon between different items. In other words, how can
vocabulary be perceived as systematic? What organising principles can we put forward for
it?

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Topic / Situation / Lexical Field

The massive word store of a language like English can be conceived of as composed
around a number of meaning areas, some large, such as ‘philosophy’ or ‘emotions’,
others smaller and more sharply delineated, such as ‘kinship’ or ‘colour’ or
‘carpentry’. The groups of words which realise these meanings are called lexical
fields, and these in turn are subdivided into smaller groups of words, lexical sets.

(Carter, R. & McCarthy, M. Vocabulary and Language Teaching Chapter 2 p19)

Consider the follow groups:

 Application form, a CV, qualifications, to have experience in something, to go to an

interview, to get the job (applying for a job)

 Armchair, sofa, coffee table, bookcase, picture (things in a sitting room)

 Would you like a bit more? starter, main course, napkin, That was lovely (having a meal)

The above examples are obviously loosely connected through topic or situation and each
could be greatly expanded. The problem with topics or situations is that they remain very
open categories. However, they are still a very useful and common way of selecting and
organising lexis in teaching and lexical items linked by topic obviously are likely to co-occur
in discourse. Within each lexical field however there are other kinds of relationships.

Hyponymy: The Relationship of Inclusion

Look at the following lists of lexical items. What is the relationship between each one?

 Season winter, spring, summer, autumn

 Vehicle van, car, lorry, bus

 Animal dog, zebra, monkey, cat

We call the items, ‘season’, ‘vehicle’ and ‘animal’ superordinates, the umbrella category
within a system of classification. The other items, ‘winter’, ‘spring’ etc. are hyponyms, types
of thing under that umbrella.

This relationship is an important feature of lexical cohesion. Rather than repeat a specific
lexical item in discourse, spoken or written, the superordinate may be used when the ‘thing’
is mentioned again (or vice versa):

‘The first genetically modified monkey has been born in the US. The scientists who
produced the animal...’ (BBC News, Jan 11 2001)

A police spokeswoman said: ‘Following an investigation of the vehicle, it was identified

that the car contained human remains. We are treating this as a murder inquiry." (BBC
News, Jan 11 2001)

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There is another type of relationship between items called meronymy or part-whole

relationships e.g. cheek, eyebrow, mouth, nose are parts (meronyms) of a face (holonym).
This is different from hyponymy because ‘cheek’ is not a type of face but a part of it. These
kinds of items may also co-occur in text.

Synonymy
Synonyms are words that mean the same thing. There are many words in English that
appear to mean the same e.g. sofa and settee, sitting room, living room and lounge, below
and under. However, it seems that few, if any, synonyms are truly synonymous or correct
and appropriate in all situations.

 They may not collocate with the same items e.g. ‘antique furniture’ but not ‘antique
houses’.

 They may not have exactly the same coverage in terms of meaning and may have
different connotations e.g. ‘thrifty’ and ‘economical’ or ‘a bread bun’ and ‘a roll’.

 They may have different syntactic behaviour e.g. ‘leave’ and ‘depart from’.

 They may be of a different style e.g. archaic, modern, literary, formal/informal. Consider
the difference between ‘a wireless’ and ‘a radio’ or ‘to be in the red’ and ‘to be
overdrawn’.

 They may be related to a particular variety of English (American, British etc.) or a

particular register (technical, legal etc.).

Synonyms also play an important role in giving a text cohesion, that is, holding it together
and giving it meaning. In the text below there are three ways of referring to the people who
work for a company. Repetition of ‘workers’ is avoided so as not to sound repetitive but the
fact that they are referred to three times throughout the text helps create greater unity.

Workers suspended by a leading insurance company over the

distribution of 'lewd' e-mails have been told their jobs are safe.
The Royal and Sun Alliance in Liverpool sacked 10 members of staff
and suspended 77 after the offensive e-mails were discovered.
The suspended employees have received written warnings after
disciplinary hearings into the offending images ....’
(BBC News Jan, 2001)

Oppositeness: Antonymy, Converseness and Complementarity

Within this category of sense relations there are various types.

 Items such as light/heavy, light/dark are opposites (antonyms) but the opposite varies
according to the different meanings of light.

 Items such as boiling, hot, warm, tepid, cool, cold, freezing can be represented on a
scale with the two extremes which are opposites at either end (gradable antonyms).

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 Rather than opposites there is also the concept of ‘converseness’ where the
relationships are often reciprocal e.g. parent/child, husband/wife, give/take, come/go,
borrow/lend etc.

 There are also ‘complementaries’: truly opposite entities where if one is applicable, the
other cannot be e.g. same/different, male/female. As well as this, there are ‘multiple
incompatibles’ where if it is one, it cannot be the other e.g. January, February, March
etc. (a set of 12 here)

The sense relations that we have just looked at have important implications for teaching and
learning. There is evidence that we store words in our mind, at least in part, according to
these organising patterns (hyponymy, synonymy and so on). Also these words may co-occur
in texts, and are a feature of lexical cohesion in both spoken and written texts. Therefore
these types of relationships have become common organising principles for dealing with
lexis in teaching programmes.

Homonymy and Polysemy

This is a different aspect of relationships between words because here we are looking at
how one word, or one form, may have different meanings, unrelated or related.

Homonym: the same form with a different meaning e.g. ‘bat’ the animal and ‘bat’ the object
used in cricket or baseball.

Polysemy: the same form with a related meaning e.g. ‘foot’ at the bottom of your leg and
‘foot’ the base of the mountain i.e. there is something related about the different uses, in
this case the bottom part.

Polysemy is not a fringe aspect of language; it is at the very heart of word meaning and
affects the vast majority of words, with the exception, only, perhaps of highly restricted
technical terms within specialist registers where scientific communities may agree on a
single, shared meaning for a term in which case we have a monosemous word.

(McCarthy, M. 1990 Vocabulary CUP p26)

If you think of as many examples of the word ‘course’ as you can, there are obviously
multiple meanings e.g. route, something taken at university, a dish in a meal etc. However, it
is important to consider the extent to which there is overlap in other languages. Here is an
example of some uses of the word ‘course’ translated into Portuguese. As you can see there
is a range of other lexical items used for course thus illustrating how markedly different
homonymy and polysemy can be in other languages.

A: Can I leave now?

B: Of course you can. Claro (que pode)

What are you having for your main course? prato principal

My brother’s doing a sandwich course. curso profissionalizante

de teoria e prática
alternadas

I like our coursebook. livro didático

The ship was miles off course but the captain hadn’t realised. fora de curso

I love the atmosphere of the racecourse. hipódromo

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Is there a golf course near here? campo de golfe

They invited the ambassador as a matter of course. Automaticamente

Metaphor

Metaphor has gained attention as more than just a literary device particularly since the
publication of a book called Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1980
University of Chicago Press). Coming from a philosophy and linguistics viewpoint, they
showed that metaphor pervades all language and that whole abstract areas or topics can be
described by words from a corresponding concrete area. For example, time is money (‘waste
time’, ‘spend time’, ‘save time’); emotion is linked to temperature, (‘he was fuming’, ‘to chill
out’, ‘to give someone the cold shoulder’); understanding is light (‘it dawned on him’, ‘it
came to me in a flash’ ‘he saw the light’, ‘she shed some light on the subject’ etc.

Native speakers are so used to these so-called institutionalised metaphors, since they occur
so often, that they probably do not even think of them any more as metaphors. Rather, it is
uninstitutionalised metaphor (unusual metaphor as used in poetry or literature, for
example) that stands out for the native speaker.

All languages use metaphor in this way and there is some cross-language metaphor. It is in
places where there is not a correspondence between languages that learners are likely to
find understanding difficult. Metaphor is obviously linked to polysemy but groups items in a
different way that may also be useful for teaching purposes. Metaphor may also provide
lexical cohesion within a text, that is, you may find several examples of metaphors based on
an idea such as ‘anger is heat’ within a given text.

Metaphor is one of the most fruitful of the novel ways of identifying patterns in lexis.

Michael Lewis, Implementing the Lexical Approach, p71

Componential Analysis

Words that group into lexical fields obviously have features in common, but they also have
distinguishing features. Componential analysis looks at what the various bits or components
of meaning are in a word. Thus meaning can be broken down, for example

 Man = human + male + adult

 Boy = human + male - adult

Look at the following example based on ways of moving.

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Normal steps

Normal pace
Small steps
Large steps

Purposeful

particular
direction
Without
Lacking
control
Quiet

Noisy

Slow
Fast
Stroll ✓ ✓

Stagger ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Tiptoe ✓ ✓ ✓

Amble ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Stomp ✓ ✓ ✓

Stride ✓ ✓ ✓

For certain types of words it may be a useful technique for teachers when trying to analyse
differences between the kinds of words above but it does not seem to apply to all words.
How would you explain the colour blue in this way? It’s easier to do it through comparison
with other things rather than in relation to other words in the same lexical field.

Collocation
Currently, a much talked about aspect of lexis is collocation. However, the interest among
some British linguists dates back to the 1960s.

Collocation refers to ‘the way in which words are used together regularly’ (Richards, J. &
Schmitt, R. 2002 Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (3rd
edition) Longman), or ‘words that frequently occur together’ (Thornbury, S. 2006 An A – Z
of ELT Macmillan). This makes for a very wide definition, as it could include idioms, phrasal
verbs, dependent prepositions, fixed expressions, binomials, trinomials as well as common,
but not fixed, word partnerships such as ‘highly irregular situation’, ‘told a news conference’,
‘peak condition’, ‘slightly different’.

Some writers have distinguished between lexical collocation e.g. ‘strong coffee’, ‘breathe
heavily’, ‘make a special request’ and grammatical collocation ‘depend on’, ‘be interested in
+ verb-ing’.

Michael Lewis prefers to exclude from the term various patterns such as fixed phrases, (‘on
the other hand’) grammatical collocations (‘aware of’) binomials (‘up and down’) and
trinomials (‘lock, stock and barrel’) , proverbs (‘too many cooks…’) , idioms (‘as daft as a
brush’) etc. These, in fact, are all lexical items which have, traditionally, been more usually
incorporated into language courses along with single words. The main focus now of the
interest in collocation is other predictable, but not fixed, word partnerships.

These may often consist of:

 Adjective + noun stale bread, tight security, vital evidence

 Noun + noun pressure group, death threat, chicken curry

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 Verb + adjective + noun play a significant role, report a significant

fall

 Verb + adverb live dangerously, work hard, sleep soundly

 Adverb + verb seriously affect, deeply offend

 Adverb + adjective highly successful, well established, fully

informed

 Verb + preposition + noun go on display, be on the move

Collocations may be more or less ‘strong’. For example, ‘spring to mind’, ‘foot the bill’,
‘mineral water’ are highly predictable (strong collocations) from one of the words whereas
‘a nice car’ is much less predictable because both ‘nice’ and ‘car’ collocate with so many
more words. However, some ‘easy’ expressions i.e. weak collocations also need to be
highlighted for learners e.g. expressions with ‘do’, ‘make’ or ‘have’ (‘have breakfast’, not
‘take breakfast’, ‘make a mistake’ not ‘do a mistake’). This is because they are different in
the students’ L1 and therefore a common source of error.

Languages are full of strong collocational pairs and therefore collocation deserves to be a
central aspect of vocabulary study.

(McCarthy, M. 1990 Vocabulary CUP p12)

It is certainly an area of difficulty for learners: you often find that learner language even at a
relatively advanced level is not ‘wrong’ because of inaccurate grammar or entirely
inappropriate individual words. The problem is more in the combination of words used,
which just does not sound right. Part of the problem here, aside from using language
structures appropriate to a specific genre, is inappropriate collocation.

Collocation is important because this area of predictability is ... enormous. Two, three, four
and even five word collocations make up a huge percentage of all naturally occurring text
spoken or written. Estimates vary, but it is possible that up to 70% of everything we say,
hear, read or write is to be found in some sort of fixed expression.

Hill, J. Revising priorities: from grammatical failure to collocation success in Lewis, M (ed)
Teaching Collocation. Chapter 3.7 p53

4. Comparing English with Other Languages

Are there any evident differences between the way languages label things and divide up
meaning? For example, as far as I know, all languages divide the week into seven days.
However, the division of time within a day may be different. In English we have morning,
afternoon, evening and night. In Portuguese there is ‘manhã’, ‘tarde’, and ‘noite’ i.e. no
distinction is made between afternoon and evening. In some languages there may be more
or fewer words to describe a meaning. In Portuguese ‘dedo’ means finger and toe. ‘Hus’ in
Swedish has a broader meaning than house, more like building. It is a superordinate term. In
other words, there are different semantic boundaries.

You are probably well aware that a homonym in English is not necessarily a homonym in
another language. Therefore, you cannot expect to be able to translate ‘bear’ (the animal)
and ‘bear’ (to tolerate) into the same word in another language. Similarly, polysemy,
metaphor and collocation all exist in other languages but there may be mismatches between
different languages in how they are realised.

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A further problem arises when we find words that look the same in two languages but in fact
have different meanings. These are called false friends or false cognates. For example, if a
Portuguese or Spanish student tells you ‘I am very constipated’ he or she may mean they
have got a cold since ‘constipado’ means that in their L1. It has a meaning similar to ‘blocked
up’ or ‘congested’. You will focus on these types of problem in the following task.

5. Words and their Forms

We can identify various relationships between words in terms of their form and these too
may suggest organising principles for the teaching and learning of lexis.

Word Families

Activity Person Verb

robbery robber to rob (a bank)

burglary burglar to burgle (a house)

assassination assassin to assassinate (somebody)

vandalism vandal to vandalise (public property)

murder murderer to murder (someone)

The words above are presented in a topic-related area (crime and criminals) but there is a
focus on the correct form in the different parts of speech. Students need to be able to
recognise and produce words as they change from one grammatical category to another.

There are particular endings characteristic of classes of words and this can provide another
organising principle in teaching lexis. For example you could look at common endings for
‘doers’ (reader, writer, teacher etc.)

Prefixes and Suffixes (Affixes)

You can also look, for example, at adjectives with particular suffixes or prefixes and identify
common meanings in their use e.g. ‘-ful’ meaning having the quality of, ‘-less’ meaning
without, ‘-proof’ meaning something can be resisted and ‘anti-‘meaning against or opposed
to.

Pronunciation
Words can be grouped according to their stress patterns and sounds and this feature seems
also to play a role in how native speakers store words in their minds. We associate words
that sound similar. This organising principle seems to be particularly strong in young
children, hence they love nursery rhymes, chants and so on.

Homophones

Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelt differently and have different
meanings e.g. ‘bear’ and ‘bare, ‘write’ and ‘right’, ‘key’ and ‘quay’, ‘sleigh’ and ‘slay’, ‘wear’
and ‘where’ etc. They do not usually form a significant part of an attempt to describe lexis as
a system but work on homophones in the classroom may rather be a way of raising student
awareness of vowel sounds and diphthongs and sound/spelling relationships.

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6. Conclusion
Language practitioners need not shy away from lexis as a boundless chaos; organisational
principles are available and simply wait to be more fully exploited.

(Carter, R, & McCarthy, M Vocabulary and Language Teaching p38)

If we are to plan a teaching programme around lexis, as The Lexical Approach suggests, it is
obviously crucial to look at ways in which lexis can be seen to be organised or what systems
exist within it. At the very least, we need to incorporate lexis systematically into our teaching
programme. In Lexis 2 we look at how we select and order lexis for teaching purposes.

7. Terminology Review
The definitions below all refer to concepts from this input. Supply the term being defined.
There is an example provided.

Example: Chunks of language whose constituent parts never change, e.g. ‘Let’s face it’,
‘Same again, please’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ = Fixed Expression

1. A group of words which belong to the same category, such as ‘apple’, ‘kiwi’, ‘banana’,
‘pineapple’.

2. A lexical item formed of two words, such as ‘science fiction’ or ‘passer-by’.

3. A word which has a number of different meanings, such as ‘train’: ‘We took the train to
Bristol’ and ‘You need to train if you want to run the marathon.’

4. A word which is more generic than a given word or words. For example, ‘transport’ is
the __________ of ‘train’, ‘bus’, ‘taxi’, ‘tram’ etc.

5. Items which belong to one topic area. They may be different parts of speech e.g. ‘cut’,
‘saucepan’, ‘flour’, ‘onion’ and ‘washing-up’ are all part of a __________ of cooking.

For 6 – 9, provide a definition for the labels given. There is an example provided.

Example: Affixes

Bound morphemes such as ‘–ness’, ‘ir-’ and ‘non-’ are placed before a root or ‘free’
morpheme (as a prefix), or after (as a suffix) in order to change meaning, word class etc.

6. Antonym

7. Collocation

8. Synonym

9. False Cognate

Suggested Answers
1. Lexical set

2. Compound noun

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3. Homonym

4. Superordinate

5. Lexical field

6. The opposite of a given word e.g. ‘hot’ and ‘cold’.

7. Two (or more) words which commonly occur together.

8. Words which have the same semantic meaning e.g. ‘leave’ and ‘depart’.

9. Words which look the same in two languages, but different meanings e.g. French
‘sympatique’ and English ‘sympathetic’.

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Reading:
Although not essential to your Module 1 preparation, if you would like to explore this area
further we suggest the following:

Suggested Reading
Lewis, M. 1997 Implementing the Lexical Approach, LTP

McCarthy, M. 1990 Vocabulary, Oxford University Press

Thornbury, S. 2002 How to Teach Vocabulary Longman

Additional Reading
Baker, J. April 1998 Metaphor ETP Issue 7

Carter, R. & McCarthy, M. 1988 Vocabulary & Language Teaching Longman

Deignan, A. Gabrys, D. & Solska, A. Teaching English Metaphors using Cross-Linguistic

Awareness-Raising Activities ELTJ 51/4

Gairns, R. & Redman, S. 1986 Working With Words, Cambridge University Press

Hill, J. April 1999 Collocational competence ETP Issue 11

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