TEMA 11 – LA PALABRA COMO SIGNO LINGÜÍSTICO. HOMONIMIA. SINONIMIA.

ANTONIMIA. “FALSE FRIENDS”. CREATIVIDAD LÉXICA. The word as a linguistic sign.

Homonymy. Synonymy. Antonymy. False friends. Lexical creativity.

OUTLINE
1. INTRODUCTION
2. WORD AS A LINGUISTIC SIGN
2.1. On the nature of the linguistic sign.
3. HOMONYMY, SYNONYMY, ANTONYMY AND HYPONYMY
3.1. Homonymy.
3.1.1.Types of homonyms.
3.2. Synonymy.
3.2.1.Absolute vs. partial.
3.2.2.Types of synonyms.
3.3. Antonymy.
3.3.1.Types of antonyms.
3.4. Hyponymy.
4. FALSE FRIENDS
5. LEXICAL CREATIVITY
6. FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING
7. CONCLUSION
8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. INTRODUCTION
Topic number 11 deals with the English lexis and the different relationships that exist among pair or groups of words, such
as antonymy, synonymy or homonymy. To start with, it is important to justify this topic in the English curriculum. In the
past, grammar and lexical aspects were considered the primary aspects of learning a foreign language, so other important
parts were disregarded. The new Organic Law LOMLOE “Ley Orgánica de Modificación de la LOE” 3/2020 has proposed a
new communicative approach to foreign languages, and this approach implies not only the consideration of grammatical
aspects and vocabulary, but also cultural, historical, and social characteristics of the English language.
Vocabulary plays an essential part in our everyday lives, since we need to know as much as we can of it to reach an
effective communication with people. We can be grammar masters but if we do not know enough vocabulary, our
messages are not going to be well-explained or interpreted. As the businessman Jim Rohn said, “vocabulary enables us to
interpret and to express. If you have a limited vocabulary, you will also have a limited vision and a limited future”. In this
context, this topic has a relevant role in the English curriculum as it deals with the communicative and vocabulary aspects
and it can be a tool to teach our students some of the basic and fundamental competences such as the communicative
competence.
All topics concerning linguistics are interrelated and they should be treated as a whole, for instance, in order to understand
this topic much better, we should take into consideration other topics, such as topic 10, which deals with the English lexis
and word formation processes such as compounding, affixation or conversion.
To carry out this unit I will present the word as a linguistic sign and the nature of the linguistic sign, touching an important
notion which is signified and signifier. Then, I will talk about homonymy, synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy, their
definitions and types. I will continue with an explanation of false friends and lexical creativity as well as the future
directions in language teaching. After that, you will find a conclusion on this present study and finally, you can find the
bibliography used to elaborate this topic.

2. WORD AS A LINGUISTIC SIGN

To begin with, I will refer to concept of meaning. According to Lyons (1995), many answers have been proposed in order
to answer the question of what meaning is and what we understand by this word. The term “meaning” can be defined in
many ways, but the definition most pertinent to linguistics is that meaning is the “function of signs in language”. This
corresponds to the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s definition (1953), by which he stated that “the meaning
of a word is its use in the language”, that is, the role a word plays in the language. We must bear in mind that meaning is
to a large extent imposed and arbitrary rather than inherent in the nature of things, and therefore, it differs from one
language community to another. Therefore, it is often very difficult to translate from one language to another, especially
if the two languages are used by people with very different ways of looking at the world.
Since ancient times the way of improving communication preoccupied human beings as they had a need to express some
basic structures of the world and of human life, such as feelings, attitudes, and everyday situations. The study of meaning
as such was labelled during the 19th century under the term semantics, which had a linked sense with the science related
to the study of signs, semiotics.
Studies of symbolism began in the modern sense of the word only when people had learned to analyse the content of a
message from the form. The German philosopher G.F.W. Hegel laid down the road for later research in the field when he
considered Babylonian and Egyptian architecture to be the best exponent of early symbolism when linking nature to
religious thoughts. The first attempt to formulate a science of signs dates from the late 19th century, when a French
linguist, Michel Bréal, published Essai de sémantique (1897), which was a philological study of language. Some years later,
Ferdinand de Saussure divided language into two components, symbols, and syntax as it is stated in his book Cours de
linguistique Générale (1916).
Grammar and phonology were included as post-Saussurean semantics in the study of meaning as a branch of linguistics.
Both were concerned with relations within language (sense) and relations between language and the world (reference).
Generally, their study is known as structural or lexical semantics. Reference is concerned with the meaning of words and
sentences in terms of the world of experience: the situations to which they refer or in which they occur.

2.1. On the nature of the linguistic sign

Ferdinand de Saussure’s theoretical ideas in relation to linguistics were published in the Course in General Linguistics in
1916, three years after his death. This is a collection and expansion of notes taken by Saussure during various lecture
courses he gave.
Saussure was interested in language as a system and structure, and his ideas were applied to any language and to anything
we may call a “signifying system”. Within this theoretical approach, Saussure describes the structures within any language
which make meaning possible, although he was not interested in what particular meanings were created. He was only
interested in the design of the structure itself.
He emphasized the idea of language as a living phenomenon, of studying speech instead of written texts, of analyzing the
underlying system of a language in order to demonstrate an integrated structure, and of placing language firmly in its
social environment.
Following Crystal (1985), Saussure’s main contribution was to clarify the concept of language system and his view of
meaning. Saussure accepted there were two sides of meaning, but emphasized their relationship was arbitrary. He names
the two notions “concept” vs. “acoustic image”, and also “content” vs. “expression”. The linguistic sign is made of the
union of a concept and a sound image. His labels for the two sides were “signified” which means the concept of a word,
and “signifier” which means the form of a sign. Saussure was insistent that meaning was a relationship between two
equally participating characteristics. He called this relationship of signified to signifier a linguistic sign. For him, the sign is
“the basic unit of communication, a unit within the language of the community”, and therefore, Saussure sees language
as “a system of signs”.
The linguistic sign has two main characteristics. First of all, the bond between them is arbitrary, that is, there is no natural,
intrinsic, or logical relation between a particular acoustic sound and a concept. For example, we refer to the concept of
“house” with different acoustic sounds in different languages (English “house”, German “haus”, Spanish “casa”, French
“maison”). The second characteristic is that the signifier or the auditory signifier is linear, that is, it exists in time.
Therefore, you cannot say two words at the same time since language operates as a linear sequence.

3. HOMONYMY, SYNONYMY, ANTONYMY AND HYPONYMY.

On examining the role of words as a linguistic sign, we deal with lexical semantics, which examines the relationship among
word meaning between words at a paradigmatic level, and therefore with the fairly traditional concepts of homonymy,
synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy. These concepts are mainly studied from two branches of linguistics: etimology, on
the origin of words, and semantics, on the study of meaning of words.
When addressing the term “word”, we have to take into account two quite different distinctions which is quite relevant
to our concerns, that is, the distinction between words as token and words as types, and similarly the difference between
words as forms and words as expressions.
However, not all the expressions listed in a dictionary are words. Some of them are traditionally called phrases or phrasal
expressions. The expressions of a language fall into two sets. The first set is made up of finite lexically simple expressions,
that is, lexemes which are the vocabulary-units of a language, out of which the members of the second set, lexically
composite expressions, are constructed by means of the grammatical rules of the language.

3.1. Homonymy
Following Lyons (1995), homonyms are traditionally defined as words which have the same pronunciation, same spelling
but different meaning, for example “bank” as “financial institution” vs. “sloping side of a river” or “bear” as “animal” vs.
“carry”. We may distinguish two main types of homonymy concerning pronunciation and spelling, first, homophones
with the same pronunciation, different spelling, and different meaning, and homographs with the same spelling, different
pronunciation, and different meaning (“wind” /wind/ “air in motion” vs. “wind” /waind/ “move in a twisting manner”).
Homonyms cannot be predicted by any rules of grammar or diction since you cannot systematically search the dictionary
for homonyms. The definition of homonymy is still defective in that it fails to take account of the fact that, in many
languages, most lexemes have not one, but several forms. We should establish two main distinctions, between
homonymy and polysemy and between absolute and partial homonymy.
Regarding the distinction between homonymy and polysemy, we must point out that whereas homonymy is a relation
that holds between two or more distinct lexemes, polysemy, or multiple meaning, is a property of single lexemes.
Concerning homonymy, there are two major types, based upon whether the meanings of the word are historically
connected or result from coincidence. In theory, the two criteria that are usually involved in this connection are etymology
and relatedness of meaning, that is, resulting from coincidence (Lyons, 1995). For instance, most native speakers of
English would probably classify “bat” (furry mamal with membranous wings) and “bat” (implement for striking a ball in
certain games) as different lexemes. However, these two words do indeed differ in respect of their historical source.
Coincidental homonyms are the result of such historical accidents as phonetic convergence of two originally different
forms of the borrowing of a new word which happens to be identical to an old word. There is usually no natural link
between the two meanings: the bill of a bird vs. the bill one has to pay.
The second type of homonym, the polysemous homonym, results when multiple meanings develop historically from the
same word. The process by which a word acquires new meanings is called polysemy. They usually preserve some
perceptible semantic link marking the development of one meaning out of the other, as in the leg of chair and the leg of
a person. Since polysemy is so difficult to separate from true homonymy, dictionaries usually order entries according to
the first recorded appearance of word or frequency of meaning use.

3.1.1. Types of homonyms

We may distinguish two types of homonyms: homophony and homography. Homophones are defines as “one of two or
more words which have the same pronunciation but different meaning or spelling”, as the words “to”, “too”, and “two”or
“sea” and “see”. Homophones are usually true homonyms in that they derive from completely unrelated sources. There
are also occasional polysemous homophones such as “draft” (into the army) and “draught” (of beer).
Homographs are defined as “one of two or more words spelt alike but different in meaning or pronunciation”, such as
“bow” /bau/ “front or forward end of a boat” vs. “bow” /bou/ “piece of wood curved with a tight string”. Since these
words are pronounced differently in each of their meaning, in English, most homographs are polysemous homographs,
like “use” and “record”. But there are a few true homonyms that are homographs: wind.

3.2. Synonymy
Synonyms refer to a relationship between two or more lexical units which have identical or a slightly different meaning
as another and which differ only with respect to their supplemental or peripheral components, that is, context. often,
synonyms occur together in certain types of expressions, such as explanations and clarifications on the meaning of
another word.
According to Aitchinson (2000), when the same concept can be expressed by two or more terms, one of these is selected
as the preferred term. Then, an equivalence relationship is established since each term is regarded as referring to the
same concept which in effect substitutes for other terms expressing equivalent or near equivalent concepts.
Nuances in meaning may be drawn from cultural differences in English speaking countries. For example, we may see that
the words “togs-swimming costumes-bathers” describe the same concept but they reflect cultural differences between
areas. Thus, “togs” is a term used in Queensland; “swimming costumes” has been used in New South Wales and “bathers”
tends to be used in South Australia and Victoria. Another criterion is given at the educational level since difference
between year levels in schooling may establish word differences. Thus, “salt” might be used in primary schools to describe
“sodium chloride” which might be used by upper secondary school science students. Both terms are equally valid.
Synonymy is one of the three types in which equivalent subject terms have been broadly categorized (NISO, 1994). The
other two categories are lexical variants, and quasi-synonyms. Lexical variants differ from synonyms in that they are
different word structures representing the same concept. On the other hand, quasi-synonyms are synonyms whose
meanings in ordinary usage have different properties. There are two types, first, those synonyms which are regarded as
being different within a certain subject term (car parks/parking spaces) and secondly, those subject terms that fall under
the definition of an antonym (dryness/wetness, literacy/illiteracy).

3.2.1. Absolute vs. partial synonymy

On the notion of absolute synonymy, we must say that it is extremely rare to find, at least as a relation between lexemes,
in natural languages as they would have identical meanings, and this does not happen in any language. For instance,
McCawley (1972) stated that when you change the structure of a sentence, and replace a synonymy by another one, the
total effect is destroyed. True synonyms or absolute cannot exist due to factors such as geographical differences of
dialects, stylistic differences, emotive differences, collocational differences and context differences.
Yet, Lyons (1995) defines absolute synonyms as expressions which satisfy at least one, but not all three of the following
criteria: to have identical meanings, synonymous in all contexts, and being identical on all dimensions of meaning.
On the other hand, partial synonymy meets the criterion of identity of meaning by following the condition of being
semantically equivalent. They fail on being synonymous in all contexts since synonyms must not only manifest a high
degree of semantic overlap and a low degree of implicit contrastiveness. Lyons relates partial synonymy to near-synonymy
in lexical units which are “more or less similar, but not identical in meaning”.

3.2.2. Types of synonyms

We should establish different types of synonyms following general lines drawn from the most relevant figures in this field,
they are Cruse (1986), Lyons (1995) and Aitchinson (2000). Synonyms are categorized into the following types:
- True synonyms refer to two expressions that have the same descriptive meaning and are not affected by emotive,
dialectal, collocational, geographical, and contextual factors among others. They are quite rare in English, and
even, they have been denied by some linguists. However, they have been recently admitted in scientific, medical,
industrial and technological fields due to their format of reciprocal scope which includes a reference to the other
synonyms and its application for a particular audience or cultural groups (water/H2O, urban areas/cities).
- Stylistic synonyms are said to be the most common ones and are defines as “a lexical unit that has a similar range
of reference but is differentiated by the speaker’s intention, the audience, and the situation” (Cruse, 1986). They
are affected by several factors, such as generality (say-demand), intensity (like-love), emotion (soft-tender),
morality (deed-exploit), professional (fill in-write), literary (rise-ascend, liberty-freedom), colloquial (bring up-
educate), dialectal (play (London) – lare (York)), legal (last will-testament), and children’s talking (mother-mum,
dog-puppy) among others (Collinson, 1939).
- Generic nouns and trade names (tissues/Kleenex). They are expressions which differ in the nature of their
expressive meaning, the most obvious difference is between those which imply approval or disapproval and those
which are neutral with respect to expressivity, such as “statesman” vs. “politician”, or “stink” vs. “stench” vs.
“fragrance” vs. “smell”.
- Variant names for concepts, new or existing (arid zones/deserts).
- Current names and older terms, namely refer to loanwords, which are “a nearly synonymous lexical unit,
borrowed from another language to fill what is perceived to be a semantic gap”. According to Baugh & Cable
(1993), the richness of English in synonyms is largely due to the happy mingling of Latin, French and native
elements. In Middle Ages synonyms entered English at three levels: popular, literary and learned from English,
French and Latin, respectively.
- Current jargon or slang terms (graffiti/pieces, bloody/disgusting).
- Cultural or dialectal variants which are different units that are part of the vocabulary of different dialects but
have very similar ranges of reference. Their differences emerge from different cultural backgrounds within
different English speaking countries or dialectal differences in the same country (Br.E. vs. Am.E., torch vs.
flashlight, holiday/vacation; and in different states in Australia, tramping/bushwalking).

3.3. Antonymy
Antonymy is opposite meanings that is probably the most readily apprehended by ordinary speakers in an attempt to
organise reality (Cruse, 1986). Opposites exhibit unique properties, such as the paradox of simultaneous difference and
similarity at the same time since they occupy opposing poles and hence, the feeling of difference. The essence of
oppositeness is based on the notion of complementary pairs, where the presence of one quality or state which signifies
the absence of the other and vice versa. This notion is based on a binary system which leaves out spelling and
pronunciation, but not morphology since it plays an important role in the formation of antonymous dualities.
Palmer (1976) claimed that antonyms share the following characteristics, they are fully gradable, among which most are
adjectives and a few are verbs, they are members of a pair denoting degrees of some variable property such as length,
speed, weight, accuracy, among others, when more strongly intensified, the members of a pair move, as it were, in
opposite directions along the scale representing degrees (very light-very heavy), the terms of a pair do not strictly bisect
a domain as there is a range of values of the variable property (it’s long-it’s short are contrary, not contradictory).
In terms of semantic features, we can contrast them to explain their meaning since one word implies the negative of the
other, that is, we should have at least one positive feature in one term’s description and negative in the other’s. However,
not all antonyms are opposite in the same way as they share mutually exclusive properties.

3.3.1. Types of antonymy

Some antonyms are complementary pairs while others are gradable and need specification. Others are relational
opposites.
Complementary pairs as in married/single, complete/incomplete, are pairs of words correspond to binary features where
any member of a particular set is either one or the other but not both. We deal with absolute difference, there are no
intermediate states (pregnant/not pregnant) and therefore, it is not gradable, for instance, you cannot be “a little single
or married”.
Gradable pairs are opposite ends of a continuum or scale (hot-cold, wide-narrow, big-small) which allows for a natural,
gradual transition between two poles. They are not contradictory but contrary relationships which can be measured on a
scale, among which we usually find a number of intermediate terms (hot-cold: hot-warm-tepid-cool-cold). These
intermediate terms may take, firstly, a large number of values, from positive to negative. Secondly, their meaning is
relative to cultural norms, for example, “very very old” for American people might be over 100 years old, whereas for
Chinese people it might be only 60 because of differences in life expectancy.
Relational antonyms represent two opposite roles in an interdependent relationship which are not on a natural scale.
Oppositeness depends on real world attitudes which share the same semantic features, but the focus or direction is
reversed (tie/untie, buy/sell, teacher/pupil). They entail a logical relationship through symbolic systems of thinking.
Entailment is a logical relationship that occurs when one meaning implies another.

3.4. Hyponymy
Hyponymy is the lexical relation which refers to relationships of “inclusion” of one class in another regarding meaning.
They are based upon a quotation that states that X is a Y, that is, subordinate terms whose meaning is included in the
meaning of a superordinate term. For example, “apple” and “orange” are hyponyms of “fruit”, where the more general
term “fruit” is known as a superordinate or hypernym.
The sense of a lexical unit is determined by the network of substitution relations in the same lexical field. Sometimes, a
word comes to fill in an existing gap and becomes neutral.

4. FALSE FRIENDS
A false friend is a word in the foreign language which resembles a word in one’s mother tongue but has a different
meaning. For a Spanish learner of English, the following words may be false friends: actually (resembles “actualmente”
but means “in fact”), eventually (resembles “eventualmente” but means “at last”).
It is worth noting that one should translate meanings, rather than words as some words may be deceptive cognates. The
orthographic relatedness of Spanish and English sometimes poses potential dangers to the translator regarding nuances
in meaning since words that look similar may be used in very different ways or have completely different meanings. For
instance, in English if you are “constipated” you may ask for a “prescription” at the doctor’s. However, in Spanish, you
would not be “constipado” but “estreñido”, and you would ask for a “receta” (medicine) and not a “recipe” (food).
One of the great things about learning a foreign language is that many words often have the same historical roots, and
many similar meanings of cognates appear in semantic fields of interest. From some cognates chosen in the family/kinship
field, we observe that similarities are still more obvious in Indoeuropean languages: faeder (OE), father (English), vater
(German), pater (Latin and Greek), pitar (Sanskrit) (Algeo, 1982). Yet, we may address to cultural and idiomatic references
beyond the word level to the sentence level, and then, to the paragraph level where language actually lives, which will
help students expand their vocabulary knowledge.
We can find false friends in nouns (attend=asistir, assist=ayudar), adjectives (disappointment=decepción,
deception=engaño), phrasal verbs (come up with, give up, make up) and idioms (to have a ball, to spill the beans, like a
bat out of hell).

5. LEXICAL CREATIVITY
Lexical creativity is connected to form and meaning in linguistic creativity. What makes human language creative? How
do we produce and understand idioms such as “to let the cat out of the bag”, novel words and expressions such as “a dot-
com company”? Following Bauer (1983), the notion of creativity is related to that of productivity since, over the centuries,
the productivity of word formation has been a major factor in providing the huge vocabulary of English, and the fact that
the process of creating new lexemes with new forms has not faded out.
We may distinguish different types of lexical creativity when addressing to formal and semantic similarity. We find words
which are similar in form and meaning, that is, borrowing (map/mapa, pilot/piloto) or cognates (son/syn), words which
are similar in form but different in meaning, that is, both borrowings and cognates although they reflect some kind of
narrowing. Here we may also find false friends as deceptive words, words which are similar in meaning but different in
form, words which are different in form and meaning but grasp different view of reality, different types of construction
which imply the morphological structure of words, similar in primary meaning but different in connotation whose
equivalent may be offensive or taboo.
Therefore, lexical creativity is namely based on four classes:
- Semantic neologisms refer to the assignment of novel meanings to existing lexical items (bride, mistress,
bachelor).
- Phonological, which refers to all neologisms except the semantic type which involves phonology, new words
which must conform to the phonology of language, and onomatopoeias which are common in comic books.
 - Morphosyntactic neologisms refer to those conditions for survival in which neologisms must survive against
conservative attitudes. They are more likely to survive if they are introduced by a prominent person/publication
(internet).
- Borrowings which are borrowed directly from other countries (corner, paella, siesta).
Lyons (1995) stated that one of the principal factor operative in semantic change is metaphorical extension, as when
“foot” meaning “terminal part of a leg” also came to mean “lowest part of a hill or mountain”. This metaphorical extension
is at issue when one refers to the related meanings of polysemous lexemes. Metaphorical creativity is part of everyone’s
linguistic competence and that deals with types of semantic change such as the following:
- Extension and restriction.
- Pejoration (worsening value) and amelioration (improvement in value)., as devices to move in evaluative attitude
which typically involves women, foreigners, euphemisms (mistress, Christian, boy servant). This is an attempt to
cover up unpleasant facts by means of more pleasant labels (die-decease-pass away). Also, it is a phenomenon
coining new names to replace derogatory ones in order to avoid negative connotations (coloured
people/Negroes/blacks/Afro-Americans/African Americans/people of colour).
- Similarity in meaning by means of metaphors when a word is applied to an object or action in order to imply a
resemblance. We may distinguish man-related metaphors (the clock’s hands), animal-related metaphors (busy
as a bee), metaphors from the concrete to the abstract (high-light something), and synaesthetic metaphor, that
is, when transferring meaning from one sense to another (warm voice, cold voice, hard feelings), also by means
of similes, using similar terms to make a comparison (like is like a bowl of cherries).
- Metonymy is when a word that refers to an attribute is substituted for the thing that is meant (Washington/The
Oval Office), or by synecdoche when a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part (the
President/Government).
- Similarity in form, that is, when in folk etymology an unfamiliar word is misanalysed in terms of familiar words or
morphemes.
- Contiguity of form, that is, when there is ellipsis and words, or morphemes are lost.

6. FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Differences between the vocabulary of the learner’s native language (L1) and that of the foreign language (L2) may lead
to the following types of problems, first, false friends or cases where L1 and L2 lexemes have the same forms, but different
sense. Second, the distinctions made in L2 which are not made in L1.
Spanish students are taught in their schools that their language has a large number or internationalisms, but there is an
even larger “bridge” between Spanish and English than many learners realize. It is useful for teachers as well, to recognize
that this perceived distance between Spanish and English is not as great as the main difficulties in speaking which might
lead them to believe. They especially have in common a number of procedures for acquiring and forming new words.
With this information, teachers can help students lessen their fear of this perceived distance.
It is worth stressing the importance of similarity in phonology and semantics because students learn words more easily
when they can attach a new word in their L2 to a word they know in their L1. Learners assume translation equivalence in
order to make their job easier.
Learners cannot do it all on their own. Language learners, even 2nd year Bachillerato students, do not automatically
recognize similarities which seem obvious to teachers, learners need to have these associations brought to their attention.
As we have seen, understanding the notions of semantic features and sense relations is important to teacher because
they are typical means of defining new words. Teachers commonly define new words by giving synonyms and antonyms,
for instance, “come across” and “meet by chance” or “shallow” and “not deep”.
However, we must be aware that very few words are completely synonymous or exact opposites, and so such definitions
will only be inexact representations of the word’s true meaning. In addition, once synonyms, homonyms, and antonyms
are learned, learners must be exposed to numerous contexts in order to apply particular meanings to it.

7. CONCLUSION
To conclude, I will highlight the idea that learning English is not just learning a second language but discovering a new
culture. In this way it is very useful for our students to be aware of the English lexis as well as the relationships that exist
between pairs or group of words, such as homonymy, synonymy and antonymy.
As I previously said, knowing the said relationships that the words have between them is important in order to achieve
an effective communication and improve the communicative competence, since in that way our knowledge of vocabulary
will be expanded and, therefore, we will have better changes of expressing ourselves. All these aspects must be explained
to our students in a very communicative way. They can be taught by means of theoretical sessions and individual practices,
but they can also be taught by means of more dynamic activities. Just to give an example, we can work these relationships
by playing a version of the game “Charades” in which a student will have a word or expression on their forehead and the
rest his classmates will have to say an antonym, synonym, homonym, etc., whatever we want to work with them.
All in all, the study of the English lexis will be highly useful as our students will be facing the achievement of an effective
communication during their whole academic lives. We should not forget that our students must know that a language
cannot be separated from the aspect of communication, so it is through the acquisition of all the things that intervene on
it that they will be able to understand and communicate in English.

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Aitchinson, J. et al. (2000). Thesaurus construction and use: a practical manual. London: ASLIB Press.
- Algeo, J. (1982). Problems in the origins and development of the English language. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Inc.
- Bauer, L. (1983). English Word-Formation. Cambridge University Press.
- Baugh, A. & Cable, T. (1993). A History of the English Language. Prentice-Hall Editions.
- Cruse, D. A. (1986). Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: C.U.P.
- Crystal, D. (1985). Linguistics. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.
- Lyons, J. (1995). Linguistics Semantics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- McCawley, J. (1972). Logical and Syntactic Arguments for Semantic Structures. Indiana University Linguistics Club.
- NISO (1994). Guidelines for the construction, format, and management of monolingual thesauri. Bethesda, MD:
NISO Press.
- Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics: A New Outline. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Saussure, F. (1916). Cours de linguistique générale. New York: Philosophical Library.
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell; and New York: MacMillan.