Ebook: Contrastive Lexicology

Paper presented at the annual meeting of BAAL (September 1973). — 43 p.This paper deals with the relation between etymologically related words in different languages. A survey is made of seven stages in the development of contrastive lexicology. These are: prelinguistic word studies, semantics, lexicography, translation, foreign language learning, bilingualism, and finally contrastive analysis. Concerning contrastive analysis, the following problems are discussed: thesauri of entire vocabularies; classification of lexical hierarchies; taxonomic structure of specialized terminology; and lexico-semantic relationships. By way of conclusion, practical implications of contrastive analysis are discussed.IntroductionGeneral linguistics and semanticsPre-linguistic word studiesComparative semanticsLexical field theoryComponential analysisStructural semanticsLimitations of structural semanticsGenerative semanticsContrastive lexical studies in applied linguisticsGeneral lexicographyBilingual dictionariesTranslationForeign language learningBilingualismContrastive lexicology German/EnglishContrastive linguistic analysisLexical contrasts German/EnglishTowards contrasting whole vocabularies?Some basic lexico-semantic relationshipsPractical implicationsFig.
1. A lexical field in general vocabularyFig.
2. Lexical pitfalls in translationFig.
3. Semantic interference in foreign language learningFig.
4. Conceptual structures in a lexical field.Fig.
5. A lexical field in a technical register.Fig.
6. Hierarchial taxonomis in English/German lexis