SEMANTIC FIELDS AND EFL/ESL TEACHING
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Apr 11, 2018
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Abstract
The vocabulary of a language is a system of interrelated lexical networks but not a collection of independent items. Vocabulary of a language is organised into fields within which words interrelate and define each other in various ways. Sense relations are not enough to explain the relation between some lexical items. For example, we cannot explain the relation between patient and hospital through synonymy, antonym, hyponymy, polysemy or homonymy, but we can say that they belong to the same semantic field which we can label as ‘health’. In this paper, semantic field also known as word field, lexical field, field of meaning, and semantic system is explained by giving supporting examples. Besides, some implications for Teaching English as a Foreign Language/Teaching English as a Second Language (TEFL/TESL) are suggested.Key words: Semantic fields, structural semantics, lexical network, lexical field, semantic system
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English. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
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College English Vocabulary Instruction. Chinese Journal of Applied
Linguistics, 33(3), 51-51
Clark, H. H. and Clark, E. V. (1977). Psychology and Language. New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.
Crystal, D. (1987). The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. (1991). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. London: T.J.
Press.
Crystal, D. (1992). An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Language and
Languages. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
Dyvik, H. (2005. Translations as a semantic knowledge source. In
Proceedings of the Second Baltic Conference on Human Language
Technologies. Tallinn, Estonia, 2005. Retrieved from
http://folk.uib.no/hfohd/TranslHLT.pdf
Graddol, D. et al. (1987). Describing Language. Philadelphia: Open
University Press.
Hurford, J. R., Heasley, B. & Smith, M. B. (2007). Semantics: a course
book. (2nd Ed.).
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2017, Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/semantic-field-
1692079
Nordquist, R. (2017). “What is Semantic Field Analysis?” ThoughtCo, Sep.
11, 2017 Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/semantic-field-
analysis-1691935
Lexical Semantics (2017, November). English Language and Linguistics
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http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Semantics/SemanticsLexicalfields
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