Definition of Lexical Family

The study of the language covers very diverse areas: syntax, etymology or semantics. In this post we are going to focus on the semantic issue of language, that is, in the meaning of the words.

There are three semantic concepts that are very useful: the lexical field, the semantic field and the family lexical. The concept of lexical field refers to a series of words that have a relationship between them by some reason, for example because they refer to the same topic (thus in the lexical field of football we can speak of striker, defense, midfielder or scoring, since all these terms share the same area, even if they are words of nature different).

We speak of a semantic field when a series of words are included in the same contents semantic (for example, chair, armchair or sofa belong to the semantic field of the term furniture). We understand the lexical family as a set of words that come from the same primitive word, that is, they all have the same lexeme or root of a word.

Some examples of lexical family

The word class acts as a lexeme or root and from it I can form other words of the same family: classification, unclassifiable, classify, class, etc.

With the root bread we can form words like baker, breadmaker or bread basket. The word cold allows us to articulate others: coldness, chilly or refrigerator. With the term market we form words like merchandise, flea market or little market. The term sea is quite curious, since its lexical family is quite extensive (sailor, tidal wave, maritime, swell, tide, marines, high tide, diver and a long etcetera).

The example of the word sea allows us to remember that terms of the same lexical family can be used in very different contexts (a dizziness is related to the state of health and diving is an activity sporty). Keep in mind that two words can be very similar but not be from the same lexical family (given and dice are homonymous words but they do not share the same same lexical family, since the first is the participle of the verb to give and the second is a piece that is used to play and therefore they do not share the same source).

The examples mentioned communicate the same conclusion, that is to say, that the lexical family of a word is formed by those terms that have the same spelling characteristics (gift and gifted are both written with g) and the same origin semantic. The most relevant of the words of the same lexical family is the fact of sharing the same root (sun, sunny, sunny or hand, manual, manual). It is appreciated, therefore, that in different words of the same lexical family there is a part of them that does not change (the root) and another part that does change (the gender, the number, the augmentatives, the diminutives or the prefixes and suffixes that accompany it).

Photos: iStock - shapecharge / graletta