A1. Lexical Relations - Simple Set

This lesson introduces lexical relations, which are semantic relationships between words. It focuses on paradigmatic relations—specifically synonym sets—using the simple set structure.

🔑 Key Concepts:

• Lexical Relations are culturally recognized patterns connecting words in a language.
  
  

• Paradigmatic Relations involve words that can substitute each other in the same syntactic slot (e.g., {happy, glad, joyful}).
  
  

• Simple Set Structure is used when lexical items share one or more core semantic components and are not ordered.
  
  

• Synonyms are words with identical or nearly identical meanings, though they may differ in style, dialect, or origin:
  
  

  • Stylistic (e.g., glad vs. joyful)
    
    

  • Loanwords (e.g., langit vs. kabunyan)
    
    

  • Dialectal (e.g., flashlight vs. torch)
    
    

📚 Why Lexical Relations Matter:

• Help differentiate word senses
  
  

• Enrich dictionary content
  
  

• Improve definitions
  
  

• Aid in understanding connotations and denotations
  
  

🛠 Tools for Identifying Synonyms:

1. Semantic domains in categorized dictionaries
   
   

2. Searches in bilingual databases
   
   

3. Thesauri or synonym dictionaries
   
   

4. Contextual testing via interlinear texts
   
   

🧩 Activities in FLEx:

• Insert Synonyms at the sense level
  
  

• Use Compare Relations for loose associations (entry-level cross-references)
  
  

• Create new entries and link them
  
  

• Modify or delete relations as needed
  
  

📌 Final Notes:

• This lesson is foundational for understanding simple set structures.
  
  

• Other structures like scale, tree, and set of pairs are covered in subsequent lessons.
  
  

This module supports users in enhancing dictionaries with deeper lexical networks using FLEx (FieldWorks Language Explorer).