Here's a breakdown of key aspects:
* Word Meaning: Lexical semantics explores the conceptual content of words, including their denotation (literal meaning) and connotation (implied meaning). It investigates how the meaning of a word can vary depending on context. For example, "bank" can refer to a financial institution or the edge of a river.
* Word Relationships: This field examines the relationships between words, including:
* Synonymy: Words with similar meanings (e.g., "happy" and "joyful").
* Antonymy: Words with opposite meanings (e.g., "hot" and "cold").
* Hyponymy: A hierarchical relationship where one word is a specific type of another (e.g., "dog" is a hyponym of "animal").
* Meronymy: A part-whole relationship (e.g., "wheel" is a meronym of "car").
* Word Structure: Lexical semantics analyzes how the morphology (structure of words) influences meaning. For example, the suffix "-ing" in English usually indicates a present participle.
* Word Sense Disambiguation: It explores how to determine the correct meaning of a word in a specific context, given that many words have multiple senses.
* Applications: Lexical semantics has numerous applications, including:
* Natural Language Processing: Developing computer systems that can understand and process human language.
* Machine Translation: Translating text from one language to another while preserving meaning.
* Information Retrieval: Improving search engines' ability to find relevant information.
* Lexicography: Creating and improving dictionaries.
Essentially, lexical semantics helps us understand how words contribute to the meaning of sentences and texts, and how meaning can be manipulated and understood.