R. S. Ginzburg, S. S. Khidekel, G. Y. Knyazeva, A. A. Sankin a course in modern english

§ 5. Frequency and Semantic Structure


Frequency also reflects the interdependence and comparative importance of individual meanings within the word. For example, the adjective exact has two meanings 'entirely correct, precise', eg. the exact time, smb's exact words, etc. and 'capable of being precise', e.g. exact observer, exact memory. The comparison of the frequences of these individual meanings shows that they are not of equal importance in the semantic structure of the word; it is the first meaning of this word that is much more important than the second as it accounts for 78% of total occurrences of the word, leaving only 18% to the second meaning.

The adjective blue which is a polysemantic unit of a high frequency value may serve as another example. On comparing the frequencies of individual meanings of this word we find that its neutral meaning 'the colour of the sky' accounts for 92% of the occurrences of the word, whereas the meaning 'sad' (cf. to look (to feel) blue) and the meaning 'indecent, obscene' (cf. to tell blue stories, to talk blue) are both marked by a heavy emotive charge and make only 2% and 0.5% of the occurrence of this word respectively.

Thus, as we see, the semantic frequencies of individual meanings give a better and a more objective insight into the semantic structure of words.

We may now conclude by pointing out that frequency value of the word is as a rule a most reliable and objective factor indicating the relative value of the word in the language in general and conditioning the grammatical and lexical valency of the word. The frequency value of the word alone is in many cases sufficient to judge of its structural, stylistic, semantic and etymological peculiarities, i e. if the word has a high frequency of occurrence one may suppose that it is monomorphic, simple, polysemantic and stylistically neutral. Etymologically it is likely to be native or to belong to early borrowings. The interdependence so markedly reflected by frequency can be presented graphically. Below we show the analysis of two groups of synonyms. (See the table, p. 181.)

REPLENISHMENT OF MODERN ENGLISH VOCABULARY