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

parts, of good (or bad) staging of the play, of the wonderful scenery and so on. When we go shopping it is usual to speak of the prices, of the goods we buy, of the shops, etc.¹

MEANING RELATIONS IN PARADIGMATICS AND SEMANTIC CLASSIFICATION OF WORDS

Modern English has a very extensive vocabulary. A question naturally arises whether this enormous word-stock is composed of separate independent lexical units, or it should perhaps be regarded as a certain structured system made up of numerous interdependent and interrelated sub-systems or groups of words. This problem may be viewed in terms of the possible ways of classifying vocabulary items.

Attempts to study the inner structure of the vocabulary revealed that in spite of its heterogeneity the English word-stock may be analysed into numerous sub-systems the members of which have some features in common, thus distinguishing them from the members of other lexical sub-systems. Words can be classified in various ways. Here, however, we are concerned only with the semantic classification of words. Classification into monosemantic and polysemantic words is based on the number of meanings the word possesses. More detailed semantic classifications are generally based on the semantic similarity (or polarity) of words or their component morphemes. The scope and the degree of similarity (polarity) may be different.