Lexical Semantic Organization for Verbs

Abstract

The words in the lexicon are arranged according to a prescribed pattern. Many terms such as syntagmatic versus paradigmatic, contiguity versus similarity, etc are put forth to explain the organization. The terms taxonomic versus thematic is found to be more apt while explaining the organization for nouns and verbs. Taxonomic refers to the names of other lexical items, while thematic refers to the cluster of words which goes with the theme of target word. The responses would again differ between nouns and verbs. The present study was carried out with the aim of probing lexical semantic organization of verbs for mid- and older-aged participants for visual and auditory stimulus. The mid-aged individuals produced more number of thematic as compared to taxonomic and associative responses. This trend was constant for both visual as well as auditory stimulus. For older adults, the responses varied as a function of the modality of stimulus. They produced more thematic and associative responses for visual stimulus while more associative responses were elicited for auditory stimulus. The overall responses were more for visual as compared to auditory stimulus. Lexical semantic organization was more theme-based while the previous studies on lexical semantic organization for nouns showed that the organization is more taxonomic. The study is of importance as it deals with the lexical semantic organization for verbs also because the study was carried out in adults unlike the previous studies which deal with the lexical semantic organization in children.

Keywords: Taxonomic, thematic, modality

Cite this Article

Abhishek BP, Mahesh K. Lexical semantic organization for verbs. Research and Reviews: Journal of Neuroscience. 2018; 8(2): 30–34p.