THEORY OF LEXICAL FIELDS

revisited concepts and a special look at Coseriu's semantics

Abstract

The notion of “field”, in lexical studies, starts from a structuralist-based semantics. The beginning of
thisdiscussion took place even before the writing of the Course in General Linguistics (CGL), by
FerdinandSaussure.However, it was from Coseriu (1981) that an appropriate and mostly linguistic-based methodology could bedeveloped. This paper, therefore, seeks to list and discuss these semantic studies aimed atdelimiting and buildinglexical fields, citing some of Coseriu's predecessors until reaching his postulates.Therefore, it became necessary todefine terms such as lexeme, archilexeme, sema, associative field,semantic network, conceptual field, lexical class,oppositions and dimensions (although some of these conceptions originated or share presence in the theories ofother researchers) , becomes relevant in this work for the understanding of the chosen cut). It is hoped that theconceptsrevisited and the examples demonstrated corroborate for the understanding of these postulates so dear toresearch in Structuralist Semantics and so used in it.