II. Relations involving form:

1) Relations of complete identity of form (homonyms): post (1) – «position, appointment, job»; post (2) – «transport and delivery of letters, etc»; post (3) – «a piece of wood, metal, etc. supporting or marking smth.»; post (4) – «to put letters into a post-box».

2) Relations of partial sameness of form and meaning (word-building families), e.g., move, movement, moving, movable, immovable.

3) Relations of partial similarity of form and very distant similarity of meaning (paronyms), e.g. to affect and to effect, ingenious and ingenuous.

Syntagmatic relations exist in the act of speech. They are relations between words in a sentence and consequently they imply co-occurrence in speech. They include two types:

1) Relations of collocation, realized in word combinations and involving lexical meanings of words, e.g., «The dog barks»; the verb to bark is normally combined with the noun dog. Compare also: «the right hand», «the right answer», where the meaning of the adjective right is determined by the meanings of the words it is combined with.

2) Relations of colligation, realized in syntactic structures, e.g., «I made him speak» (make + N/Prn + Vinf). For the verb to make to be understood in this meaning only the syntactic structure is important, but not the words which enter this structure.

The syntagmatic relations of a word with other words underlie the distribution of this word.

Distribution is the sum total of all the possible environments of a word. It includes lexical distribution as the sum of all collocations and syntactic distribution as the sum of colligations of the word. The distribution of the word characterizes its contextual usage.

Each element of the system can enter lots of relations with other elements. Let us consider the adjective light (as opposed to dark) – «well provided with light»:

5. Types of Lexical Subsystems

The lexico-semantic system of language has a hierarchic structure, including lots of subsystems and micro-systems, which can also interact and intersect.

There can be different kinds of subsystems with different kinds of relations between them. But first and foremost vocabulary units are organized in semantic fields with the common denominator, expressing the common basic concept. Here belong, for example, semantic fields of color, of kinship, of intellect, etc. The meaning of any member of the field can be properly understood mostly through its relations with other members. This idea was first formulated by J. Trier, who analyzed the meanings of the noun captain and showed that in the army it is determined by its opposition to lieutenant and major, but in the navy it is opposed to first mate and admiral.

Semantic fields can include words of different parts of speech. For example, the semantic field of education will include nouns (pupil, schoolchildren, teacher, school, class...), verbs (to teach, to enter, to pass, to fail...), adjectives (intelligent, clever, slow, well-read...) and so on. These words enter various subsystems. Here belong such subsystems as thematic groups, e.g., teacher – tutor, professor, assistant professor, associate professor, visiting professor, student teacher, etc.; lexico-semantic groups including synonyms and antonyms, e.g., to teach, educate, instruct, breed, cultivate, raise, foster, rear; to pass and to fail; to take an exam and to pass an exam. Word family is another type of grouping based on the word-formation or structural principle, e.g., head, heady, to head, to behead, headline, headmaster, etc. So, vocabulary has a very complicated structure.