ABSTRACT
The meaning relations that explain how words relate to one another in the authors's mental lexicons are the following: synonymy, antonomy, hyponomy, meronomy, attribution, function, and polysemy, as well as collocations, series, and hierarchies. Semantic categories provide ways of "cutting up the lexicon [vocabulary] along semantic lines to group together lexical items [words] related to each other in a variety of ways." Words are organized in semantic categories for speaking and writing and by sound similarity for listening and for reading. Semantic maps reflect the organization of words in the mental lexicon. The semantic mapping procedure involves the following steps: The semantic map may be used as an outline or a guide for writing about the central topic of a lesson or activity. The effectiveness of semantic mapping and semantic feature analysis is supported by several studies. Activities that focus on the similarities and differences in words within semantic categories are based on the meaning relations exemplified earlier.
