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Lead, govern, rule, ...: near-synonyms? | ||
Tags: Synonyms | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5767 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 1 of 4 13 November 2009 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have been thinking about a lexical cluster (maybe not the right word) containing words like those (including 'chairing a meeting' (does that exist)?
Do you find those words related to call them synonyms in some way ? I thought you might be able to combine them with 'country'. But the most important question to me: how have you ever found this cluster treated in some dictionary ? Dicitonaries will generally not refer to those words that are somehow related semantically. But maybe you know some, not just dictionaries please. Edited by JanKG on 14 November 2009 at 7:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 2 of 4 13 November 2009 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Dictionaries generally won't point out synonyms. That's what a thesaurus is for. Here for example is the entry for "govern" in the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, which includes "lead", "rule" and a host of other related words.
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| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6034 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 3 of 4 14 November 2009 at 12:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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I like this one: http://thesaurus.reference.com/
Apart form synonyms, it also gives antonyms (words meaning the opposite thing). There is usually a long list of "synonyms", but most of them have specific differences in meaning. It's more like a semantic net than a synonym list. For example, here are two entries for 'govern':
Edited by Sennin on 14 November 2009 at 1:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5767 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 4 of 4 14 November 2009 at 7:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree that a thesaurus is more ussful than a dictionary, but I thought a Th was also a dict... But those surveys are quite OK, but what I miss is the precise difference. Just imagine a prime minister saying (after consulting this list): 'I dominate this government'. he might have meant something different ! But in that Webster's seems better to me, making more distinctions...
The big issues in my view are : - lead and govern are not simply/ always interchangeable (*govern a group, an association ??), so - how can you make that difference clear ? (Webster's was great in that respect: it helped/ helps the reader to distinguish between 'near synonyms')One possibility would be making a table of direct objects and near synonyms, and pointing out (marking) what verbs can be combined with them - it might also be interesting to mention 'to lead to' with a [- human] subject separately, as a lemma (this decision leads to a loss of jobs) - I thought of a visual representation with short and long lines, based on the degree of literality of a meaning as well (to lead a group through the desert vs. to lead a group), but that is a difficult track... Anyone who knows lexicographical sites ? Edited by JanKG on 14 November 2009 at 7:47am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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