Syntagmatic relations in vocabulary

Lexical grouping can be done on the basis of contextual (syntagmatic) relations. Classification of vocabulary items into thematic groups is based on the co-occurrence of words in certain repeatedly used contexts. For example, on the level of word-groups the word question,for instance, is often found in collocation with the verbs raise, put forward, discuss,etc., with the adjectives urgent, vital, disputable and so on. The verb accept occurs in numerous contexts together with the nouns proposal, invitation, plan and others.

As a rule, thematic groups deal with contexts on the level of the sentence. Words in thematic groups are joined together by common contextual associations within the framework of the sentence and reflect the interlinking of things or events. Common contextual association of the words, e.g. tree – grow – green; journey – train – taxi – bags – ticket or sunshine – brightly – blue – sky,is due to the regular co-occurrence of these words in a number of sentences. Words making up a thematic group belong to different parts of speech and do not possess any common denominator of meaning.

Thematic groups are distinguished by means of text analysis. Words entering a thematic group are united by some typical situation. The basis for uniting words into thematic groups are relations of the objects in the real world.