A course In Modern English Lexicology

что-л. с головой (‘to throw oneself into smth.’), etc., but will never think of using the word head in connection with ‘a bed’ or ‘a coin’.
T h i r d l y , the meaning of any word depends to a great extent on the place it occupies in the set of semantically related words: its synonyms, the constituents of the lexical field the word belongs to, other members of the word-family which the word enters, etc.
Thus, e.g., in the English synonymic set brave, courageous, bold, fearless, audacious, valiant, valorous, doughty, undaunted, intrepid each word differs in certain component of meaning from the others, brave usually implies resolution and self-control in meeting without flinching a situation that inspires fear, courageous stresses stout-hearted-ness and firmness of temper, bold implies either a temperamental liking for danger or a willingness to court danger or to dare the unknown, etc. Comparing the corresponding Russian synonymic set храбрый, бесстрашный, сме-лый, мужественный, отважный, etc. we see that the Russian word сме-лый, e.g., may be considered as a correlated word to either brave, valiant or valorous and also that no member of the Russian synonymic set can be viewed as an exact equivalent of any single member of the English synonymic set in isolation, although all of them denote ‘having or showing fearlessness in meeting that which is dangerous, difficult, or unknown’.
Different aspects of this quality are differently distributed among the words making up the synonymic set. This absence of one-to-one correspondence can be also observed if we compare the constituents of the same lexico-semantic group in different languages. Thus, for example, let us assume that an Englishman has in his vocabulary the following words for evaluating mental aptitude: apt, bright, brilliant, clever, cunning, intelligent, shrewd, sly, dull, stupid, slow, foolish, silly. Each of these words has a definite meaning for him. Therefore each word actually represents a value judgement. As the Englishman sees a display of mental aptitude, he attaches one of these words to the situation and in so doing, he attaches a value judgement. The corresponding Russian semantic field of mental aptitude is different (cf. способный, хитрый, умный, глупый, тупой, etc.), therefore the meaning of each word is slightly different too. What Russian speakers would describe as хитрый might be described by English speakers as either cunning or sly depending on how they evaluate the given situation.
The problem under discussion may be also illustrated by the analysis of the members of correlated word-families, e.g., cf. голова, головка, etc.
head, heady, etc. which are differently connected with the main word of the family in each of the two languages and have different denotational and connotational components of meaning. This can be easily observed in words containing diminutive and endearing suffixes, e.g. the English word head, grandfather, girl and others do not possess the connotative component which is part of the meaning of the Russian words головка, головуш-ка, головёнка, дедушка, дедуля, etc.
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Thus on the lexical level or to be more exact on the level of the lexical meaning contrastive analysis reveals that correlated polysemantic words are not co-extensive and shows the teacher where to expect an unusual degree of learning difficulty. This analysis may also point out the effective ways of overcoming the anticipated difficulty as it shows which of the new items will require a more extended and careful presentation and practice.
Difference in the lexical meaning (or meanings) of correlated words accounts for the difference of their collocability in different languages.
This is of particular importance in developing speech habits as the mastery of collocations is much more important than the knowledge of isolated words.
Thus, e.g., the English adjective new and the Russian adjective новый
when taken in isolation are felt as correlated words as in a number of cases new stands for новый, e.g. новое платье — a new dress, Новый
Год — New Year. In collocation with other nouns, however, the Russian adjective cannot be used in the same meaning in which the English word new is currently used. Compare, e.g., new potatoes — молодая картош-ка, new bread — свежий хлеб, etc.
The lack of co-extension may be observed in collocations made up by words belonging to different parts of speech, e.g. compare word-groups with the verb to fill:
to fill a lamp — заправлять лам- to fill a truck — загружать ма-ny