A Review on the Concepts of Lexical Semantics

Language is a product of society and is affected by all kinds of events and situations affecting the society. For this reason, the meanings of words may change over time. Following the traces of words is extremely important for to recognise a language. These changes in the meanings of words are named with various terms. Document analysis, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study and content analysis was used to analyse the data. In this study, the concepts related to lexical semantics were discussed by analysing the studies in the literature and the dynamic structure of language was revealed. There are different opinions about the terms analysed. While examining the studies, attention was paid to this situation and it was tried to reach the studies of researchers with different views. Within the scope of the study, the concepts of polysemy, synonymy, plain meaning, connotation, connotation, term, figurative meaning, simile, metaphor and metonymy, synonymy, antonymy and semantic changes (semantic restriction, semantic expansion, meliorative, pejorative, semantic transfer) were mentioned.