The variability of synonymic oppositions chior–orb, vechi–bătrîn, copac–pom, mal–țărm and their lexicographic treatment
The variability of synonymic oppositions chior–orb, vechi–bătrîn, copac–pom, mal–țărm and their lexicographic treatment

Summary/Abstract: The analysis of a series of synonymic oppositions in Romanian aims at pointing to their variation on a diachronic and diatopic level, the relationship between these two levels, as well as how these linguistic realities are treated at a lexicographic level, especially in modern dictionaries of synonyms. The modern dictionaries of synonyms do not pay enough attention to the relationship between synonyms, as their lexicographic entries mainly consist of ordering the synonyms of the title word and occasionally adding examples. This is known as the ``cumulative” method, and it is favoured by an inadequate definition of the synonymic relationship. Therefore, following the analysis of four pairs of synonyms belonging to the basic Romanian vocabulary we have concluded that the approach of synonymic oppositions in two representative Romanian dictionaries of synonyms is merely approximate and at times inappropriate. The structure of the lexicographic entries in these dictionaries often shows an inadequate knowledge of words history and how it is reflected as a variation at the dialectal level. The exemplification method is as well inadequate because the authors deliberately provide examples that are irrelevant for the identification of the differences between the synonyms.

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