What is a rank lexical relation?

A rank lexical relation is an association between lexical units which have different relative values based on some shared underlying semantic property.

Lexical units which are related by rank are likely to be functionally descriptive of the characteristics of an entity. They are likely to be lexical categorized as nouns.

• {private, corporal, sergeant, general}
• {Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2,…}
• {priest, bishop, archbishop, cardinal, pope}

A rank set has the structure of a scale.

Context for this page:

• Concept module: rank lexical relation
• In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): R
• In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
• In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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