Words from the MAR family

In Spanish, the words relate to each other from different semantic ties, either because they derive from the same family of words, or because they maintain synonymy or antonymy relationships. All the words that share semantic features form what is known as the word family or lexical family.

In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to review what a word family is and we will see an example through the words of the "sea" family. Keep reading!

A word family is a group made up of different words that have in common the fact that each and every one of them comes from a primitive word, which acts as the basis for forming a family of words.

Let's see it with an example: the word "fruit" it is a primitive word because it does not derive from any other, to put it another way, it is the word that has the greatest semantic content, which remains the same and does not change or modify. From the term "fruit", we can find different words that maintain a relationship of semantic proximity with it, since they have some of its significant features in common. For example,

"fruit store" It is the place where the fruit is sold and bought, "frutero, -a" is the person who is in charge of buying and selling the fruit, "frutal" is the tree from which the fruit is obtained, and so on.

In this way, to know if a word belongs or not to a certain lexical family, what we must do is look at its meaning and see if, from it, we can relate it to the primitive word.

Most of the words that make up a word family have been formed from different word creation processes, such as suffixation or prefixation, among others. Therefore, it is essential to know how to distinguish the primitive word on which these processes of linguistic creation have acted to give rise to more words.

In this video of a PROFESSOR you will discover what are word families.

Once we have reviewed the theory about word families, we are going to study a practical case: the word family of "sea". The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (DRAE) picks up the term sea and defines it as the "mass of salty water that covers most of the earth's surface", as well as "each of the parts into which the sea is considered divided"; that is, each of the different seas that exist, for example, the Cantabrian Sea, the Adriatic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Dead Sea, etc.

Once we know what the meaning of the word "sea" is, we must look for all those words that derive from it; that is to say, that they are semantically linked to it, since "sea" is the primitive word of this lexical family, since it is the basis of it, from which we can obtain the rest.

Thus, some of the words that belong to the word family of "sea" are the following: tide, swell, tide, sailor, marine, marine, maritime, maritime, tidal wave, tidal wave, tidal gauge, seafaring, marinesco, marinesca, tide, tidal, underwater, diver, marinate, mariculture, ultramarine, high tide, low tide, marine, marsh, marola.

These are the words belonging to the lexical family of "sea", since they share some semantic feature that allows us to relate them directly or indirectly to the sea. Can you think of any other words that are part of the word family for "sea"? Go ahead and share it with us!