Lexicology, Phraseology and Stylistics
What the task demands
This domain tests word meaning and relationships, the origin and use of vocabulary, fixed expressions, and stylistic choice. You must explain synonymy, antonymy, homonymy and polysemy; distinguish native words from borrowings; and recognise phraseological units as fixed combinations whose meaning is not the sum of their parts.
Concepts to master
Know the difference between direct and figurative meaning, and how context disambiguates polysemous words. Learn common Bulgarian phraseologisms (хвърлям прах в очите, бера душа, правя от мухата слон) and their stylistic register. Understand functional styles: scientific, official, journalistic, artistic and colloquial, with their typical lexical and syntactic features. Recognise stylistic devices such as metaphor, metonymy, epithet, comparison, hyperbole and irony, and the difference between neutral and marked (bookish or colloquial) vocabulary.
Traps
- Confusing homonyms (unrelated meanings, same form) with polysemes (related meanings).
- Interpreting a phraseologism literally.
- Confusing metaphor (based on similarity) with metonymy (based on contiguity).
- Misjudging register: a colloquial word used where the text is formal.
Rule of thumb
For meaning questions, substitute the word in context and test whether the sentence still makes sense. For phraseologisms, ask whether the expression can be changed word by word - if not, it is fixed.
Worked example
"Той е лъв в битка." Лъв is used metaphorically (similarity: courage), not metonymically. In contrast, "Прочетох Толстой" uses the author's name for the work - metonymy.