Semantic/ meaning Fields and Components of Meaning

Semantic field The students analyze a text and discuss with their teacher Fish, fisherman, fishhook, wave, boat, sea. Infant, child, adolescent, adult Mother, father, daughter, child, grand mother, grand father, uncle.

Semantic/ meaning components/ semantic features/ semantic properties/ markers component/ semantic primitives mother  human, female, adult, married. father  human, male, adult, married. Bicycle Motorcycle

Horse sheep Mammals yesyes Four legsyesyes Herbivoreyesyes Animal farm yesyes

Words which stay in one semantic field are classified into  collocation (linear)  set (paradigmatic)

Components of meanings Semantic ComponentDescriptionExample Contrastive diagnostic, distinctive, essential Distinguishes one lexical unit from another “Male” is the contrastive semantic component distinguishing man from woman, and boy from girl. Shared common Occurs in each member of a group of lexical units “Human” is a shared component for man, woman, boy, and girl.

Examples of componential analysis

Reasons for identifying such components are: They may allow an economic characterization of the lexical and sentential relations. It shows the sentence relations like the contradiction, e. g. a. Ferdinand is dead. b. Ferdinand is alive. and entailment, e. g. a. Henrietta cooked some lamb chops.. b. Henrietta cooked some meat. They have linguistic import outside semantics. It can help to describe a range of syntactic and morphological process. They provide us with an unique view of conceptual structure or psychological architecture.

To show hyponymy woman [FEMALE] [ADULT] HUMAN] spinster [FEMALE] [ADULT] HUMAN] [UNMARRIED] Wife [FEMALE] [ADULT] HUMAN] [MARRIED]

To show antonymy. bachelor [MALE] [ADULT] [HUMAN] [UNMARRIED] spinster [FEMALE] [ADULT] [HUMAN] [UNMARRIED] wife [FEMALE] [ADULT] [HUMAN] [MARRIED]