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Semantic Features

The document discusses semantic fields, sense relations, and componential analysis. Semantic fields group words by meaning into sets referring to specific subjects. There are ordered and unordered semantic fields. Sense relations characterize word meanings through relationships like synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, and meronymy. Componential analysis breaks down word meanings into semantic features.

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21 views24 pages

Semantic Features

The document discusses semantic fields, sense relations, and componential analysis. Semantic fields group words by meaning into sets referring to specific subjects. There are ordered and unordered semantic fields. Sense relations characterize word meanings through relationships like synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, and meronymy. Componential analysis breaks down word meanings into semantic features.

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Structural Semantics: semantic fields,

sense relations & componential


analysis
Semantic Field
In linguistics, a semantic field is a
1 set of words grouped by meaning
referring to a specific subject

A semantic field is a lexical set of


2 words grouped semantically that
refers to a specific subject
Semantic Field
3 It is a collection of words which
are related to one another be it
through their similar meanings or
through a more abstract relation
For Example

If a writer is writing a poem or a


novel about a ship, they will surely
use words such as ocean, waves,
sea, tide, blue, storm, wind, sails,
etc.
Two kinds of Semantic Fields

1 Ordered
E.g: Months of the year begin from January until
December. Also the days of the week

Unordered
2 E.g: animals can be arranged depending on families
such as the animals of the cat family
What is the effect of semantic
field?
Build an emotion: Semantic fields also help
to create undertones to pieces of literature.
This effectively builds emotion, and
provides subtle indications to a reader as to
what may be about to happen.
Sense Relations
It is the characterizing the meaning of a word in
terms of its relationship to others.

For example:
Conceal - "it's the same as hide"
Shallow - "the opposite of deep"
Daffodil - "it's a kind of flower"
This procedure has also been used in the
semantic description of languages and is treated
as the analysis of sense relations.

There are three types of sense relations:


Synonymy, Antonymy, & Hyponymy
Synonymy
Synonymy are two or more forms, with
very closely related meanings, which are
often, but not always, intersubstitutable
in sentences.
For example, whereas the word answer
fits in this sentence: Karen had only one
correct answer on the test, its near-
synonym, reply, would sound odd.
Antonymy
Two forms with opposite meanings are
called antonyms.

Antonyms are usually divided into two


types which are 'gradable', and those
which are 'non-gradable'.
Gradable Antonyms
• are pairs that describe opposite ends of a continuous
scale, such as the pair big-small, can be used in
comparative constructions bigger than - smaller than,
and the negative of one member of the pair does not
necessarily imply the other.
For example

If you say that dog is not old, you don't have to mean that dog is
young. Another example is hot and cold. Not everything that can
be hot or cold is, in fact, either hot or cold. A liquid for example,
may be neither hot nor cold; it can be in between, say, warm or
cool. These antonyms do not constitute contradiction but
contrary relationships.
Non-Gradable Antonyms

are pairs that exhaust all


possibilities along some
scale.

Dead and alive are examples of non-gradable antonyms. It constitute a


contradiction, because dead means not alive. There is no middle ground
between the two. For example, that person is not dead does indeed mean
that person is alive.
Hyponymy
When the meaning of one form is included in the
meaning of another is described as hyponymy.

The concept of 'inclusion' involved here is the idea


that if any object is a daffodil, then it is necessarily
a flower, so the meaning of flower is 'included' in
the meaning of daffodil. Or, daffodil is a hyponym
of flower.
From this diagram, we can say that 'horse is a hyponym of animal' or that
'ant is a hyponym of insect'. We can also say that two or more terms which
share the same superordinate (higher up) terms are co-hyponyms. So, horse
and dog are co-hyponyms, and the super-ordinate term is animal.
The relation of hyponymy captures the idea of 'is a
kind of, as when you give the meaning of a word by
saying "an asp is a kind of snake". It is often the case
that the only think some people know about the
meaning of a word in their language is that it is a
hyponym of another term. That is, you may know
nothing more about the meaning of asp other than
that it is a kind of snake.
Partitive Relations
Partitive relations (part-whole relations, meronymy,
partonymy) are to be strictly distinguished from
hyponymy. For example, a head, arm or leg is a part
of the body, not a kind of body. Therefore, head, arm,
leg etc. are meronyms of body. It represents a relation
between individual objects and their parts.
Componential Analysis: The Semantic Feature
Approach
• This procedure is a
means of analyzing
meaning in terms of
semantic features
For Example
Features such as +animate, -animate; +human, -
human; +male, - male, can be treated as the basic
features involved in differentiating the meanings of
each word in the language from every other word. If
you were asked to give the crucial distinguishing
features of the meanings of this set of English words
(table, cow, girl, woman, boy, man), you could do so
by means of the following diagram:
References:

• Meyer, P., (2008). Descriptive English Linguistics: An Introduction.


(4th Edition).
• Mariani, N., & Mu'in, F., (2007). An Introduction to Linguistics:
(Teaching & Learning Material). Banjarmasin: PBS FKIP UNLAM
• https://www.slideshare.net/LailaAfridi2/semantic-fieldpptx

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