Semantic/ meaning Fields and Components of Meaning

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Semantic/ meaning Fields and Components of Meaning
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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.

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Semantic/ meaning components/ semantic features/
semantic properties/ markers component/ semantic
primitives

• mother ?human, female, adult, married.
• father ?human, male, adult, married.
• Bicycle
• Motorcycle

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Horse sheep

• Mammals yes yes
• Four legs yes yes
• Herbivore yes yes
• Animal farm yes yes

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

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Components of meanings
Semantic Component Description Example
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.
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Examples of componential analysis
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• 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.

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• To show hyponymy
• woman FEMALE ADULT HUMAN
• spinster FEMALE ADULT HUMAN
  UNMARRIED
• Wife FEMALE ADULT HUMAN MARRIED

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