BACKGROUND OF THE SEMANTICS FIELD THEORY OF MEANING
The term "semantic field" was introduced by G. Ipsen in 1924s and the origin of the field theory of semantics is the lexical field the theory introduced by Jost Trier in the 1930s, although according to John Lyons it has historical roots in the ideas of Wilhelm Von Humboldt and Johann Gottfried Herder. John Lyons in the 1970s words related in any sense belonged to the same semantic field, and the semantic field was simply a lexical category, which he described as a lexical field. Lyons emphasized the the distinction between semantic fields and semantic networks.
In the 1980s, Eva Kittay developed a semantic field theory of metaphor. This approach is based on the idea that the items in a semantic field have specific relations to other items in the same field, and that a metaphor works by re-ordering the relations of a field by mapping them on to the existing relations of another field. Lastly, Sue Atkins and Charles J. Fillmore in the 1990s proposed frame semantics as an alternative to semantic field theory
SEMANTIC FIELD
Adrienne Lehrer (1985) defined semantic field as a set of lexemes which cover a certain conceptual domain and which bear certain specifiable relations to one another. What this means is that semantic field is a set of words or lexemes related in meaning; also called lexical field, field, or field of meaning. The words in a semantic field share a common semantic property. Most often, fields are defined by subject matter, such as body parts, landforms, diseases, colours, foods, or kinship relations. For examples, the field of 'stages of life' is arranged sequentially, though there is considerable overlap between terms like, child, toddler as well as some apparent gaps e.g., there are no simple terms for the different stages of adulthood.
BASIC ASSUMPTION SEMANTIC FIELD THEORY
The theory of semantic fields assumes that the lexemes that are semantically related, whether paradigmatically or syntagmatically, within a given language system belong to the same semantic field. A semantic field is, therefore, a paradigmatically and syntagmatically a structured subset of the lexicon. The lexical items of natural language can be classified into sets which are semantically related and divide the semantic field in various ways.
For example, the field of “Transfer of Possession” (Katz,1972:347) in English includes such lexemes as: ‘sell’, ‘buy’, ‘trade’, ‘exchange’, ‘give’, ‘receive’, ‘lend’, ‘borrow’, ‘inherit’, ‘lease’, ‘hire’, and ‘rent’.
The two lexemes ‘sell’ and ‘buy’ enter into a special sense-relation with each other and define a region within this field.
For example, Shima sold the house to Raby
From the above example, it asserts that “Raby bought the house from Shima”
The field of “Color” provides another, for example. In English, the lexemes that denote color fall under the general term ‘Color’; such as ‘red’, blue’, ‘green’, ‘white’, ‘black’ and, others.
In case of special sense- relations with one another.
For instance, ‘He is wearing a blue shirt today’ is to exclude all other colors which are not related with ‘blue’. even when we say, ‘black’ enter into the sense-relation of incompatibility with each other and they both fall under the general term ‘color’.
Thus, the object of the analysis of semantic fields is to collect all the lexical items that belong to a particular field and show the relationship of each of them to one another and to the general term. When we looking closely at semantic fields, it is possible to describe the gaps and overlaps (Lehrer, 1974:16)
SEMANTIC FIELD ANALYSIS
Semantic field analysis is the arrangement of words or lexemes into groups or fields on the basis of an element of shared meaning. This is also known as lexical field analysis. Although the terms lexical field and semantic field are usually used interchangeably, Siegfried Wyler (1992) made a distinction between the two. According to him, a lexical field is a structure formed by lexemes while a semantic field is the underlying meaning, which finds expression in lexemes. There are lexical groups or components that made up the semantic field also used for semantic field analysis. They are as follows:
1. Meronymy
A meronym is a word that denotes a constituent part or a member of something. For example, apple is a meronym of an apple tree; Finger is a meronym of hand. The opposite of a meronym is a holonym. Holonym is the name of the whole of which the meronym is a part. For example, Apple tree is a holonym of apple; hand is a holonym of a finger while the body is a holonym of others parts of the body like the hand, legs, ear, head, etc. They share a semantic field of part/whole relation. Other examples of meronym are:
- Part meronym: a tyre/ a car
- Member meronym: a car/a traffic jam; church congregation/a worshipper
- Substance (stuff) meronym: a car tyre is made from rubber
2. Sememe
A sememe is a semantic language unit of meaning correlative to a morpheme. It is a proposed unit of transmitted or intended meaning; atomic or indivisible. A sememe can be the meaning expressed by a morpheme, such as the English pluralizing morpheme -s, which carries the sememic feature [+ plural]. Alternatively, a single sememe (for example [go] or [move]) can be conceived as the abstract representation of such verbs as skate, roll, jump, slide, skip or turn. the seme is a name for the smallest unit of meaning recognized in semantics, referring to a single characteristic of a sememe.
There are five types of sememes: two denotational and three connotational, with connotational occurring only in phrase units (they do not reflect the denotation):
1. Denotational 1: Primary denotation, for example "head" (body);
- Denotational 2: Secondary denotation by resemblance with other denotation: "head" (ship);
- Connotational 1: High position, as the role or function of "head" in the operation of the human body;
- Connotational 2: Emotive, e.g., meaning in "honey";
- Connotational 3: Evaluative, e.g., meaning in "sneak" – move silently and secretly for a bad
From the above explanation, it revealed that it share the semantic field of part relation.
3. Sense-Relations
The speakers of a language intuitively or share feel a relationship between certain pairs or sets of lexemes which is not accounted for by an overt (openly) phonological or grammatical similarity.
The speakers of English, for instance, intuitively feel that the lexemes
The lexemes “parent” and “child” are related in other ways “parent” and “stool” are not
The main goal is to characterize and explicate the semantic relations holding between semantically-related lexemes and how these relations are being made use of in the communicative process.
Semantic relations are considered in terms of the following relations:
i. Complementarity
The term ‘complementarity’ will be used here for the sense-relation that holds between ungradable opposites for instance like ‘male’: ‘female’; ‘dead’: ‘alive’;‘single’: ‘married’. It is normally the case here that the denial of the one implies the assertion of the other and the assertion of the one implies the denial of the other.
For example: Thus, ‘He is not dead implies He is alive
‘He is dead implies He isn’t alive
NB
It is obvious that the above pairs of complementaries ( i.e. ‘male’: ‘female’; ‘single’: ‘married’, ‘dead’: ‘alive’) are morphologically unrelated. But they may also be morphologically related as in ‘perfect’: ‘imperfect’; ‘mortal’: ‘immortal’.
ii. Antonymy
The main defining feature of antonyms is that they are gradable opposites in the sense that they may be seen in terms of the degrees of the quality involved. Lyons(1997).
The gradable antonyms we may distinguish between morphologically unrelated lexemes and morphologically related lexemes
For Example; morphologically unrelated lexemes (e.g. ‘good’: ‘bad’; ‘high’: ‘low’; ‘deep’) morphologically related lexemes (e.g. ‘friendly’: ‘unfriendly’; ‘usual’: ‘unusual’; ‘frequent’: ‘infrequent’, etc.)
In English, a lexeme may have both types of antonym e.g. ‘friendly’: ‘hostile’/ ‘inimical’; ‘friendly’: ‘unfriendly’.
Gradable antonyms of a many-member set can be placed on a scale; in which case they may be ordered: ‘hot, warm, cool, cold’ and may be intensified in a variety of ways (‘very hot’, ‘very warm’, ‘extremely cold’ ) to specify certain points on the scale. Other lexemes may be added to the scale (e.g. ‘boiling’, ‘lukewarm’, ‘freezing’, ‘icy’, etc.)
As we have seen, gradable antonyms do not represent absolute values in that the denial of one member of the pair does not imply the assertion of the other. To say ‘The water is not hot’ does not suggest that ‘The water is cold’; it may be ‘fairly warm’.
Example of Gradable antonyms
Young and old | Happy and sad | Hard and soft |
Last and first | Foolish and wise | Fast and slow |
Warm and cool | Joy and grief | Joy and grief |
Wide and narrow | Dark and light | Early and late |
Abundant and scarce | Dangerous and safe | Risky and safe |
Nevertheless, such antonyms are frequently interpreted as ‘polar opposite’, opposites that represent absolute-nature poles rather than a gradable scale. For instance, if we are asked ‘Is he a good driver?’ and we reply ‘No’, we may well be held to have committed ourselves implicitly to the proposition that ‘He is a bad drive’(Lyons,1997:278).
Complementary antonyms have a relationship where there is no middle ground. There are only two possibilities, either one or the other.
Man and woman | Dead and alive | True or false |
Input and output | Leave and arrive | Fantasy and reality |
Silence or noise | Brother and sister | Natural or artificial |
Relational antonyms are sometimes considered a subcategory of complementary antonyms. With these pairs, for there to be a relationship, both must exist.
Examples are:
- Husband and wife
- Doctor and patient
- Buy and sell
- Predator and prey
- Above and below
- Give and receive
- Teach and learn
- Instructor and pupil
- Servant and master
iii. Polysemy
Flight: (i) as passing through the air (birds flight) (ii) As air journey (iii) Power of flying Head: (i) leader of a group (ii) Part of body (iii) Part of furniture (iv) Part of a coin Eye: (i) as part of the body |
For example
Mouth: (i) as part of the body
(ii) as where rivers flow into the sea
(iii) as entrance of a cave
Ear: (i) part of the body
(ii) Part of a plant (such as maize)
iv. A Homonym
Is a word that is written and pronounced the same way as another, but which has a different meaning.
Examples of a homonym:
'Lie' can be a verb meaning to tell something that is not true or to be in a horizontal position. They look and sound the same, but are different verbs as can be seen from their forms:
Lie; lied, lied (to say something untrue)
Lie; lay, lain (to be in a horizontal position)
Feet/feat; soul/sole; principle/principal; row/row/row; altar/alter; vain/vein flour/flower; buy/bye; break/brake; read/red; floor/flaw; etc.
v. Hyponymy/hypernymy
Hyponymy is a sense relation in semantics that serves to relate word concepts in a hierarchical fashion. Hyponymy is a relation between two words in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of the other word. The lexical relation corresponding to the inclusion of one class in another is hyponymy. Examples are apple- fruit; car- vehicles; chair- furniture; cow - animal.
The more specific concept is known as the hyponym, and the more general concept is known as the hypernym or superordinate. Apple is the hyponym and fruit is the superordinate / hypernymy.
The more specific concept is known as the hyponym, and the more general concept is known as the hypernym or superordinate. Apple is the hyponym and fruit is the superordinate / hypernymy.
Hyponymy is not restricted to objects, abstract concepts, or nouns. It can be identified in many other areas of the lexicon.
Examples:
a. the verb ‘cook’ has many hyponyms.
Word: Cook (hypernym)
Hyponyms: Roast, boil, fry, grill, bake.
b. the verb ‘color’ has many hyponyms
Word: color (hypernym)
Hyponyms: blue, red, yellow, green, white, black, purple and pink.
Hyponymy involves the logical relationship of entailment. Example: ‘There is a horse’ entails that ‘There is an animal”. Hyponymy often functions in discourse as a means of lexical cohesion by establishing referential equivalence to avoid repetition. Retrieved from:
Examples:
a. the verb ‘cook’ has many hyponyms.
Word: Cook (hypernym)
Hyponyms: Roast, boil, fry, grill, bake.
b. the verb ‘color’ has many hyponyms
Word: color (hypernym)
Hyponyms: blue, red, yellow, green, white, black, purple and pink.
Hyponymy involves the logical relationship of entailment. Example: ‘There is a horse’ entails that ‘There is an animal”. Hyponymy often functions in discourse as a means of lexical cohesion by establishing referential equivalence to avoid repetition. Retrieved from:
KATZ’S SEMANTIC THEORY OF MEANING
Katz’s semantics theory is One of the earliest approaches to semantics within generative grammar was componential: it appeared in Katz and Fodor (1963), and was later refined, notably in Katz and Postal (1964) and Katz (1972):1 for simplicity we will refer to it as Katz’s theory.
Two central ideas of this theory are:
1 Semantic rules have to be recursive for the same reasons as syntactic rules: that the number of possible sentences in a language is very large, possibly infinite.
1 Semantic rules have to be recursive for the same reasons as syntactic rules: that the number of possible sentences in a language is very large, possibly infinite.
2 The relationship between a sentence and its meaning is not arbitrary and unitary, for instance syntactic structure and lexical content interact so that john killed fred and fred killed John do not have the same meaning despite containing the same lexical elements; nor do The snake frightened Mary and The movie delighted Horace despite having the same syntactic structure. In other words, meaning is compositional Leech (1981). The way words are combined into phrases and phrases into sentences determines the meaning of the sentences.
Katz’s theory reflects this by having rules which take input from both the syntactic component of the grammar, and from the dictionary. For these linguists the aims of the semantic component, paralleling the aims of syntax, are:
i. To give specifications of the meanings of lexical items
ii. To give rules showing how the meanings of lexical items build up into the meanings of phrases and so on up to sentences;
iii. To do this in a universally applicable metalanguage.
The first two aims are met by having two components: firstly, a dictionary which pairs lexical items with a semantic representation; and secondly, a set of projection rule which show how the meanings of sentences are built up from the meanings of lexical items. The third aim is partially met by the use of semantic components. We can look at the dictionary and the projection rules in turn Leech, (1981).
The Katzian Dictionary
The details of the form of dictionary entries changed considerably during the development of this theory; we can risk abstracting a kind of typical entry for the most famous example: the word bachelor (adapted from Katz and Fodor 1963, Katz and Postal 1964):2
bachelor {N}
The details of the form of dictionary entries changed considerably during the development of this theory; we can risk abstracting a kind of typical entry for the most famous example: the word bachelor (adapted from Katz and Fodor 1963, Katz and Postal 1964):2
bachelor {N}
a) (human) (male) means one who has never been married
b) (human) (male) means young knight serving under the standard of
another knight
another knight
c) (human) means one who has the first or lowest academic degree
d) (animal) (male) means young fur seal without a mate in the breeding
season]
season]
Katz and his colleagues built into their theory the common-sense idea that part of a word’s meaning is shared with other words, but part is unique to that word
Projection rule
These rules are responsible for showing how the meaning of words combines into larger structures. was designed to be part of a Chomskyan generative grammar, the rules interfaced with a generative syntactic component. So typically the projection rules operated on syntactic phrase markers, or ‘trees’. The projection rules used these trees to structure the amalgamation of word meanings into phrase meanings, and then phrase meanings into the sentence’s meaning. Again we can select a standard example from Katz and Fodor (1963). Projection rule
The main constraint on the amalgamation processes involved in these rules is provided by selection restrictions. These are designed to reflect some of the contextual effects on word meaning. We can stay with the same example and look at the dictionary entries for colorful and ball with the selectional restrictions Leech, (1981).
colorful {ADJ}
i. (color) [abounding in contrast or variety of bright color
ii. <(physical object) or (social activity)
iii. (evaluative) [having distinctive character, vividness, or pictures queness] <(aesthetic object) or (social activity)>
ball {N}
i. (social activity) (large) (assembly) [for the purpose of social
dancing]
dancing]
ii. (physical object) [having globular shape]
iii. (physical object) [solid missile for projection by engine of war]
Finally, Katzian approach to meaning, we can see that an essential part of the theory is the attempt to establish a semantic metalanguage through the identification of semantic components: in simple terms, the theory is decompositional. It is these components that Katz (1972) uses to try to characterize the semantic relations of hyponymy, antonymy, synonymy, contradiction, entailment.
REFERENTIAL THEORY OF MEANING
The term “referential” derives from the term “reference” which deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements (words, phrases, sentences) and the non-linguistic world of experience (Palmer, 1981). Reference differs from sense, which relates to the complex system of relation-ships that hold between the linguistic elements themselves (especially words); it is concerned only with intra-linguistic relations. Reference is an essential element in semantics in a sense that it is concerned only with the relationship between our language and our experience.
Semantics can be divided into two: one type deals with
i. Semantic structure
ii. Semantic meaning
Semantics meaning in terms of our experience outside language. In other words, one kind of semantics that relates to non-linguistic entities and the other is intra-linguistic. In its simplest form this theory would claim that reference picks out elements in the real world (Saeed, 2009:30).
Referential theories
It concerned with the relationship between expressions and the external world. The referential theory is used to explain our knowledge of linguistic meaning, but makes no claim about how we actually know how linguistic expressions acquire meaning. In other words, it makes no psychological claims. A referential theory of semantics assumes that Meaning is Reference to Facts or Objects in the World. According to Saeed (2009:31), As described by Ruth Kempson (1977:
13) such an approach might claim the following,
13) such an approach might claim the following,
Proper names denote individuals,
Common names denote sets of individuals,
Verbs denote actions
Adjectives denote properties of individuals,
Adverbs denote properties of actions.
According to this theory, the main goal of a dictionary is to provide users with referential meaning; this is ensured by relating a word whose meaning is unknown to a word or words whose reference is already understood.
For example 1(a) a pointed boy is a meaning of a word BOY. Also, in example 1(b), the meaning of a word GIRL is a pointed person girl. In referential theory, the two words “boy” and “girl” does not mean anything rather than a male and female people (not adult) whom we can point out in a real world, without referring to psychological meaning or any other meaning.
The meaning denoted by a verb can also be derived from the nature of that verb. For instance, the reference of a transitive verb (syntax) or a two-place predicate (semantics) kiss is the set of ordered pairs of individuals where the first individual stands in a kissing relation to the second. Consider example Marry kissed John
Marry kissed John will be true just in case the pair John and Mary are in the set of ordered pairs of individuals where the first individual kisses the second one.
Weaknesses of Referential Theory of Meaning
The first challenge is that it seems to predict that many words have no meaning (Saeed, 2009:31) if we denote meaning only for the references we can point out, it is very difficult to find a real world referent for some words like so, not, very, but, of.
The second challenge is that that many nominal expressions used by speakers do not have a referent that exists or has ever existed (Saeed, 2009:31). Consider the sentences below.
In the painting a unicorn is ignoring a maiden.
World War III might be about to start.
Father Christmas might not visit you this year.
As far as referential theory is concern, we find that expressions like unicorn, World War III, and Father Christmas are meaningless since these expressions are not referring to anything in reality.
Another problem is that even when we are talking about things in the real world, there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between a linguistic expression and the item we want to identify (Saeed, 2009:31). Consider the examples below.
Then in 1981 Anwar E1 Sadat was assassinated.
Then in 1981 the President of Egypt was assassinated.
The same individual is referred to by a name, Anwar E1 Sadat, and also by a definite description, the President of Egypt. The two expressions would share the same referent but we probably want to say they have different meanings. This implies that there is more to meaning than reference. One might object that names do not really have any meaning.
NB
This is often so in English, where we commonly use names derived from other languages like Hebrew, Greek, etc., but is not necessarily true of other cultures. Still, even if we allow this objection, the phenomenon is not restricted to names (Saeed, 2009:31&32).
For example, you might refer to the woman who lives next door to you by various descriptions like my neighbour, Pat’s mother, Michael’s wife, the Head of Science at St Helen’s School, etc.
It seems clear that while these expressions might all refer to the same individual, they differ in meaning. Indeed it is possible to know that some nominal expressions refer to an individual but be ignorant of others that do. We might understand expressions like the President of the United States and The commander –in-chief of the united states Armed force but not know that they both refer to same man
A referential theory of meaning does not predict the difference between semantic intension and intention. A referential theory of meaning accounts for our ability to point to the things that words denote, but it has several critical shortcomings. Saeed cited from Gottlob Frege (1980) pointed out a critical flaw using the phrases morning star and evening star. These phrases have the same referent, but different meanings. Using them in a sentence makes this difference obvious.
2 (a) The morning star is the morning star.
(b) The morning star is the evening star.
The first of these sentences does not tell us anything new, while the second sentence does. A referential theory of meaning does not predict this difference. Frege distinguished between a word’s semantic extension and its semantic intension. The semantic extension of a word is the set of things the word denotes, while its semantic intension is the concept or meaning of the word.
Lastly, challenge to this theory is referential changes; the things that words refer to seem to be changing constantly. A good example of this change is the name of a town, like Lawrence. Lawrence has been continuously expanding since its beginning. It was even burnt to the ground once and rose from its ashes. Individual buildings in the town are constantly changing shape and color. The entity denoted by the name Lawrence is not the same from one day to the next. A strict interpretation of a referential theory of meaning would predict that the meanings of most names are constantly changing.
COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
Components of Meaning
Word-meaning analysis is a process of breaking down the sense of a word into its minimal components. For example, words like man, woman, boy, and girl belong to the same semantic field called the human race and their relations can be appropriately represented by two ways Leech (1981).The first way is two-dimension diagram as indicated in example1.
Adult |
| ‘woman’ | |
‘girl’ |
Human |
Example 1 above indicates meaning dimensions of words (man, woman, boy, girl). The first dimension is sex which include male and female; under this dimension, man and boy mean male, while woman and girl mean female. The second dimension is of adulthood which include young and adult; under this dimension, boy and girl mean young, while man and woman mean adult.
The other way is to represent the relations by writing a formula called “Componential Definitions” in which the dimensions of meaning are expressed by the use of symbols. A symbol “+” marks the presence of a given feature, while “-” marks absence of a particular feature hence it means an opposite feature.
Example 2: {+HUMAN “human”} {+ADULT “adult”} {+MALE “male”}
{-HUMAN “animal, brute”} {-ADULT “young”} {-MALE “female”}
From example 2 above, the meanings of the four individual items (man, woman, boy, girl) can be expressed by a combination of the above features. Hence, man: {+HUMAN +ADULT +MALE}, woman: {+HUMAN +ADULT -MALE}, boy: {+HUMAN –ADULT +MALE}, girl: {+HUMAN -ADULT -MALE}.
Some features like sex and man do not give a clear definition of the item within a certain field, because they are unspecified for both sex and adulthood. To recognize their features we have to represent the neutralization of opposition by using the symbol “O”.
For example: man: +HUMAN (OMALE) (OADULT)
child: +HUMAN (OADULT) (–OMALE)
female: (OHUMAN) (OADULT) –MALE
Meaning Relations
Words can be analyzed in terms or meaning relatedness. Synonym and antonym are the only words for semantic relatedness in general use in our language. Synonym is a word with the same sense and similar meaning, while antonym is a word with opposite meaning and does not only contrast words on a single dimension but also may contrast with other words on a number of dimensions at once. In this sense, antonym is incompatibility. Thus, the meaning of woman is incompatible with that of child because of the contrast between + ADULT and –ADULT.
Child: HUMAN (-ADULT) (OMALE)
Hyponym
Hyponym exists between two meanings if one componential formula contains all the features available in the other formula. For example, ‘woman’ is hyponymous to ‘grow-up’ because the two features making up the definition ‘grow-up’ (+HUMAN +ADULT) are present in the definition ‘woman’; +HUMAN +ADULT –MALE).
Synonymy and polysemy are relations between form and meaning of words, whereby synonym involves more than one form having the same meaning while polysemy involves the same form having more than one meaning. Hyponymy and incompatibility are relations between two meanings; whereby hyponymy is the inclusion of one meaning in another while Incompatibility is the exclusion of one meaning from another.
The semantic Notation: Signese
According to Leech, G (1981pg 94) state that Segnese is a formula language, and this means that it has two crucial properties, which are; ambiguous and graphically arbitrary. Formal language plays an indispensable role in rendering semantic discussion clear and explicit.
COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
Componential analysis aims to decompose the senses of lexemes into minimum semantic features, which are contrastive and significant. It is very similar to the approach of distinctive feature theory in phonology. We may take the following sets of lexemes in English and see how their senses (i.e. as always, one sense of each lexeme) can be analysed into semantic features:
man woman child
bull cow calf
Componential analysis according to Leech, G. (1981pg 97) is to show that the contrast and combinations of meaning one has recognized are necessary and sufficient to explain relevant data. For example; the secretary is a woman means that “the secretary is adult”. “I met two boys” means that I met two children. The link between componential analysis and basic statements is made through the mediation of such meaning relations as hyponymy and incompatibility Leech, G. (1981).
Taxonomic Opposition
This oppositeness is based on arrangement of categories. The existence of two terms to the opposition and the contrast between them refers to binary taxonomy indicating an arrangement of categories; the following diagram indicates the binary taxonomy of the words “alive” and “dead”. Other oppositions which involve more than two terms, these are called multiple taxonomies. These include semantic classes which deal with metal, species of animal, tree or fruits and so on. For example: iron, gold, copper, mercury. Here the absoluteness of boundaries can be determined in logical terms.
Polar Oppositions
These are oppositions which can accommodate a middle ground belonging neither to one pole nor to the other. This is contrary to binary opposition. For example: large and small.
Relative Opposition
It is the kind of opposition or incompatibility between two terms either of which needs the other to explain it. For example, the idea of father/son, double/half, own/belong to, up/down, above/below.
Hierarchic Oppositions
These are oppositions which include elements of ordering. For example, 1 length, 2 length, 3 length which includes elements of ordering. Also units of measurements such as ‘inch’, ’foot’, ‘yard’, calendar of the year such as ‘January’, ‘February’, … and that of number (‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’…) which is open ended as it has no ‘highest’ term.
Inverse Opposition
The inverse opposition must obeys a special rule of synonymy which involves substituting one inverse term for another, and changing the position of a negative in relation to the inverse term. This includes binary semantic contrast such as ‘all’/ ‘some’, remain’/’become, ‘still’ /already’. For example: SOME countries have no coastline is synonymous with NOT ALL countries have a coastline.
Redundancy Rules
Redundancy rules state that the presence of one feature implies the absence of another feature. Example:
Male = + Human Female = +Human
+ Female -Male
Reduandancy rules are important due to the question of how features of different semantic oppositions can be combined, due to the fact that every dimensions of meaning is variable. There are some dimensions which are independent variable. For example, +HUMAN, +ADULT and +MALE (these are dimensions which are independent variables), but there are some dimensions which makes no sense to combine them hence results to contradiction. For example, +ANIMATE and +COUNTABLE, this makes no sense to combine either of the features +MALE or –MALE with +ANIMATE {+INANIMATE} or -COUNTABLE (mass). This means that features +female and -male presuppose the presence of the feature +ANIMATE.
Marked and Unmarked
The binary opposition has a marked and unmarked term, that is, the terms are not entirely of equivalent weight but the unmarked one is neutral positive in contrast to the other. For example: in English the plural is the marked category of number (book – books.) A similar kind of marked/unmarked destination is found in polar oppositions such as (long – short), (high – low), (old – young). Markedness can also be between form and meaning, like it first form (like words) contrast on a single dimension of meaning, the unmarked one is the one which can also apply neutrally to the whole dimension, due to a positive-negative bias inherent to the semantic opposition itself. Usually the marked term is indicated by a negative prefix or suffix, for example, happy-unhappy; polite – impolite, useful – useless.
Criticisms and Problems of Componential Analysis
The first criticism is that componential analysis counts only for some parts of a language’s vocabulary (especially parts which are neatly organized). It supposes to look on the semantic features especially looking at the metaphors and other kinds of meaning.
Componential analysis merely explains one set of symbols by another set of symbols which are both from English words. It should be noted that the notations symbols are in principle arbitrary.
Componential analysis postulates abstract semantic features based on the rules that accounts for relations of hyponyms and incompability. However, componential analysis can be formulated to operate on the word forms themselves.
Componential analysis postulates universal features of meaning and therefore relies upon the strong assumption that the same semantic features are found in all languages. It is right to generalize semantic features but only if to the justified translated equivalent.
Componential analysis is unexplanatory as it does not provide for the interpretation of semantic features in terms of the real word properties and objects that they refer to, for example; +Adult remains an abstract and uninterrupted symbol unless we can actually specify what adults are like. To overcome the challenge, the analysis should provide the theory of meaning and reference.
Componential analysis does not account for the nature of word meanings, which are looser, fuzzier, and more inconsistent than what componential analysis implies.
The componential analysis does not consider the nature of word meaning than what it implies. For example it does not account for fuzzy meaning. By fuzzy meaning, we mean that word meaning is not clear thus the definite criteria for the reference of words cannot be given. For example: when we find the word “game” we could find no essential defining features of what constituents a “game” and it is known that the word ‘game’ means only by virtues of recognizing certain family resemblances between the activities it refers to.
REFERENCES
Bendix, E. M. (1966). Componential analysis of general vocabulary. The Hague: Mounton.
Historical word formation. Jacek Fisiak, (ed.) pp283-96. Berlin: Mounton de Gruyter.
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Leech, G.N. (1981). Semantics: The Study of Meaning (2nd ed). England: Penguin Books Ltd.
Lehrer, A. (1985). The influence of semantic fields on semantic change. In Historical semantics
Lyons, John 1977: Semantics, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, John 1981: Language, Meaning and Context. London: Fontana.
Lyons, John 1981: Language, Meaning and Context. London: Fontana.
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