成分分析和语义(词汇学)

A knowledge of the semantic features of words helps us to choose the right word or collocation. Some words require a human subject while some do not. For example, verbs of perception and cognition usually take a human subject as in ‘John forgave your rudeness’, but a tree or a door cannot forgive unless used metaphorically. Question: Now could you express such semantic feature of forgive? [+HUMAN SUBJECT -]

Another way to represent these senses is to write formulae in which the dimensions of meaning are expressed by feature symbols like HUMAN and ADULT. The meanings of the individual items can then be expressed by combinations of these features: Man Woman +HUMAN +HUMAN +ADULT +ADULT +MALE -MALE

The term COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS has often been used for the method of analysis illustrated here, that of reducing a word’s meaning to its ultimate contrastive elements. It bears some resemblance to the mathematical process of factorizing a number, e.g. 10=1×2×5.
‘male’ ‘adult’ ‘young’ ‘man’ ‘boy’ ‘human’
‘female’ ‘woman’ ‘girl’

The diagram shows two dimensions of meaning: that of ‘sex’ and that of ‘adulthood’; a third dimension is presupposed by the isolation of the field as a whole: that between ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ species. The dimensions of meaning themselves will be termed SEMANTIC COMPONENTS or FEATURES.


Dynamic adjectives can be used in imperative sentences and progressive aspects. Consider: (7) a. Be careful. (dynamic) b. * Be tall. (stative)
(8) a. He is being cruel. (dynamic)
3. Be able to be used in imperative sentence or not? (5) I persuade her to learn English. (dynamic) (6) * I persuade her to know English. (stative)
Five types of dynamic verb: ★ Activity verb: abandon, ask ★ Process verb: change, grow ★ Sense verb: ache, itch ★ Transitional verb: die, land ★ Momentary verb: knock, hit Two types of stative verb: ★ Sense and cognition verb: love, know ★ Relational verb: equal, seem
b. * He is being cwenku.baidu.comever. (stative)
Exercise

See P86-7.
Lecture IV Componential analysis and semantic features
Lead-in remark
How to distinguish bicycle, motor cycle and car? Bicycle: [TWO WHEELS], [PROPELLED BY PEDALS] Motor cycle: [TWO WHEELS], [PROPELLED BY ENGINE] Car: [FOUR WHEELS], [PROPELLED BY ENGINE] Things are differentiated by their features. Words follow the same principle, i.e. different words have different meanings as they contain different features.

A particular characteristic of componential analysis is that it attempts as far as possible to treat components in terms of binary opposites, e.g. [±MALE] and [±FEMALE]. Notationally there is an advantage in such binary terms in that we can choose one only as the label and distinguish this in terms of pluses and minuses. Thus, [MALE] and [FEMALE] are written as [+MALE] and [-MALE].
Boy
Girl
+HUMAN
+HUMAN
-ADULT
-ADULT
+MALE
-MALE

These formulae are called the COMPONENTIAL DEFINITIONS of the items concerned: they can be regarded, in fact, as formulated dictionary definitions.

Semantic features

The linguistic meaning of a word is the set of abstracted characteristics necessary to distinguish the category which the word names from all other categories. The analysis of word-meaning is often seen as a process of breaking down the sense of a word into its minimal components. A very simple example of this is provided by the words man, woman, boy, girl, and other, related words in English.
Dynamic vs. stative

How to distinguish dynamic and stative verbs? Consider learn and know. 1. Be able to be used in progressive aspect or not? (1) He is learning English. (dynamic) (2) * He is knowing English. (stative) 2. Be able to be used in pseudo-cleft sentence or not? (3) What I did was to learn English. (dynamic) (4) * What I did was to know English. (stative)

The chief drawback of componential analysis is the impossibility of making a list of the infinite number of semantic features.


Semantic features usually used to distinguish nouns include [±ANIMATE], [±MALE], [±VEGETABLE], [±ADULT], [±ABSTRACT], [±COUNTALBE], etc. Semantic features to distinguish verbs include [±DYNAMIC], [±STATIVE], [±CAUSATIVE], [±VOLITIVE], [±COMPLETIVE] [±DURATIVE], etc.

Componential analysis enables us to have an exact knowledge of the conceptual meaning of words. Two words are synonymous if they contain all the same sense components, e.g. both father and male parent can be given the same definition [+HUMAN +ADULT +MALE +MARRIED] even though they clearly differ in connotation, the one (Which one? And what exactly?) having connotative meaning, the other evoking no association.

These words all belong to the semantic field ‘the human race’, and the relation between them may be appropriately represented by a two-dimensional ‘field diagram’: