SEMANTICS

1. COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
AND
CONTRAST OF MEANING
By : DIAN PERANDHA WULANDARI
WISELINA NAZARA

2. COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
LINGUISTICS
TERMS
WORD MEANING
Combinations of
the features

3. COMPONENTS OF
MEANING
A process of breaking down the
sense of a word into its minimal
components.
such as :
The words of man, woman, boy,
girl, etc.
‘Male’ ‘Female’
Adult
Young
‘Man’ ‘Woman’
‘Boy’ ‘Girl’
‘Human’

4. To make it clear there are some ways to represent component of meaning like
HUMAN and ADULT, the it can be expressed by combinations of these features
with this formulae. Leech (1974:90) states :
Man : +HUMAN + HUMAN +MALE
Woman : +HUMAN + ADULT -MALE
Boy : +HUMAN - ADULT +MALE
Girl : +HUMAN - ADULT -MALE

5. MEANING RELATIONS
1. Synonym  word of same
meaning
2. Antonym  word of opposite
meaning

6. WOMAN
Incompatible with that of a child because of
the clash between +ADULT and -ADULT :
Women : +HUMAN +ADULT -MALE
CHILD : +HUMAN -ADULT (OMALE)

7. as in : ‘woman’ is hyponymous to
’grow up’ the two features making up
definition ‘grow-up’ (+HUMAN +ADULT)
are both present in definition ‘woman’ :
+HUMAN + ADULT –MALE.
‘woman’ is also hyponymous to ‘female’
and ‘ human being’,.
Other meanings
incompatible with
‘woman’are ‘man’, ‘boy’,
girl, cow, not to speak of
more remotely
contrasted meanings
such as ‘tree’ or
‘screwdriver’. Another
relationship of meaning it
is useful to distinguish is ‘
meaning inclusion’ or
hyponymy.

8. PolysemySynonym hyponymy : the
inclusion of the
meaning is
another
incompatibilty :
the exclusion of
one meaning
from another.
4 componential relationships that
separated into 2 pairs:
Synonym and polysemy ->
relation between form and
meaning
Hyponymy and incompatibility
 relations between two
meaning

9. THE SEMANTIC NOTATION : ‘ SIGNESE’
Signese is : formal language such as (languages
of mathematics and formal logic).
UNAMBIGOUS
has just have one
meaning
ARBITRARY
consitent and does
not lead to
ambiguity

10. For example in English and Portuguese
used l like this for :
male,adult, human  English
macho, adulto humano  Portuguese

11. JUSTIFYING A COMPONENTIAL
ANALYSIS
By following out its logical
consequences in term of basic
statements implies giving a
certain priority to sentence
meaning over word-meaning.
‘
Example :
 The secretary is a woman’ entails ‘ the
secretary is an adult’.
 ‘ I met two boys’ entails ‘ i met two
children’.

12. Taxonomic Oppositions
Indicating an arrangement of categories
‘alive’
(+LIVE)
‘dead’
(-LIVE)

13. Oppositions which involve more
than two terms

14. Polar oppositions
This term can have two
poles or extremes

15. Relative oppositions
Involves a contrast of
direction

16. Other types of oppositions
Hierarchic oppositions
Inverse oppositions

17. Hierarchic oppositions

18. Inverse oppositions
The most important inverse opposition
is quantification
all/some
possible/necessary
allow/compel
be willing/insist
still/already.

19. Thank you 