Componential analysis is a semantic method that breaks down word meanings into fundamental contrastive elements, influenced by structural semantics and models from various linguistic traditions. This approach helps in understanding meaning relationships and distinguishing words through their components, categorized into common, diagnostic, and supplementary types. Despite its usefulness, componential analysis can sometimes highlight non-distinctive features, complicating the investigation of lexical fields.

1. WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

2. YOUR TEACHERS:
• MILJAN MILJANIĆ
•MILENA NIKOLIĆ
•MARIJA JOJIĆ
•LJILJANA BRAŠANAC
•TAMARA STOJANOVIĆ
•IRENA BULATOVIĆ
•ANA ROĆENOVIĆ
•ANDREA MILOŠEVIĆ
•RADMILA RADONJIĆ
•JADRANKA MATOVIĆ

3. COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS is a semantic
process in which a word’s meaning is reduced
to its ultimate contrastive elements, or
MINIMAL COMPONENTS.

4. Structural semantics and the componential
analysis were patterned on the phonological
methods of the Prague School, which
described sounds by determining the absence
and presence of features. Componential
analysis gave birth to various models in
generative semantics, lexical field theory, and
transformational grammar.

5. Hjelmslev was the first structural semanticist:
the approach was developed considerably by
European linguists, with a German variety and a
French variety.

6. Another linguist, Wierzbicka, created
an extreme version of componential
analysis. Wierzbicka's view is that
there exists a very restricted set of
universal semantic atoms in terms of
which all conceivable meanings can
be expressed. Her inventory of
primes is astonishingly small (she
started out with eleven, but the list
has now grown to fifty or so), and
they are not abstract, but concrete.

7. Why do we use componential analysis?
Well... We can describe meanings, meaning
relationships (like ENTAILMENT) and the
grammatical behaviour of word classes by
analyzing word meanings into meaning
components.
It reveals the culturally important features by
which speakers of the language distinguish
different words in the domain.

8. So, let’s see what it looks like by using a matrix:
Man + HUMAN + ADULT + MALE
Woman + HUMAN + ADULT - MALE
Boy +HUMAN - ADULT + MALE
Girl + HUMAN - ADULT - MALE

9. Since we can draw as well… We made a tree for you.
HUMAN
NOT ADULT
MALE
GIRL
NOT MALE
BOY
WOMAN
MAN
NOT MALE
MALE
ADULT

10. Within COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS we distinguish:
1. DIMENSIONS (HUMAN, ADULT, MALE)
2. FEATURES (+ HUMAN, + ADULT, + MALE, -
HUMAN, - ADULT, - MALE)
Complete combinations of features make up
COMPONENTIAL DEFINITIONS.

11. LET’S VISUALIZE…
BOOKS WORDS SYLLABLES
LETTERS.
SIMILAR TO THIS…
WORDS MORE BASIC WORDS
WORDS THAT SERVE AS GENERAL CATEGORIES

12. There are three types of components:
1.Common components – common to all of the
meanings in the set, thus defining the set.
2.Diagnostic components – essential
(necessary and sufficient) to distinguish the
various meanings.
3.Supplementary components – important for
an extensive definition, but not diagnostic in
specifying basic differences.
* for example, RUN may serve as a
supplementary component for SPEED.

13. PROBLEMS WITH COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS:
It sometimes forces the investigator to highlight
features that are not distinctive at all for one or
some of the items in the lexical field under
investigation, although they may be distinctive for
the rest.

14. BACHELOR:
1.A person who has received what is usually the lowest
degree of academic education.
2.An unmarried man.
3.A male animal (as a seal) without a mate during
breeding time.
Bachelor 1 +HUMAN +/-MALE +/-SINGLE
Bachelor 2 +HUMAN +MALE +/-SINGLE
Bachelor 3 -HUMAN +MALE +SINGLE

15. One of the earliest and still most persistent and
widespread ways of approaching word meaning is
to think of the meaning of a word as being
constructed out of smaller, more elementary,
invariant units of meaning.
Probably the first statement of a componential
programme for semantics within modern
linguistics was due to Hjelmslev, but it has Czech,
German, and French variants.
Componential analysis is as good as any well-
formed definition (Nida 1975 : 120)

16. Thank you
very much
for being so
interested
in
our
awesomeness.