This document provides an overview of componential analysis, an approach to analyzing word meanings by decomposing them into semantic features or components. It gives examples of how words can be analyzed into features like [+/-MALE] and [+/-ADULT]. Specifically, it shows how the meanings of words like "man", "woman", "boy", and "girl" can each be represented by a formula of three semantic features: [+HUMAN], [+/-MALE], [+/-ADULT]. Componential analysis provides a formal way to represent word meanings and reveals that words contrast in some features but not all. However, it also has limitations in that it may not apply to all lexicons and semantic features may not be universal

1. Componential Analysis
Presented by
Abdul Farooq Khan
Assigned by
Sir Asif Usmani

2. Department of English Language and Literature, Minhaj University Lahore.

3. Before modern linguistics, the meaning of a word was assumed to be unaccountable. But
semanticists have been able to show that the sense of a word can be analyzed in terms of a set
of more general sense-components (or semantic properties/features). If you consider the
meaning of the following lists of words, you can easily point out the semantic feature shared by
each group of words.
(a) Mother Woman Hen
(b) Father Man Bull
(c) Girl Boy
Words in (a) share the semantic feature FEMALE, those in (b) MALE, and those in (c) YOUNG.
This shows that word meaning is analyzable.
The approach that analyzes word meaning by decomposing it into its atomic features is
called componential analysis (CA). Looking at man,woman, boy and girl from different
perspectives, we can write the components of each of them.
(Source: Leech 1981: 87)

4. The diagram shows that the meaning of each of the four words is composed of three semantic
features: +HUMAN, +/-MALE, +/-ADULT. Another way to represent this analysis is to write a
semantic formula in which the semantic properties are represented by symbols like +ADULT, -
MALE, etc.
man: +HUMAN +ADULT +MALE
woman: +HUMAN +ADULT -MALE
boy: +HUMAN -ADULT +MALE
girl: +HUMAN -ADULT -MALE
Different from these, some words may contain more semantic properties. For example, one
sense of the word bachelor can be analyzed in terms of four semantic properties:
bachelor: +HUMAN +ADULT +MALE -MARRIED
The symbol “0” represents the neutralization of the semantic property. A son may be +ADULT
or -ADULT.
The advantages of this approach to meaning analysis are obvious. Firstly, it is a breakthrough
in the formal representation of meaning. Once formally represented, meaning components can
be seen. Secondly, it reveals the impreciseness of the terminology in the traditional approach to
meaning analysis. Looking at the semantic formula of man and womanagain you can see that it
is not true that the total meaning of one word contrasts with that of the other. It is merely in
one semantic feature that the two words contrast. When we look at the semantic formula
of manand father, we find that all the semantic features of man are included in the semantic

5. formulae of father. Then we reach a different conclusion from common sense in regard to the
relation between man and father. Is this contradictory? The answer is No. The obvious fact
that man includesfather is derived from the perspective of reference. Componential analysis
examines the components of sense. The more semantic features a word has, the narrower its
reference is.
The limitations of componential analysis are also apparent. It cannot be applied to the
analysis of all lexicons, but merely to words within the same semantic field. It is controversial
whether semantic features are universal primes of word meanings in all languages.
Nevertheless, CA is so far a most influential approach in the structural analysis of lexical
meaning