The review of Semantic field, Semantic relation and Semantic components.

I’m going to share about an article that I have reviewed, the title of this article is semantic field, semantic relation and semantic components.

The author of this article is Benedict Ukpabi from (Academia.edu) 

at http://www.academia.edu/12865362/Semantic_Field_Semantic_Relation_and_Semantic_Component  

This article has 17 (seventeen) pages.

The background of this article :

Semantic is one of branches of linguistics that study of meaning. It is a wide subject within the general study of language. The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased.

This paper discussed semantic field, and semantic relation They are vital areas of consideration in the study of semantics.

In the content the author explain that :

1.    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.

Beside that, there is a term of 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.

There are lexical groups or components that made up semantic field also used for semantic field analysis. They are as follows:

1.    Meronym :  is a word that denotes a constituent part or a member of something.

•  Example : apple is a meronym of 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. 

• Example : Apple tree is a holonym of apple; hand is a holonym of finger while body is a holonym of others parts of the body like the hand, legs, ear, head, etc.

2.    Sememe : is the smallest unit of semantics, responsible for transmitting meaning in all natural languages. Sememes are a basic component of language that "can be used independently" and "expressed by specific linguistic form."

•  Example :  the sememe ‘move’ means ‘to move’, but also conveys meanings for ‘roll’, ‘jump’, or ‘turn’ in an abstract sense.

2.    SEMANTIC RELATIONS

Semantic relations or meaning relations are words that are semantically related to other words. Modern studies of semantics are interested in meaning primarily in terms of word and sentence relationships. Semantic relations are considered in terms of the following relations:

1.    Synonymy : Akwanya (1996) in Umera-Okeke (2008 p. 47) defined synonyms as “different phonological words having similar meanings”. Beside  Palmer (1996) also in Umera-Okeke opined that “synonymy is used to mean sameness of meaning”.

Example : slender/thin/skinny, Beautiful/attractive/pretty/lovely/stunning

2.    Antonym :  is a word that is the opposite meaning of another. There are 3 categories of antonyms, among others :

•  Graded antonyms deal with levels of the meaning of the words, like if something is not “good”, it may still not be “bad.”

Examples are :

1)    Fat and skinny

2)    Young and old

3)    Happy and sad

4)    Hard and soft

•    Complementary antonyms have a relationship where there is no middle ground. There are only two possibilities, either one or the other.

Examples are :

1)    Man and woman

2)    Push and pull

3)    Dead and alive

4)    Day and night

• Relational antonyms are sometimes considered a subcategory of complementary antonyms. With these pairs, for there to be a relationship, both must exist.

Examples are:

1)    Husband and wife

2)    Doctor and patient

3)    Buy and sell

4)    Servant and master

3. Polysemy is a meaning relation whereby a single lexical item has several (apparaently) related meanings. That is the several meanings of  a polysemous word must belong to a common semantic field.

            Examples :

•         Head: (1) leader of a group , (2) Part of body, (3) Part of furniture, (4) Part of a coin
• ·      Foot:   (1) as part of the body, (2) as part of a mountain, (3) as part of a bridge, (4) as part of a bed.

4.    Hyponymy is the more specific concept and the more general concept is known as the hypernym.

      Examples are : Manggo- fruit ; Car- vehicles ; table- furniture ; Hen - animal.

·         The verb ‘colour’ has many hyponyms

 Word: colour (hypernym)

 Hyponyms: blue, red, yellow, green, white, black, purple and pink.

·         The verb ‘cook’ has many hyponyms.

Word: Cook (hypernym)

Hyponyms: Roast (Memanggang), boil (merebus), fry (menggoreng), grill (memanggang), bake (membakar).

3.    SEMANTIC COMPONENT

1.    Semantic components is a potentially contrastive part of the meaning of a lexical unit.

2.    Kinds of semantic components:

·        Contrastive, also known as: diagnostic, distinctive, essential is distinguishing one lexical unit from another.

Example : “Male” is the contrastive semantic component distinguishing man from woman, and boy from girl

·         Shared, also known as common is Occuring in each member of a group of lexical units.

Example :

1)    “Human” is a shared component for man, woman, boy, and girl.

2)    ‘Animal’ is a shared component for goat, cow, dog, cat.

3)    ‘Female’ is a shared component for woman, girl.

So, in the conclution:

Semantic is one of branches of linguistics that study of meaning. The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased.

I got the points that this paper discusses semantic field includes : Meronym and Sememe. Beside that Semantic relations are considered in terms of the following relation such as; Synonymy,  Antonym, Hyponymy and Polysemy. In addition Semantic components is  a potentially contrastive part of the meaning of a lexical unit. The kinds of semantic components are Contrastive which distinguishes one lexical unit from another and Shared which Occur in each member of a group of lexical units. So we can show the similarities and differences of meaning between one word to another word.

The weakness :

Semantic components of lexical items create room for ambiguity of meaning. Finding a specific meaning of a lexeme becomes difficult except on pragmatic ground where context of usage could help to deduce the meaning of a lexeme beside that I am still confused in distinguishing between the hyponym and hypernym.

Thank you for reading my blog.