词汇学-Chapter-5-Word-Meaning-and-Componential-Analys_原创精品文档.pptVIP

1.3.1 Componential Analysis The word man, for instance, has the following semantic features: [Human], [Adult] and [Male]. This kind of analysis is known as componential analysis (语义成分分析法), which refers to the process of breaking down the sense of a word into its minimal components. human man woman adult boy girl young male female man [ +MALE, +ADULT, +HUMAN] woman [ -MALE, +ADULT, +HUMAN] boy [ +MALE, -ADULT, +HUMAN] girl [ - MALE, -ADULT, +HUMAN] Exercise on page 121 14. Try to analyze the following words in terms of semantic opposition. [+HUMAN] [+MALE] [+ADULT] [+BOVINE] [+GALLINE] bull cow calf rooster hen chicken 2. The advantages and disadvantages of componential analysis. Advantages of the componential analysis 1.Useful in characterizing meaning relations such as synonymy, polysemy, antonymy, and hyponymy 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 having connotative meaning , the other evoking no association. 2.Helpful in choosing the right word or collocation. Some verbs require a human subject while some do not . For example, verbs of perception and cognition take a human subject as in “John forgave your rudeness”, but a tree or door cannot forgive unless used metaphorically. Verbs like elapse take a class of nouns referring to time as its subject, so one can say “A month / an hour elapsed”, but not “* A bicycle / a person elapsed”. Dynamic adjectives like ambitious or conscious modify a human or animate noun. Some adjectives like latent (as in “the infection is latent” or “latent infection”) and overt (as in “the hostility is overt” or “overt hostility”) modify abstract nouns; and adjectives of color usually modify concrete objects. Disadvantage 1.Hard for us to find a set of features that capture what is common in meaning across lex