Semantic feature
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A semantic feature is a notational method which can be used to express the existence or non-existence of semantic properties by using plus and minus signs.
- Man is [+HUMAN], [+MALE], [+ADULT]
- Woman is [+HUMAN], [-MALE], [+ADULT]
- Boy is [+HUMAN], [+MALE], [-ADULT]
- Girl is [+HUMAN], [-MALE], [-ADULT]
Intersecting semantic classes share the same features.
Some features need not be specifically mentioned as their presence or absence is obvious from another feature. This is a redundancy rule.
On Semantic Features
Contents |
Introduction
Chomsky realized the importance of meaning when he started transformational-generative grammar in1957. But the problem is that Chomsky himself was “unable” to give it a suitable place in linguistics. ‘Only within the past fifteen years has the study of meaning been approached head-on in modern linguistics’ (Crane, Yeager, & Whitman, 1981). Perhaps the structuralists’ rigid view of science is the reason beyond this “ignoring”. They studied language without reference to meaning. This approach to study meaning is called semantics, and it is defined as the study of meaning.
Semantics is a subfield of linguistics and it is more concerned with the meaning. The word semantics came from Greek sematikos, the “significant meaning” which is derived from sema, semeion the “sign, mark”. In Syntax for example, the focus is more on the structure rather than on the words or their meaning, which shows why the structuralists did ignore meaning. The famous sentence provided by Noam Chomsky (1957) “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is an example of a sentence that is syntactically correct and semantically wrong or odd.
So in linguistics, semantics may be defined as ‘the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world i.e. how words literary connect to things’ (Yule 1995). ‘Semantics is not only concerned with meaning and change in meaning, but also with the manipulation of meaning’ (West 1975). It also deals with the semantic roles, lexical relations (synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy…etc.), sense, reference, and truth conditions. Semantic features are the main subject of the present paper.
Historical Review
The first attempt to incorporate a semantic component within a transformational-generative grammar was in 1963 by Katz and Fodor with the publication of “The Structure of a Semantic Theory”. ‘The ideas offered by Katz and Fodor were called interpretive semantics’ (Crane, Yeager, & Whitman, 1981). Fodor and Katz had divided the set of basic semantics elements into two types of element, ‘called semantic markers and distinguishers’. They proposed that a semantic component has two parts: a dictionary and a set of projection rules. Katz has defended this distinction (1967) which Bierwisch (1969) has rejected since it was ‘an out come of an early stage in the development of a semantic theory and must be rejected as theoretically unmotivated’.
The notion of the semantic feature is first associated with the name of Uriel Wenireich (1966), who proposed a useful distinction between a paradigmatic semantic feature ‘(approximately as in componential analysis, (Bendix 1965)’ and a transfer feature. Of course this distinction made it easier to use the semantic feature in broader sense than in transformational-generative grammar. According to Wenireich, the semantic feature serves different purposes:
- It is regarded as the basis of semantic agreement, e.g. the man ate the hamburger vs. the hamburger ate the man.
- It explains metaphorical readings.
- It adds provisional semantic contents to a potentially ambiguous word.
What does a semantic feature mean?
A semantic feature is a notational method in which you mark a component i.e. a word with + or – feature such as the word man. Man is +animate, +human, +male, and +adult. This procedure of analyzing meaning is called semantic feature analysis, i.e. in terms of features such as +animate, -animate…etc. It attempts to establish the differences and relationships between words. Also, it helps to explore and find out how a set of words or things are related to one another. The semantic feature is also known as the semantic component.
It is good to notice that the semantic features ‘are not to be considered real English words but abstract concepts given in a metalanguage, which is a precisely defined language used in an exact discussion of another language’ (Crane, Yeager, & Whitman, P.139, 1981). Languages that are used to program computers for example, such as “FORTRAN” and “COBOL” are called metalanguage. Therefore no language, including English, may be ‘used as a metalanguage to describe itself’.
Feature analysis
An important part of the meaning of a word can be expressed in terms of semantic features. In fact the term feature analysis ‘got its most recent impetus from anthropologists, who have used it to describe kinship’ (Bolinger, 1968). So, if we want to describe the words woman and girl for example we use the following features:
Woman is: + animate, + human, - male, + adult
Girl is: + animate, + human, - male, - adult
It is good to notice that intersecting semantic classes share the same features. Of course not all words need to be exemplified through using this method because it is difficult to do so and we will need as much features as words in a language. Now we need to know what the types of semantic features are.
Types of semantic features
There are 'four types (Kuhli, 2002) of semantic features':
- Plus feature and it is marked by the + sign. For example, man is + animate, + human, + male, + adult; these signs indicate that the word man has all these features.
- Minus feature and it is marked by the – sign. For example, woman is – male, - young; these signs indicate the lack of such features or their absence.
- The plus-minus feature and it is marked by the ± sign. For example, teacher is ± masculine; because it can be a male or female.
- Zero feature and it marked by the Ø sign. For example, book is Ø masculine, because it can not be + masculine nor – masculine.
Basic semantic feature analysis
Semantic features are divided into two parts, distinctive features and non distinctive features. If we take the word cow for example, its color is not a basic distinctive feature. The cow might be black, red, or white, but still it is cow. Another example is the words boy and girl. The color of his/her skin, eyes, or hair is not considered to be basic features, they are called secondary features because, both the boy and girl can have the same color.
Benefits and problems
The importance of semantic feature analysis
It is very obvious that semantic features has such importance. They attempt to characterize nouns, adjectives such as man in terms of basic semantic concepts. They are also used to define such relations as ambiguity, synonymy, antonymy, as well as other relations. ‘An obvious advantage of this approach is that it allows us to group entities into natural classes. Hence, man and boy could be grouped together as [+Human, +Male] while man and woman could be put in a class defined by the features [+Human, +Adult]’ (O’grady, Dobrovolsky, & Katamba, P.274, 1987). The following points summarize the whole thing:
- Features are important components to many theories of semantics.
- They are used to explain many findings including basic level naming, typicality effects, context effects, and category structure.
- Concepts are represented by sets of features.
- They are most useful for uncovering and representing similarities among semantically related words.
Shortcomings
Of course semantic feature analysis has shortcomings or problems. The first one is the semantic redundancy rules. If we take for example the features [+ Human] and [+ animate], this rule indicates that anything that is + human must be + animate. Also, another thing that can be count is that culture plays an important role in defining what words mean, it is what the ‘culture packs’ is considered to be true for a word not what a feature determines (Bolinger 1968); that is culture does effect our understanding for some words. We can summaries the problems in the following points:
- Many words lack analysis. As in the words ram and bull, they both [- human], [+ male], and [+ adult]; so what distinguish them?
What features would distinguish “cup” and “mug”? What features would distinguish “chair, sofa, and bench”?
- Some words have fuzzy concepts i.e. they do not have clear-cut boundaries. The word rich for example is a fuzzy word, you can say for example some people qualify to be rich and others do not. But what about the other riches how would you define their ‘richness’
- Some words are not good example of a group. That is many categories have internal structures. For example the word bird is not equal to other examples of birds like ostrich, and penguin.
Summary and conclusion
As we have seen that the method outlined above is not without problems, yet it is very important and useful. Meaning is not an easy thing to get, it is more likely to be abstract; nor can pictures neither features describe it. It is more than a feature. Semanticists now are working in new approaches to avoid such problems outlined above. However, they face a serious problem in doing so.
The aim of this paper is to outline, and discuss what does the semantic feature mean, and what are the attractions and problems may occur within such approach in analyzing words or concepts. Understanding these problems and questions may help semanticists to develop new approaches in analyzing meaning and avoid them.
References
- Bendix, E. H. (1966). Componential analysis of general vocabulary. Mouton.
- Bierwisch, M. (1969). On certain problems of semantic representation. Foundations of Language, 5, 153-84.
- Bierwisch, M. & Heidolph, K. E. (Eds). (1970). Progress in linguistics, a collection of papers. Mouton.
- Bolinger, D. (1975). Aspects of language. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. (First published in 1968).
- Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. Mouton.
- Crane, L. B., Yeager, E., & Whitman, R. L. (Eds.). (1981). An introduction to linguistics. Little, Brown and Company.
- Katz, J. J. (1967). Recent issues in semantic theory. Foundations of Language, 3, 124-94
- Katz, J. J. & Fodor J. A. (1963). The structure of a semantic theory. Language, 39, 170-210
- Kuhli, M. A. (2002). An introduction to semantics. Dar AlFalah.
- O’grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M. & Katamba, F. (1987). Contemporary linguistics, an introduction. Longman.
- Wenireich, U. (1966). Exploration in semantic theory. In T. A. Sebeok(Ed). Current trends in linguistics, III, 395-477. The Hague; Mouton.
- West, F. (1975). The way of language. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
- Yule, G. (1995). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
- Yule, G. (1996). The study of language. Cambridge University Press. (Original Work published 1985).