Semantic field

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In linguistics, a semantic field is a lexical set of words grouped semantically (by meaning) that refers to a specific subject. [1] [2] The term is also used in anthropology, [3] computational semiotics, [4] and technical exegesis. [5]

Contents

Definition and usage

Brinton (2000: p. 112) defines "semantic field" or "semantic domain" and relates the linguistic concept to hyponymy:

Related to the concept of hyponymy, but more loosely defined, is the notion of a semantic field or domain. A semantic field denotes a segment of reality symbolized by a set of related words. The words in a semantic field share a common semantic property. [6]

A general and intuitive description is that words in a semantic field are not necessarily synonymous, but are all used to talk about the same general phenomenon. [7] Synonymy requires the sharing of a sememe or seme, but the semantic field is a larger area surrounding those. A meaning of a word is dependent partly on its relation to other words in the same conceptual area. [8] The kinds of semantic fields vary from culture to culture and anthropologists use them to study belief systems and reasoning across cultural groups. [7]

Andersen (1990: p.327) identifies the traditional usage of "semantic field" theory as:

Traditionally, semantic fields have been used for comparing the lexical structure of different languages and different states of the same language. [9]

History

The origin of the field theory of semantics is the lexical field theory introduced by Jost Trier in the 1930s, [10] : 31  although according to John Lyons it has historical roots in the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Johann Gottfried Herder. [1] In the 1960s Stephen Ullmann saw semantic fields as crystallising and perpetuating the values of society. [10] : 32  For John Lyons in the 1970s words related in any sense belonged to the same semantic field, [10] : 32  and the semantic field was simply a lexical category, which he described as a lexical field. [10] : 31  Lyons emphasised the distinction between semantic fields and semantic networks. [10] : 31  In the 1980s Eva Kittay developed a semantic field theory of metaphor. This approach is based on the idea that the items in a semantic field have specific relations to other items in the same field, and that a metaphor works by re-ordering the relations of a field by mapping them on to the existing relations of another field. [11] Sue Atkins and Charles J. Fillmore in the 1990s proposed frame semantics as an alternative to semantic field theory. [12]

Semantic shifts

The semantic field of a given word shifts over time. The English word "man" used to mean "human being" exclusively, while today it predominantly means "adult male," but its semantic field still extends in some uses to the generic "human" (see Mannaz).

Overlapping semantic fields are problematic, especially in translation. Words that have multiple meanings (called polysemous words) are often untranslatable, especially with all their connotations. Such words are frequently loaned instead of translated. Examples include "chivalry" (literally "horsemanship", related to "cavalry"), "dharma" (literally, "support"), and "taboo".

Anthropological discourse

Semantic field theory has informed the discourse of Anthropology as Ingold (1996: p. 127) relates:

Semiology is not, of course, the same as semantics. Semiology is based on the idea that signs have meaning in relation to each other, such that a whole society is made up of relationally held meanings. But semantic fields do not stand in relations of opposition to each other, nor do they derive their distinctiveness in this way, nor indeed are they securely bounded at all. Rather, semantic fields are constantly flowing into each other. I may define a field of religion, but it soon becomes that of ethnic identity and then of politics and selfhood, and so on. In the very act of specifying semantic fields, people engage in an act of closure whereby they become conscious of what they have excluded and what they must therefore include. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:

Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller elements known as phonemes, or distinguishing sounds. Lexicology examines every feature of a word – including formation, spelling, origin, usage, and definition.

Semantics is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and computer science.

Semiotics is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional, such as a word uttered with a specific meaning; or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings and may communicate internally or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge.

Semantic properties or meaning properties are those aspects of a linguistic unit, such as a morpheme, word, or sentence, that contribute to the meaning of that unit. Basic semantic properties include being meaningful or meaningless – for example, whether a given word is part of a language's lexicon with a generally understood meaning; polysemy, having multiple, typically related, meanings; ambiguity, having meanings which aren't necessarily related; and anomaly, where the elements of a unit are semantically incompatible with each other, although possibly grammatically sound. Beyond the expression itself, there are higher-level semantic relations that describe the relationship between units: these include synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy.

A semantic feature is a component of the concept associated with a lexical item. More generally, it can also be a component of the concept associated with any grammatical unit, whether composed or not. An individual semantic feature constitutes one component of a word's intention, which is the inherent sense or concept evoked. Linguistic meaning of a word is proposed to arise from contrasts and significant differences with other words. Semantic features enable linguistics to explain how words that share certain features may be members of the same semantic domain. Correspondingly, the contrast in meanings of words is explained by diverging semantic features. For example, father and son share the common components of "human", "kinship", "male" and are thus part of a semantic domain of male family relations. They differ in terms of "generation" and "adulthood", which is what gives each its individual meaning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyponymy and hypernymy</span> Semantic relations involving the type-of property

Hyponymy and hypernymy are semantic relations between a term belonging in a set that is defined by another term and the latter. In other words, the relationship of a subtype (hyponym) and the supertype. The semantic field of the hyponym is included within that of the hypernym. For example, pigeon, crow, and eagle are all hyponyms of bird, their hypernym.

Lexical semantics, as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings. It includes the study of how words structure their meaning, how they act in grammar and compositionality, and the relationships between the distinct senses and uses of a word.

In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For instance, the word "warm" may evoke calmness or cosiness, but these associations are not part of the word's denotation. Similarly, an expression's denotation is separate from pragmatic inferences it may trigger. For instance, describing something as "warm" often implicates that it is not hot, but this is once again not part of the word's denotation.

In programming language theory, semantics is the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages. Semantics assigns computational meaning to valid strings in a programming language syntax.

Computational semiotics is an interdisciplinary field that applies, conducts, and draws on research in logic, mathematics, the theory and practice of computation, formal and natural language studies, the cognitive sciences generally, and semiotics proper. The term encompasses both the application of semiotics to computer hardware and software design and, conversely, the use of computation for performing semiotic analysis. The former focuses on what semiotics can bring to computation; the latter on what computation can bring to semiotics.

Conceptual semantics is a framework for semantic analysis developed mainly by Ray Jackendoff in 1976. Its aim is to provide a characterization of the conceptual elements by which a person understands words and sentences, and thus to provide an explanatory semantic representation. Explanatory in this sense refers to the ability of a given linguistic theory to describe how a component of language is acquired by a child.

Cognitive semantics is part of the cognitive linguistics movement. Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. Cognitive semantics holds that language is part of a more general human cognitive ability, and can therefore only describe the world as people conceive of it. It is implicit that different linguistic communities conceive of simple things and processes in the world differently, not necessarily some difference between a person's conceptual world and the real world.

Semantic change is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. In diachronic linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations, which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very different meanings. The study of semantic change can be seen as part of etymology, onomasiology, semasiology, and semantics.

In linguistics, semantic analysis is the process of relating syntactic structures, from the levels of phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to the level of the writing as a whole, to their language-independent meanings. It also involves removing features specific to particular linguistic and cultural contexts, to the extent that such a project is possible. The elements of idiom and figurative speech, being cultural, are often also converted into relatively invariant meanings in semantic analysis. Semantics, although related to pragmatics, is distinct in that the former deals with word or sentence choice in any given context, while pragmatics considers the unique or particular meaning derived from context or tone. To reiterate in different terms, semantics is about universally coded meaning, and pragmatics, the meaning encoded in words that is then interpreted by an audience.

Structural semantics is a linguistic school and paradigm that emerged in Europe from the 1930s, inspired by the structuralist linguistic movement started by Ferdinand de Saussure's 1916 work "Cours De Linguistique Generale".

Lexical field theory, or word-field theory, was introduced on March 12, 1931 by the German linguist Jost Trier. He argued that words acquired their meaning through their relationships to other words within the same word-field. An extension of the sense of one word narrows the meaning of neighboring words, with the words in a field fitting neatly together like a mosaic. If a single word undergoes a semantic change, then the whole structure of the lexical field changes. The lexical field is often used in English to describe terms further with use of different words.

Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within the system. It is derived from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism. Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining language as a dynamic system of interconnected units. Saussure is also known for introducing several basic dimensions of semiotic analysis that are still important today. Two of these are his key methods of syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis, which define units syntactically and lexically, respectively, according to their contrast with the other units in the system.

Ronald K. (Ron) Stamper is a British computer scientist, formerly a researcher in the LSE and emeritus professor at the University of Twente, known for his pioneering work in Organisational semiotics, and the creation of the MEASUR methodology and the SEDITA framework.

Pamela Faber Benítez is an American/Spanish linguist. She has held the Chair of Translation and Interpreting at the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Granada since 2001.

References

  1. 1 2 Howard Jackson, Etienne Zé Amvela, Words, Meaning, and Vocabulary, Continuum, 2000, p14. ISBN   0-8264-6096-8
  2. ↑ Pamela B. Faber, Ricardo Mairal Usón, Constructing a Lexicon of English Verbs, Walter de Gruyter, 1999, p67. ISBN   3-11-016416-7
  3. 1 2 Ingold, Tim (1996). Key debates in anthropology. Routledge. ISBN   0-415-15020-5, ISBN   978-0-415-15020-0. Source: (accessed: Sunday May 2, 2010), p.127
  4. ↑ Andersen, Peter Bøgh (1990). A theory of computer semiotics: semiotic approaches to construction and assessment of computer systems. Volume 3 of Cambridge series on human-computer interaction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   0-521-39336-1, ISBN   978-0-521-39336-2. Source: (accessed: Sunday May 2, 2010), p.327
  5. ↑ DA Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, section "Expansion of an Expanded Semantic Field"
  6. ↑ Brinton, Laurel J. (2000). The structure of modern English: a linguistic introduction. Illustrated edition. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN   9789027225672. Source: (accessed: Sunday May 2, 2010), p.112
  7. 1 2 Adrian Akmajian, Richard A. Demers, Ann K. Farmer, Robert M. Harnish, Linguistics, MIT Press, 2001, p239. ISBN   0-262-51123-1
  8. ↑ Jaakko Hintikka, Aspects of Metaphor, Springer, 1994, p41. ISBN   0-7923-2786-1
  9. ↑ Andersen, Peter Bøgh (1990). A theory of computer semiotics: semiotic approaches to construction and assessment of computer systems. Volume 3 of Cambridge series on human-computer interaction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   0-521-39336-1, ISBN   978-0-521-39336-2. Source: (accessed: Sunday May 2, 2010), p.327
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 David Corson, Using English Words, Springer, 1995. ISBN   0-7923-3711-5
  11. ↑ Josef Judah Stern, Metaphor in Context, MIT Press, 2000, p242. ISBN   0-262-19439-2
  12. ↑ Pamela B. Faber, Ricardo Mairal Usón, Constructing a Lexicon of English Verbs, Walter de Gruyter, 1999, p73. ISBN   3-11-016416-7
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