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Unit 31: Semantic: Meaning Types: Lexical, Contextual and Others Semantics Practice

etymologist has to be steeped in social history and history of ideas, as well as in the literature of Notes
the period under consideration.
Componential Analysis Approach

Componential analysis approach underlies the linguistic theories developed by Katz and Fodor,
Weinreich, Beirwisch and others. It is a technique for the economical statement of certain semantic
relations between lexical items and between sentences containing them. It is an attempt to describe
the structure of vocabulary in terms of a relatively small set of very general elements of meaning
called ‘components’, ‘markers’, or ‘sememes’, and their various possible combinations in different
languages. It tries to discover the ultimate meaning units out of which a particular set of words
appears to be composed in some systematic way. Some segments of vocabulary can be better
analysed by this method, for example, kinship systems, pronoun systems, colour terms, and
sometimes words for discussing various kinds of flora and fauna. Through componential analysis,
we can find out how speakers use the vocabulary of a language in order to classify reality by
referring to certain parameters of meaning and can establish how parameters such as sex,
sanguineness, and generation are used to provide componential meaning.
The term ‘componential analysis’ in semantics is best explained by means of a simple example by
linguists :
1. man woman child
2. bull cow calf
3. ram ewe lamb
4. drake duck duckling
When we consider these sets of English words we can, on the basis of our intuitive appreciation of
the sense of these words, set up such proportional equations as the following
“man : woman : child :: bull : cow : calf”
This equation bears proof to the fact that, from the semantic point of view, the words man, woman
and child, on the one hand, and bull, cow and calf, on the other have something in common.
What man and bull have in common is not shared by woman and cow, and what calf and child
have in common is not shared by either bull and man or cow and woman. What these different
groups of words have in common is called a semantic component (other terms used for it are
‘plereme’, ‘sememe’, ‘semantic marker’, ‘semantic category’). Thus the sense of man, according to
componential analysis is the product of the component (male), (adult), (human); that the sense of
cow is the product of (female), (adult) and (equine); and so on.
In order to understand the meaning of a sentence and its semantic relations to other expressions,
one must know not only the meaning of its lexical elements, but also how they interrelate. Besides
commonness of components, the elements of the vocabulary are connected to each other by other
relations such as ‘pertinence relation’, ‘selection restrictions’.
Basic assumptions of componential theories of semantics : The assumption upon which current
componential theories of semantics are based or with which they are frequently associated, the
first is the assumption that the semantic components are ‘language-independent, or universal’.
The semantic components may be combined in various ways in different languages, yet they
would be identifiable as the ‘same’ components in the analysis of the vocabularies of all languages.
As Katz says :
“Semantic markers (i.e. semantic components) must..........be thought of as theoretical constructs
introduced into semantic theory to designate language invariant but language linked components
of a conceptual system that is part of the cognitive structure of the human mind”.
In matters of kinship, colour, artifacts, artifices, needs and functions of physical qualities, semantic
components may be universal, but they are not universal in many other areas.
The second assumption is that propositional equations with respect to the sense of lexical items
should be established. These propositions are cognitively valid, and can be set up on the basis of

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