Semantics is the branch of linguistics which focusses on the study of meaning. All nouns can be analyzed with semantic features. The features +/-- animate, +/-- human, +/-- , +/-- adult and +/--male can be used to differentiate the meaning of words.
The following diagram uses basic features to distinguish the meanings of six English words:
book horse girl woman boy man
animate -- -- + + + +
human -- -- + + + +
male -- -- -- -- + +
adult -- -- -- + -- +
The diagram illustrates the properties of six nouns. It does so with four basic features. The number of features can be increased to make more precises distinctions in the meaning of nouns.
No comments:
Post a Comment