REVIEW WEB BRANCH OF SEMANTIC

REVIEW WEB ABOUT BRANCH OF SEMANTIC

Classifications of Semantic Field

1.      The naturalist view, held by Plato and his followers, maintained that there was an intrinsic motivation between a word and its meaning.  The meaning of a word flows directly from its sound.  The Greek word thalassa, sea, in its classical pronunciation, supposedly sounded like the waves rushing up onto the beach.  If the naturalist view were entirely correct for all words, we would be able to tell the meaning of any word just by hearing it.  In reality only a few onomotopoeic words in each language actually sound something like what they mean:swoosh, splash, bow wow, meow.

2.      The conventionalist view of Aristotle and his followers holds that the connection between sound and meaning is completely arbitrary, a matter of social convention and prior agreement between speakers.  It is true that the form of most words is arbitrary from an extra-linguistic point of view. This position is much nearer the truth.

3.      Philologists (this is a broader term for people who study language as well as anything created with language) often make a distinction between meaning and concept.  Concept is the totality of real world knowledge about an item, while meaning is a category of language.  It is possible to know the meaning of the word without knowing everything about the concept referred to by that meaning.  For example, one can know the meaning of a word like diamond without knowing the chemical composition of the stone or that carbon and pencil lead are, chemically speaking, composed of the same substance.  In other words, one can know the word diamond means a type of gemstone without understanding the full concept associated with that gemstone in the real world.

This study follows this classification :

a.       Synonyms are words with similar meanings. They are listed in a special type of dictionary called a thesaurus. A regular dictionary lists words according to form, usually in alphabetical order; a thesaurus lists words  according to meaning. Synonyms usually differ in at least one semantic feature.

·         Sometimes the feature is objective (denotative), referring to some actual, real world difference in the referents: walk, lumber, stroll, meander, lurch, stagger, stride, mince.

·         Sometimes the feature is subjective (connotative), referring to how the speaker feels about the referent rather than any real difference in the referent itself: die, pass away, give up the ghost, kick the bucket, croak. There tend to be very few absolute synonyms in a language. Example: sofa and couch are nearly complete synonyms, yet they differ in their collocability in at least one way: one may say couch potato, but not *sofa potato.

·         One type of synonym is called a paronym. Paronyms are words with associated meanings which also have great similarities in form proscribe/prescribe, industrial/industrious, except/accept, affect/effect. Many errors in speech and writing are due to mixups involving paronyms.

b.      Antonyms are words that have the opposite meaning. Oppositeness is a logical category. There are three types:

·         Complementary pairs are antonyms in which the presence of one quality or state signifies the absence of the other and vice versa.  single/married, not pregnant/pregnant. There are no intermediate states.

·         Gradable pairs are antonyms which allow for a gradual transition between two poles, the possibility of making a comparison a little/a lot, good/bad, hot/cold cf. the complementary pair: pregnant/not pregnant.

·         Relational opposites are antonyms which share the same semantic features, only the focus, or direction, is reversed: tie/untie, buy/sell, give/receive, teacher/pupil, father/son.

c.             Homonyms are words that have the same form but different meanings.  There are two major types of homonyms, based upon whether the meanings of the word are historically connected or result from coincidence.

·         Coincidental homonyms are the result of such historical accidents as phonetic convergence of two formerly different forms or the borrowing of a new word which happens to be identical to an old word.  There is usually no natural link between the two meanings: the bill of a bird vs the bill one has to pay; or the bark of a dog vs the bark of a tree.

·         Polysemous homonyms, results when multiple meanings develop historically from the same word.  The process by which a word acquires new meanings is called polysemy.  Unlike coincidental homonyms, polysemous homonyms usually preserve some perceptible semantic link marking the development of one meaning out of the other, as in the leg  of chair and the leg of person; or the face  of a person vs. the face of a clock.

d.      Metonymy, use of word to mean something existing in close physical proximity: Saying London to mean the people who govern England. Also: TheWhite House said meaning The president said.

e.       A simile is a direct comparison using like or as: Examples: quiet as a mouse, as mad as a hatter. New similes can be created, but each language has its own particular store of accepted similes that function as collocations. English: healthy as a horse, quiet as a mouse. Other languages have their own stock of well-established similes: Russian: healthy as an ox, Mongol: quiet as a fish.

f.       A metaphor is an implied comparison using a word to mean something similar to its literal meaning. A contradiction arises between the literal meaning and the referent. Metaphors can be fresh and creative or hackneyed (the eye of night for moon). Metaphors that cease to tickle listeners with their creativity are called dead metaphors: they simply become secondary meanings of words, polysemous homonyms. We don't even sense the original creativity that went into the first usages of such historical metaphors as: leg, handle. Most compliments or insults contain metaphors: calling someone a pig, a worm, a big ox or a monster; or an angel.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the paper only covers six major semantic relations, synonym, antonym, homonym, metonymy, a simile and a metaphor . As for other semantic relations like polysemy, taxonymy, partonymy, they do play vital roles in semantic field study as well as in vocabulary learning and teaching.