WHATS IT ALL ABOUT?

YOUR TEACHERS: MILJAN MILJANI MILENA NIKOLI MARIJA JOJI LJILJANA BRAANAC TAMARA STOJANOVI IRENA BULATOVI ANA ROENOVI ANDREA MILOEVI RADMILA RADONJI JADRANKA MATOVI

COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS is a semantic process in which a words meaning is reduced to its ultimate contrastive elements, or MINIMAL COMPONENTS.

Structural semantics and the componential analysis were patterned on the phonological methods of the Prague School, which described sounds by determining the absence and presence of features. Componential analysis gave birth to various models in generative semantics, lexical field theory, and transformational grammar.

Hjelmslev was the first structural semanticist:

the approach was developed considerably by European linguists, with a German variety and a French variety.

Another linguist, Wierzbicka, created an extreme version of componential analysis. Wierzbicka's view is that there exists a very restricted set of universal semantic atoms in terms of which all conceivable meanings can be expressed. Her inventory of primes is astonishingly small (she started out with eleven, but the list has now grown to fifty or so), and they are not abstract, but concrete.

Why do we use componential analysis? Well... We can describe meanings, meaning relationships (like ENTAILMENT) and the grammatical behaviour of word classes by analyzing word meanings into meaning components. It reveals the culturally important features by which speakers of the language distinguish different words in the domain.

So, lets see what it looks like by using a matrix:

Man Woman

+ HUMAN + ADULT + HUMAN + ADULT

+ MALE - MALE

Boy
Girl

+HUMAN - ADULT
+ HUMAN - ADULT

+ MALE
- MALE

Since we can draw as well We made a tree for you.

HUMAN ADULT NOT ADULT

MALE

NOT MALE

MALE

NOT MALE

MAN

WOMAN

BOY

GIRL

Within COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS we distinguish:

1. DIMENSIONS (HUMAN, ADULT, MALE) 2. FEATURES (+ HUMAN, + ADULT, + MALE, HUMAN, - ADULT, - MALE)

Complete combinations of features make up COMPONENTIAL DEFINITIONS.

LETS VISUALIZE

BOOKS

WORDS

SYLLABLES

LETTERS. SIMILAR TO THIS WORDS MORE BASIC WORDS WORDS THAT SERVE AS GENERAL CATEGORIES

There are three types of components: 1.Common components common to all of the meanings in the set, thus defining the set. 2.Diagnostic components essential (necessary and sufficient) to distinguish the various meanings. 3.Supplementary components important for an extensive definition, but not diagnostic in specifying basic differences. * for example, RUN may serve as a supplementary component for SPEED.

PROBLEMS WITH COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS: It sometimes forces the investigator to highlight features that are not distinctive at all for one or some of the items in the lexical field under investigation, although they may be distinctive for the rest.

BACHELOR: 1.A person who has received what is usually the lowest degree of academic education. 2.An unmarried man. 3.A male animal (as a seal) without a mate during breeding time.

Bachelor 1

+HUMAN

+/-MALE +MALE +MALE

+/-SINGLE +/-SINGLE +SINGLE

Bachelor 2 +HUMAN Bachelor 3 -HUMAN

One of the earliest and still most persistent and widespread ways of approaching word meaning is to think of the meaning of a word as being constructed out of smaller, more elementary, invariant units of meaning. Probably the first statement of a componential programme for semantics within modern linguistics was due to Hjelmslev, but it has Czech, German, and French variants. Componential analysis is as good as any wellformed definition (Nida 1975 : 120)

Thank you very much for being so interested in our awesomeness.