-ump suggests something round: plump（丰满的）, chump厚肉块）, hump（驼峰）,
rump（屁股）, dump, mumps, stump（腿，树桩）.
2) Morphological/Grammatical motivation (p.146)
Derivational and compound words may be morphologically motivated.(reader,
day-dreamer)
3). Semantic motivation
Many figures of speech/rhetorical devices involve semantic motivation. (We’ll deal
with this later.)
She has a stony heart.( metaphor) Her favorite dish is fish.( metonymy)
He manages to earn his bread. (synecdoche)
II．Main Types of word meaning
1. Grammatical meaning (p.147)
1) Word-class
2) Inflectional paradigm
2. Lexical meaning word-to-world relationship
1) denotative meaning (p.150): also called conceptual/cognitive meaning.
2)connotative meaning (p.151): the supplementary value to the denotative meaning. e.g. woman: its denotative meaning is ―female adult human being‖, but its connotative meanings may have ―frail, prone to tears, emotional, inconstant, gentle, compassionate, hardworking, etc.‖
Another example: Tom is a pig.
3)stylistic meaning (p.153): One should adjust his language so as to make it appropriate in various situations in terms of the four aspects (the social relationship; the occasion; the subject matter; the mode of discourse: p.153), thus, there are five forms of styles (p.154): oratorical, deliberate, consultative, casual and intimate. These five styles can be simplified to three types: formal—neutral—informal. E.g.
a. horse (neutral), steed (poetic), nag (slang), gee-gee (childish) charger
b. home (neutral), residence (formal), domicile (officially formal), abode
(poetic)
c. small (neutral), diminutive (formal), tiny (colloquial), wee (dialectal,
Scotch)
4) affective meaning (p.154): showing the speaker’s feelings and attitudes, using some interjections. Bias words include Purr words (appreciatory: shortened as apprec.) and Snarl words (derogatory: shortened as derog.). (p.155) e.g.
Jane is an angel of a girl. That fellow is an ass.
Another example, see p.156
5) reflected meaning: When we hear or read a word, we may at once think of or reflect some other things.
a. Some polysemic words have some kind of ―bad‖ reflected meaning, and they
have become ―taboo words‖(禁忌词). Thus, people try to avoid using these words: e.g. 18
In the past, we may say: Human language is a tool of social intercourse. But
now we’d better change ―intercourse‖ into ―communication‖, because ―intercourse‖ has a kind of ―bad‖ reflected meaning—sexual connexion between a man and a woman. And we should try to avoid mentioning words such as ―cock, ejaculation, erection‖. Urinate urine
b. Some euphemistic expressions have something to do with ―reflected meaning‖.
E.g. We say ―abdomen‖ instead of ―belly‖, ―the limbs‖ in place of ―the arms and the legs‖, ―Cheers!‖ instead of ―Bottoms up‖.
6) collocative meaning: This kind of meaning is shown by the word’s collocation with other words, esp. for the polysemic words. E.g. a piece of paper, a blade of grass, an ear of corn, a grain of sand/rice/corn, a group of people, a herd of cattle, a swarm of ants/bees, etc.
Another example: We can say ―John is a man of sense. (通情达理的人)‖, but not ―John is a man of meaning.‖
We should notice that words belonging to different styles cannot collocate with each other, except to achieve humorous effect. E.g.
He mounted his gee-gee. * He got on his steed. *
7) thematic meaning: It is expressed by word order and different kinds of emphatic ways. E.g. Mrs. Smith donated the first prize. (The theme is: What did Mrs. Smith donate?).
The first prize was donated by Mrs. Smith. (The theme is: Who donated the first prize?)
III．Componential Analysis and Semantic Features
1. Theory of Componential Analysis
Componential Analysis, often shortened as CA, is a theory of word-meanings. As a method of analyzing the semantic components, it has long been widely used in logic and philosophy. But until recent scores of years has it been applied by some linguists, especially some semanticists, to researching semantic phenomena.
\The analysis of word meanings is often seen as a process of breaking down the sense of a word into its minimal components,\as semantic features, sense components, semantic markers or sememes. 一义位
We may first have a look at the following groups of words referring to living creatures:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) A B C Man Woman Child Ram Ewe Lamb Drake Duck Duckling Stallion Mare Foal Boar Sow Piglet Rooster Hen Chicken
Should we know the meaning of all the listed words in the table above, we can abstract
the components [Male] and [Adult] from the words in column A, [Female] and [Adult] in column B, [Non-adult] under C. Next, if we examine the words listed in (1), we find they all refer to [Human], to [Ovine] in (2), to [Anatine] in (3), to [Equine] in (4), to [Porcine] in (5) and finally to [Galline] in (6).
Therefore, from the eighteen words listed above, ten sense components or semantic markers ----[Male], [Adult], [Non-adult], [Female], [Human], [Ovine], [Anatine], [Equine],
19
[Porcine] and [Galline]----are abstracted. That is to say, the meanings of these eighteen
words are made up of combinations of some of the ten sense components.
The method of componential analysis is to reduce a word's meaning to its ultimate contrastive elements. As a distinctive technique, componential analysis first evolved in anthropological linguistics as a means of studying relations between kinship terms, but it has since proved its usefulness in many spheres of meaning. Semantic features are established on the basis of binary opposition, e.g. between [Male] and [Female], [Animate] and [Inanimate], [Adult] and [Non-adult], etc. And the features of an opposition are mutually defining. Thus, notationally, for the sake of an economical representation, there is an advantage in such binary opposites in that we can choose one only as the label and distinguish this in terms of pluses \[Male] and [Female] are written as [+Male] and [-Male] and so on. We can, moreover, refer to the lack of a sex distinction as 'plus or minus' with the symbol [+Male].\Then the meanings of the individual items listed in the preceding table can be expressed in terms of a few sense components written in formula:
Woman: [+Human +Adult -Male]; Boar: [+Porcine +Adult +Male]; Girl: [+Human -Adult -Male]; Ewe: [+Ovine +Adult -Male], etc.
These formulae are called the \Componential Definitions\ of the items concerned: they can be regarded, as a matter of fact, as formalized dictionary definitions. The dimensions of meaning themselves will be termed \.
The purpose of componential analysis is to study the conceptual-lexical relations. So through analyzing the semantic elements of word-meanings, we can fully grasp the denotative meaning, i.e. the conceptual meaning or cognitive meaning of words. 2. Evaluation of Componential Analysis
As a theory of word--meaning, Componential Analysis is controversial. Although many have found it a useful and revealing technique for demonstrating relations of meaning between words, others have criticized it.
Firstly, it is often said that CA accounts for only some parts of a language's vocabulary, especially that range of vocabulary with semantic oppositions, such as \woman; prince, princess; bull, cow, etc.\ But what about tens of thousands of words that do not fit into such sets of contrasts, like \Actually speaking, the principle that CA could deal with the whole vocabulary of a language is felt to be implausible. CA can be fitted into a more powerful model of meaning, with additional levels of analysis apart from CA, e.g. Predication Analysis of Sentences in semantic theory. Thus we cannot throw out CA because of this first objection.
Secondly, it is often objected that CA suffers from a \circle\in that it merely explains one set of symbols (e.g. English words) by another set of symbols (which turn out to be English words). Thus CA postulates abstract semantic entities (semantic features) unnecessarily. But this is mistaken because the notation symbols are neutral, and so the same features, oppositions, etc., may explain meaning relations in many different languages. And it should be pointed out here that CA fits in well with a %universalist\
20
conceptual contrasts are not necessarily tied to the description of particular languages. According to this view, semantic componential analysis may be generalized
from one language to another, but only to the extent that this is justified by translation equivalence.
Thirdly, the analysis of word-meaning into its sense components is not enough. It has also been claimed that CA is unexplanatory in that it does not provide for the interpretation of semantic features in terms of the real-word properties and objects that they refer to. For instance, the componential definition of \Male], which is, in fact, only an analysis of \It does not include its other sense characteristics. If you ask a four-year-old child to say what features a man possesses, he may answer \wearing trousers not skirts,\etc. And the componential definition of \can hardly explain the meaning of \But to expect CA to provide an interpretation in this sense is to expect it to provide a theory not only of \but of \or not only of conceptual meaning, but of connotative meaning. And CA cannot have this wider goal: it is meant to explain word sense, not the encyclopedic knowledge which must enter into a theory of reference. 3. Application of Componential Analysis in English Teaching
Componential Analysis, though incomplete and sometimes problematic, has long
been proved to be very useful theoretically and of much practical value. And it can be applied in English teaching in the following various ways.
1) Componential analysis enables us to have an exact knowledge of the conceptual
meaning of words when teaching English vocabulary, especially nouns. If we explain a very unfamiliar noun with different semantic features concerned, it will be a great help for students to fully understand what the noun refers to, such as \
Hippopotamus ---- [Animal] + [Mammal] + [Plant-eating] + [Heavy] +
[Thick-skinned] + [Short-legged];
Polar bear ---- [Animal] + [Mammal] + [Feeding on any food] + [Large] + [With
white fur and short tail] + [Native to the Arctic regions];
Uranium ---- [Metallic chemical element] + [Hard] + [Heavy] +[Silvery] +
[Moderately malleable] + [Radioactive].
It would take a great many semantic features to completely characterize almost any lexical item semantically. Since space does not allow presentation of a full set of these sense components, it is necessary to grasp those most important to distinguish different nouns: [+ Animate] to differentiate \chair, dictionary, etc.\be relevant for nouns with [+Animate]; [+Concrete] to tell nouns like \table\from those like \thought\[+Count] to discriminate countable nouns (pen, lamp, chair, etc.) from so-called \nouns(water, milk, gravel, etc.); and [+Common] to distinguish such proper nouns as \common nouns as \
With these semantic features of nouns, we can easily analyze the meaning structure of such nouns as \ 21
Spinster: [+Common + Concrete + Human + Adult - Male - Married + Count], Sebastian: [-Common + Concrete + Human + Count],
