ANALISING WORD MEANING

Standard Competence
1. The students are able to analyze word meaning
2. The students are able to explain semantic properties of words.
Basic Competence
1. The students are able to elaborate word meaning in detail
2. The students are able to identify features of meaning in words
3. The students are able to mention meaning component in words.

1. Features in Sounds and Meanings

It has been a common fact that word in any language contains dual structures: sound and
meaning. Both of these components can be analysed and traced into features to know and
perhaps finally to define more accurately what the word is in terms of its sound and meaning. So
this way, of course, is expected to understand how one word is phonologically and semantically
distinct from others. For examples, sound /b/ can be analysed into features of [consonant],
[bilabial], [voiced], and [non-aspirated], while /p/ into those of [consonant], [bilabial],
[voiceless], and [aspirated]. As a result, we know in what way the sound /b/ is different from that
of /p/. To make you understand more, look at the feature distribution below:

/b/ /p/
+ consonant + consonant
+ bilabial + bilabial
+ voiced - voiced
- aspirated + aspirated

Based on the illustration above, it is obviously identified that the features distinguishing /b/
from /p/ are voiced and aspirated sounds. The analysis to know how one sound is distinct from
others is called distinctive features of sounds.
This phenomenon not only occurs in phonology but also in semantics. To know how the
word is correctly pronounced means to know what the word means as well. When you say words
and sentences or perhaps speak your language, you certainly understand what they mean. So
your knowing and understanding thousands of words imply that you have perceived their
semantic features in your mental dictionary. Therefore, it isn’t shocking if you belong to a
walking dictionary.
Like sounds in phonology, meaning of word can be analysed and traced into a number of
semantic features or properties in semantics. It is a fact that your knowledge of semantic
properties, at the same time, is able to make you distinguish one from all other meanings of
words; consequently, you can automatically define what a word means. Furthermore, it can serve
to know types of meanings (connotation and denotation), and sense or lexical relation in
language such as synonymy, antonymy, homonymy, and hyponymy. For examples, such words
as man, woman, boy, and girl can be analysed into the following semantic features or
properties:

man woman boy girl

+ human + human + human + human
+ male - male + male - male
+ adult + adult - adult - adult

Looking at the semantically distributional properties above, you, of course, can

understand and finally more or less differentiate one from all other meanings of words found in
English. The way to differentiate one semantic feature from all other semantic features of the
words above is called binary choices or components. Now try to identify based on your
knowledge what semantic properties make sets of words above distinct from one another.
Suppose one day your lecturer told you a frightening story saying:

The assassin failed before he got to the prime minister.

If the word assassin is in your mental dictionary, you know that it was a person who was
prevented from murdering an important person, a prime minister. Your knowledge of the
meaning of assassin tells you that it was not an animal that tried to kill the man and that
similarly, prime minister is not likely to be a blue collar worker. Instead, your knowledge of the
meaning of assassin includes knowing that the individual to whom that word refers is human, a
murderer, a killer of very important people. These, then, are some of the semantic features of the
word to which the native speakers of English agree. Thus, your knowledge equipment of the
meaning of assassin might be compared with murderer and killer.
2. Semantic Properties
As described above, semantic feature is also called semantic property through which the
meaning of word can be identified. Moreover, it is, in some cases, named componential analysis
because each word consists of a number components by which we can analyse to obtain the
meaning of word more clearly. In application, semantic properties can be distributed to analyse
most content words: noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, and even some of the function words
especially in preposition. Nonetheless, the scope of semantic properties in this book is geared to
content words especially to nouns and verbs. The following are a group of semantic features or
properties commonly found in nouns and verbs in English:
A.
Semantic Features/Properties Nouns having them
Human man, woman, girl, teacher, ..........
Male man, father, boy, ………
Female woman, mother, spinster,…
Adult woman, man, father, ……
Young boy, girl, child, ……..
Animal bird, tiger, camel, …….
Animate human, animal, doctor, elephant,...
Married husband, wife, widow …….
Single bachelor, spinster, maiden, ……
Mammal cow, sheep, .........
Abstract happiness, honesty, ........
Concrete book, house, car, ..................
Kinship father, son, mother, daughter,.......
Domestic bird, hen, horse, .........
Wild tiger, elephant, crocodile, ............
Feline family of cat
Canine family of dog
Bovine family of cow
dogness, horseness, ….. family of dog, horse
Instrument guitar, pencil, knife,...............
Etc

B.
Semantic Features/Properties Verbs having them
Action play, work, write, ……
Motion bring, fall, plod, walk, …..
Contact hit, kiss, touch, ……..
Creation build, imagine, make, …..
Sense see, hear, feel, ……
Mental know, understand, ……
state/emotion love, like, hate, …….
Fast run, fly, ...................
Slow walk, .....................
Hand
Feet
etc.

The semantic properties above constitute commonly used terminologies to specify

meaning of word. However, you may add them freely as long as the distributional terminologies
in accordance with semantic properties are logically acceptable and understandable. Besides,
the same semantic property may occur in different classes of words. For example, the semantic
property “female” is a part of the meaning found in word mother, and is possibly added to verb
breastfeed and adjective pregnant. Consider the following illustration:

mother (n) breastfeed (v) pregnant (adj)

+ human …………… …………..
+ female + female + female
+ parent ………….. …………..

Similarly, some other semantic properties might be attached to certain verbs like darken, kill,
and beautify which mean “cause” to become dark, to die, and to become beautiful.
 The meaning of a word can then be specified by indicating a plus (+) or minus (-) for the
presence or absence of all the semantic properties that define the word, as illustrating in the
following way:

actress baby girl bachelor mare

+ human + human + human + human - human
+ female ………. + female - female + female
……….. + young + young - young - young

The same semantic property may be part of the meaning of many different words. So “female” is
a semantic property that helps to define the following sets of words:

bitch hen actress maiden

doe mare debutante widow
ewe vixen girl woman

The words in the last two columns are also distinguished by the semantic property “human”, and
the feature “human” is also found in the words below:

doctor dean professor bachelor parent baby child

The last two of these words are also specified as “young”. That is, parts of the meaning of the
words baby and child are that they are “human” and “young”.
The other examples of semantic properties towards sets of verbs will be shown and
illustrated below:

walk run crawl jog sprint

+ motion + motion + motion + motion + motion
+ feet + feet + feet + feet + feet
- hands - hands + hands - hands - hands
+ contact - contact + contact - contact - contact
+ slow - slow + slow + slow - slow
- fast - fast - fast - fast + fast

The components or features of meaning above may vary depending upon what words in the
binary choices or components are involved. For example, the semantic features possessed by the
verbs walk and run are not entirely exploited when they are distinguished from the other verbs:
plod and stalk.
 As explained above, knowing semantic features or properties of words we can
distinguish one meaning from all other meanings of words. Sometimes, something happens in
daily language when people make some of the speech errors or perhaps slips of the tongue to
pronounce words. At the same time, some errors also takes place due to the substitution of a
word for an intended word. Consider the following word substitution errors that some speakers
have actually produced:

Intended Utterance Actual Utterance (Error)

blond hair blond eyes
Bridge of the nose bridge of the neck
He came too late He came too early
Mary was young Mary was early
That’s a horse of another colour That’s a horse of another race
He has to pay her alimony He has to pay her rent

The illustrated errors above reveal that the correctly substituted word are not totally
random substitutions, but share some semantic properties with the intended words. For examples,
hair and eye, nose and neck are all parts of the body and young, early, and late are related to
time. Also the relationship of the same semantic properties occurs in colour and race, and even
in alimony and rent.