Componential Analysis
4CursSemantica Componential Analysis Classical structuralism
0. Preliminaries
From previous study, it is known that linguistic analysis proceeds level by level, specifying in each case: the primitives of the level, the combinatorial operations and rules, and finally a representation of the utterance on that level. In the particular case of the semantic level, one must specify: a) the sense components , the constructional rules for building complex meaning out of the more elementary meanings and a semantic representation of words and sentences. Lexical semantics precisely contributes an interpretation of phrases like: arrow, student, novel, etc. Structuralist semantics worked under the at the time novel hypothesis that meanings are decomposable, and proposed two complementary methods of semantic analysis: componential analysis (a paradigmatic method) and distributional analysis (a syntagmatic method). In the coming lectures, stress is laid on the development of componential analysis, starting with the classical structuralist period
1. Componential Analysis (CA) 1.1 History. It is probably true to say that, currently, the majority of semanticians implicitly or explicitly adopt a version of CA. The earliest and most influential proponents in the post Saussurean tradition were Hjelmslev and Jakobson. Both believed that the principles that Troubetzkoy (1939) had introduced into phonology could be, and should, be extended into semantics. Foremost among European theorists of CA are linguists like Greimas, Pottier, Coseriu. In the US, CA appears to have developed independently. It was proposed by anthropologists, as a technique for describing the vocabulary of kinship terms in different languages. (See Goodenough (1963), Lounsbury (1964)). Only later was it taken up and generalized by Nida (1964, 1975), Weinreich (1963), Katz and Fodor (1963), Katz (1972), a.o.
1.2. Main assumption:
(1) The sense of
0. Preliminaries
From previous study, it is known that linguistic analysis proceeds level by level, specifying in each case: the primitives of the level, the combinatorial operations and rules, and finally a representation of the utterance on that level. In the particular case of the semantic level, one must specify: a) the sense components , the constructional rules for building complex meaning out of the more elementary meanings and a semantic representation of words and sentences. Lexical semantics precisely contributes an interpretation of phrases like: arrow, student, novel, etc. Structuralist semantics worked under the at the time novel hypothesis that meanings are decomposable, and proposed two complementary methods of semantic analysis: componential analysis (a paradigmatic method) and distributional analysis (a syntagmatic method). In the coming lectures, stress is laid on the development of componential analysis, starting with the classical structuralist period
1. Componential Analysis (CA) 1.1 History. It is probably true to say that, currently, the majority of semanticians implicitly or explicitly adopt a version of CA. The earliest and most influential proponents in the post Saussurean tradition were Hjelmslev and Jakobson. Both believed that the principles that Troubetzkoy (1939) had introduced into phonology could be, and should, be extended into semantics. Foremost among European theorists of CA are linguists like Greimas, Pottier, Coseriu. In the US, CA appears to have developed independently. It was proposed by anthropologists, as a technique for describing the vocabulary of kinship terms in different languages. (See Goodenough (1963), Lounsbury (1964)). Only later was it taken up and generalized by Nida (1964, 1975), Weinreich (1963), Katz and Fodor (1963), Katz (1972), a.o.
1.2. Main assumption:
(1) The sense of