Semantics

A seminar on ‘Semantic Fields’

The outline of the Seminar:

 Semantic fields
Syntagmatic & Paradigmatic relations

Prepared by: Ahmed Salih & Faris Ali

Submitted to
Assistant Prof. Ahmed B. Hassan

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Semantic Fields

In the 1930s the work of Stern (1921, 1931) and the German linguist Trier (1931)
introduced the notion of structure into semantics with the idea that lexemes should not be
treated in isolation but in structured groups — 'lexical fields' — where they delimit one
another semantically. (Hogg: 1992)

Jost Trier (1931) introduced the term lexical field (or semantic field) that he defined as a set
of semantically related words whose meanings delimit each other. Thus, the meaning of a
word can only be fully determined in terms of contrasts in which it stands with other words
in the field. From a diachronic perspective, this means that any change in the meaning of
one word affects the meaning of other words to which it is related. According to Trier, the
members of a field cover a whole conceptual or objective domain without any gaps or
overlaps, i.e. the boundaries of a lexical field can be clearly delimited. Criticism of this
conception of lexical fields brought about differentiations and modifications of lexical field
theory and led in the development of componential analysis. Lexical field or semantic field
is the way of organizing related words and expressions into a system which shows their
relationship to one another. For example, father, mother, uncle, and aunt, and so on,
belong to one lexical field. An extension of the sense of one word narrows the meaning of
neighboring words, with the words in a field fitting neatly together like a mosaic. If a single
word undergoes a semantic change, then the whole structure of the lexical field changes.
Trier's theory assumes that lexical fields are easily definable closed sets, with no
overlapping meanings or gaps. These assumptions have been questioned and the theory
has been modified since its original formulation. (Net*)

Semantic field theory took the view that the vocabulary of a language is not simply a listing
of independent items (as the head words in a dictionary would suggest), but is organized
into areas or fields, within which words interrelate and define each other in various ways.
According to this theory, meanings of words cluster together to form fields of meaning,
which in turn cluster into even larger fields until the entire language is encompassed. For
instance, we can identify a semantic field of ‗madness‘ containing words like ‗insane,
demented, batty, paranoid, etc.‘, some of which are synonyms of ‗mad‘, and other which are
types of ‗madness‘. This field belongs in turn to a larger field of mental states, which
includes a wider selection of words. (Misbah)

A natural consequence of field theory is the idea that words, or more particularly the senses
of words, define themselves against each other; for example, in the field of medical
personnel, part of our understanding of ‗doctor‘ is not ‗nurse\matron‘ or ‗orderly‘. Also a
fundamental to field theory is the assumption that words can belong to more than one field.
In addition. In addition to meaning ‗insane‘, for example, ‗mad‘ can also mean ‗angry‘, and
as such belongs within the field of anger. Sense relations utilize fields to establish

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relationships based on synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, polysemy, and
incompatibility. These lead us to say that the meaning of a word is its use in language.
(Misbah)

Semantic fields are characterized by having the following features:

1- The set of lexemes covering a certain field is unlikely to correspond to those in any
other language. For example, languages can differ widely in terms of the set of
‗kinship terms‘. Arabic has a male\female distinction for ‗cousin‘ that English lacks.
So Arabic distinguishes between:
‫ بنت الخالة‬,‫ بنت الخال‬,‫ ابن العم‬,‫ ابن العمة‬,‫ ابن الخال‬,‫ ابن الخالة‬,‫ بنت العم‬,‫بنت العم‬
But English does not. This lack of correspondence between semantic fields in two
languages represents a problem in translation.

2- In almost all cases, the lexemes in the field are incompatible.

Thus, we cannot say:
―This is a red hat‖ and of the same object, ―This is a green hat‖.
Nor shall we allow a creature to be described as a lion and as an elephant.
Sentences with incompatible terms will thus contradict each other.

3- In some cases the distinction between the terms in the field is clear. This is so with
animal names. In other cases, there are overlaps. For example: ―kill, murder,
assassinate, execute, slaughter and manslaughter‖ overlap in that hey all involve the
notion of ‗killing‘
4- Generally, the terms in the field are unordered. There is no way, for example, to
arrange elephant, tiger, lion, in terms of meaning. But some groups of lexemes seem
to have some order like the months of the year or days of the week.
5- There are plenty of gaps in the field . In English, for example, there is lexeme
‗corpse‘ for (body of dead human being), and ‗carcase‘ for (body of dead animal), but
no lexeme for a dead plant, and this is the gap. (Misbah)

In short, a lexical field is a group of lexemes that fulfills the following conditions:

1- The lexemes are of the same word class.

2- Their meanings have something in common.
3- They are interrelated by precisely definable meaning relations.
4- The group is complete in terms of the relevant relations. ( bner)

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Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic relations

All linguistic units – sounds, syllables, words, phrases, sentences – can be combined into
more complex units. In the original terminology of structuralism, such a complex is called a
syntagm. A syllable is a syntagm of phonemes, a word taken as a sound unit is a syntagm
of syllables; as a semantic unit, a word may be a syntagm of morphemes (e.g., un-natur-al);
a syntactic phrase like the NP ‗a lucky decision‘ is a syntagm of words, a sentence is a
syntagm of phrases. For each kind of syntagm there are specific formation rules and within
each syntagm the constituents are related to each other in specific ways. The general term
for the relations within a syntagm is syntagmatic relations. The syntagmatic relations that a
given unit bears to other constituents are determined by its combinatorial properties. For
example, an English NP may take the form article+noun but not noun+ article. Thus English
articles have the combinatorial property of preceding the noun in an NP. The set of all
alternatives is called a paradigm. Below is a table that clarifies basic structuralist concepts:

Structuralist concept Definition

syntagm complex unit

syntagmatic relations relations between the constituents of a

syntagm
combinatorial properties properties of a unit that determine its syntagmatic relations:
syntagmatic properties how it can be combined with other units

Paradigm set of all elements that can fill a certain position in a syntagm

paradigmatic relations relations between the elements of a paradigm

contrastive properties distinctive properties of the elements of a paradigm

paradigmatic properties

The units within a paradigm exhibit relations of difference and similarity. These are called
paradigmatic relations. For example, the opposition voiced vs voiceless distinguishes /b/
and /p/ within the onset paradigm.

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So far we have discussed the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations as it is viewed in
structuralism and now it is time to discuss them on the level of semantics.

We said earlier that semantic field is a set of related items which are of the same word
class. Word classes are essentially paradigms. Hence, meaning relations such as:
opposition, hyponymy, meronymy and the more specific relations structuring certain lexical
fields are paradigmatic relations.

 Opposition as in (boy \ girl, man\woman, black\white, etc.)

 Hyponymy as in (red, black, green, etc. are all hyponyms of their hypernym which is
‗colour‘, i.e a hyponym is in a type-of relationship with its hypernym)
 Meronymy which denotes a constituent part of, or a member of something. For
example, finger is a meronym of hand because a finger is part of a hand.

For example, all terms for the days of the week can be inserted into the empty position of
the syntagm today is ___. Within the resulting paradigm, we can assess the meaning
relations between the terms. Syntagmatic meaning relations hold between the constituents
of a syntagm. They consist of the way in which the meanings of the constituents are
combined to yield the meaning of the whole syntagm. Let us consider two simple examples.
In (1) a transitive verb is combined with a subject NP and an object NP to form a sentence:

(1) Mary seized the bottle.

The syntagmatic meaning relation that holds between the subject NP and the verb is that of
the NP specifying the verb‘s agent. The object NP is related to the verb as its theme
specification. The semantic relations of the NPs to the verb are indicated by their syntactic
position.

(2) The red balloon

The combination red balloon in (2) describes the potential referent of the NP as a red
balloon. Both the adjective and the noun are one-place predicates of the potential referent.
Thus the syntagmatic meaning relation between adjective and noun is one of sharing their
argument. Predicate terms carry selectional restrictions. These conditions constrain the
choice of expressions that can be combined with the predicate terms. Thus they constitute
syntagmatic, or combinatorial, semantic properties of verbs, adjectives and nouns. In
addition to selectional restrictions, which impose logical conditions on argument
specifications, lexemes may have combinatorial properties that restrict their usage further.
For example, German has different systems of terms for animals and people. Where people
‗essen‘ (eat), animals ‗fressen‘, drinking of people is ‗trinken‘, of animals ‗saufen‘. People
have a ‗Mund‘ (mouth), but animals a ‗Maul‘, ‗Schnauze‘, etc. Such distinctions give rise to
language-specific combinatorial meaning properties.

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References

Al-Sulaimaan, M. M. D. (2011). Semantics and Pragmatics. Mosul: Daar Ibn Al-Atheer for
Publishing and Distribution.

General Linguistics. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Semantics/SemanticsLexicalfields

Hogg, R. (Ed.). (1992). The Cambridge History of the English Language (The Cambridge
History of the English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521264747

bner Sebastian. ( ). Understanding semantics. Routledge.