Lexical Semantic Features
Honor Code policy: You are free to discuss the assignment
orally with others taking the class (making sure you are contributing
and not just absorbing others' ideas). But don't share written work
with one another until after the assignments are graded. Also don't
use written work from students in previous years of this class. If
you wish, you can test out data on native speakers of English from
outside the class (as long as they haven't taken the class and as long
as they are NOT linguistics grad students, profs or other linguistic
professionals). Do not consult a dictionary for this
assignment. Careful thought, probing your own and/or other speakers'
native intuitions about what it is normal to say in a given situation
vs. what is semantically anomalous, is the main vehicle to an
insightful analysis.
Assignments should be uploaded to Owlspace. It will probably take at
least 5 pages of text (if printed out) to answer these questions
well. Total points 100.
Suggestion: allow yourself time to think about the assignment before
writing, but leave plenty of time for writing. An analysis that seems
perfectly straightforward when you talk or think about it may be
hard to 'put into words'. Part of the exercise lies in sharpening your
ability to clearly get across what you mean about meaning--not a
simple task.
This is an exercise in "semantic feature analysis" or "componential
analysis". The usual methodology for these types of analysis, which
you can use here, is the intuitions of native speaker(s) (including
the analyst, i.e. you) arrived at by
controlled elicitation (cf. Tyler). Controlled elicitation for
semantic features involves presenting examples to find which of them
'work' and which lead to semantic anomaly (meaning a clash of semantic
components). By careful comparison and contrast of example sentences
you should be able to arrive at some conclusions about meaning
components of these words.
Asking native speakers (including yourself) how they/you would define
the word is not a good methodology as it does not tap unconscious
knowledge of meaning revealed by specific types of usages.
1. What semantic features (or components or meaning
properties; terminology is flexible at this point) are present in the
meanings of the words in (a)-(b) below? (80)
a. plod
For each case, give justifications for your features. In your
justifications, support your claims by citing normal, odd, and
abnormal uses of the word in phrases or sentences (as for example the
following sentences with assassinate in them:
Several U.S. presidents have been assassinated while in office.
Use some reasonable way of indicating degree of normality/acceptability, e.g.
question marks as above, or words such as ODD).)
You can also support your analysis by citing other
words which contrast with the target word with respect to particular
features. Focus on the literal, motion verb senses of the words.
A tip: Don't be scared of 'semantic fuzziness'. Try to identify the
meaning properties that seem to be most important at getting at the
essence of the word. These are the ones that, if omitted, would give a
distorted idea of the word's meaning.
If you notice other properties that seem to you to be conventionally
associated with the word, discuss them too. These may be more variable
across speakers, but you can argue for their validity in your speech
(or the speech of other native speakers you consult) by citing
relevant examples of normal, odd and distinctly abnormal usages.
2. For the pair of partial synonyms in (a) below, determine
the semantic features or properties that are shared by members of the
pair, and determine the features/properties that distinguish the words
in the pair from one another semantically. Provide evidence for your
features as above. (20)
a. float -- drift
Your analysis for this problem will be limited to shared and
distinguishing properties of the words (supported by examples of use),
rather than a full semantic description as in the previous problem.
© 2010Suzanne Kemmer
and Lexical Relations
Posted: Wed Sept. 1 2010
Due: Wed. Sept. 8 before class
b. scurry
??The cat assassinated the bird.
???He slowly assassinated the prime minister.
Last modified 1 Sept 2010