Componential analysis is a way proposed by the structural semanticists to analyze word meaning. The approach is based upon the belief that the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic features.

Plus and minus signs are used to indicate whether a certain semantic feature is present or absent in the meaning of a word, and these feature symbols are usually written in capitalized letters.

Man [+HUMAN,+ADULT,+MALE]

Woman[+HUMAN ， +ADULT ， -MALE]

Boy[+HUMAN, -ADULT, +MALE]

girl[+HUMAN,-ADULT,-MALE]

This is parallel to the way a phoneme is analyzed into smaller components called distinctive features.

/b/ [+PLOSIVE,+BILABIAL,+VOICED]

/P/[+PLOSIVE,+BILABIAL,-VOICED]

Componential analysis provides an insight into the meaning of words and a way to study the relationships between words that are related in meaning.

A feature of “belongingness” distinguishes to return, when it takes an object, from to take back, We took Junior back to the zoo might refer to letting him visit the place again, but We returned Junior to the zoo calls him an inmate.

A feature “enemy”

distinguished U-boat from the

neutral submarine in the First

World War.

Predications,Arguments and Predicates

Before the analysis of sentence meaning is discussed, two points should be made clear.

First, the meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components. It cannot be worked out by adding up all the meanings of its constituent words.

Second, there are two aspects to sentence meaning; grammatical meaning, which means the grammaticality or grammatical well-formedness of a sentence, and semantic meaning, which is governed by selectional restrictions.

Grammaticality is governed by the grammatical rules of the language while Selectional Restrictions are constraints on the combination of words to ensure semantic well-formedness. Some sentences which are grammatically well-formed may not be semantically meaningful.

For example:

*The brown concept jumps sympathetically.

The predication analysis, proposed by Leech, is a way to analyze the meaning of sentences. A sentence, composed of a subject and predicate, is a basic unit for grammatical relation. The basic unit for meaning analysis is called predication, which is the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence.

The grammatical form of the sentence does not affect the semantic predication of the sentence, therefore the following forms have the same predication HE(JUMP):

He jumps. He is jumping. He will jump. He has been jumping. Did he jump?

Consider the three sentences The children ate their dinner, Did the children eat their dinner? And Eat your dinner, children! Leaving aside differences of tense and pronouns, these sentences have a common content which can be expressed in a kind of Pidgin English: “Children eat dinner”. It is this type of structure which are called predication,

A predication consists of argument(s) and predicate. An argument is a logical participant in a predication. It is generally identical with the nominal element (s) in a sentence. A predicate is something that is said about an argument or it states the logical relation linking the arguments in a sentence.

According to the number of arguments in a predication, predication can be divided into one-place predication, two-place predication and no-place predication.

For example:Children like sweets. (two-place predication) ： CHILDREN, SWEET(LIKE)

John is ill. (one-place predication) ： JOHN(BE ILL)

It is hot.(no-place predication) ： (BE HOT)

“It is hot.” is a meteorological utterance. It is difficult to accept that the element expressed by “ it” is an argument, since it has no meaning independent of the predicate. “it” is so predictable that one cannot construct a question for which “it” is an appropriate answer, therefore it is a no-place predication: What is hot? * It!

The predicate is the main element in a predication, for it includes tense, modality, etc., determines the number and nature of the arguments and governs the arguments. Componential and predication analyses together will enable us to represent the greater part of the meaning of sentences.

My uncle owns This car

Could be broken down into two arguments ( or “logical participants”), “my uncle” and “ this car”, with a relational element linking them (“owns”). This linking element may be called, following logical rather than grammatical terminology, predicate.

My uncle owns This car

Rather as subject,verb, object, adverb, etc., are constituents of sentences, so argument and predicate are constituents of the predications expressed by sentences.

Arguments sometimes match syntactic elements like subject, verb and object, and sometimes do not.

My uncle owns This car

One has to avoid associating the ‘predicate” in this sense with the “predicate” of traditional grammar.

A tall woman was in front of the car

Assuming that all predications can be divided up into arguments and predicates, we have to ask how the content of these units themselves can be analyzed. The examples we have looked at suggest that these units can be analyzed componentially.

For example:

A tall woman:

Tall, +Human, +Adult, -male, +singular

A similar analysis, containing features such as “ private”, “motor”, and “vehicle”, could be supplied for “ the car”.

Predicates, too, can be broken down into features. The predicate “boiled’ ( in the sentence Adam boiled an egg) might be analyzed into three components: “cook”, “in water”, and “past”.

“Adam boiled an egg”

entails

“ Adam cooked an egg.”

Boil: [+ cook, +in water,+ past]

a In front of b a In front of b

But this does not go far enough. The analysis of “ in front of “ fails to show its relation to the locative meanings, such as “over”, “under”, “by”, “on the left of”, etc. For this purpose, three semantic oppositions are needed:

Directions Directions Directional contrast between “ in front of “ and “behind”, “over” and “under”, etc. )

+Horizontal “horizontal” -Horizontal “vertical”

+Lateral “side-to-side” -Lateral “front-to-back”

The prepositions over, under, in front of, behind, etc., may now be defined:

(a) over [ spatial] direction -horizontal

(b) under

[ spatial]

direction

-horizontal

(c) in front of

[ spatial]

direction

[+horizontal]

-lateral

(d) behind

[ spatial]

direction

[+horizontal]

-lateral

(e) on the left

[ spatial] direction [+horizontal]

+ lateral

(f) on the right

[ spatial]

direction

[+horizontal]

+ lateral

(g) beside, by

[ spatial]

+ proximate

[+horizontal]

+ lateral

1)The shell exploded by the wing of the airplane.2)Place the one coin by the other.3)The red car was parked by the green one.

In (1), by simply means “ in spatial proximity to”. Here “by” could include “over” or “under”.

1)The shell exploded by the wing of the airplane.

In (2), the most likely sense is “ near to on a horizontal plane”---that is, excluding “over” and “under”.

2) Place the one coin by the other.

In (3) the meaning is even more specific: it is “beside”, in contrast to “ in front of” or “behind”.

3)The red car was parked by the green one.

1)The shell exploded by the wing of the airplane.

by (1) spatial+ proximate

2)Place the one coin by the other.

by (2)

[ spatial]

+proximate

+horizontal

3)The red car was parked by the green one.

by (3)

[ spatial]

+proximate

+lateral

+horizontal

This discussion of spatial relations has emphasized the point that predicates, like arguments, can be analyzed componentially. So arguments and predicates are comparable units: on the one hand they are the elements of predications, and on the other they consist of features.

Predications

Arguments,

predicates

features

(1) PREDICATION (2)

Predicate ->direction - lateral

“in front of” Argument1 Argument2

+HUMAN +ADULT +MALE +SINGULAR

+HUMAN +ADULT

-MALE +SINGULAR

“ a man” “ a woman”

The predicate is the major element in the sense that it determines ( in ways that will shortly be made clear ) the number and nature of the arguments. In the above case, the relational meaning of “in front of” requires the presence of two arguments which can be placed in a spatial relationship; without them, “in front of” would not make sense.

Three general types of predicate are distinguished: two-place, one-place and no-place.

It is doubtful whether there are three- or four-place predications because they usually turn out to be combinations of two-place and one-place predications.

“John caused X”“X”= “The dog received a bone”.

“John gave the dog a bone”

Thus , “John gave the dog a bone” can by analyzed as follows:

Entailment and Inconsistency

In predication analysis, hyponymy and incompatibility are treated as relations between arguments and between predicates, rather than between word-meanings.

An entailment relation exists between two propositions which differ only in that an argument of one is hyponymous to an argument of the other. For example, a is a hyponym of b in:

(16) a b“I saw a boy Entails “ I saw a child

The hyponymy relation can also be between predicates:

(17)

P Q“ Turpin stole a horse” Entails “Turpin took a horse”

The following general rules for entailment and inconsistency may now be stated:

X entails Y if X and Y are identical except that

1. X contains an argument a and Y contains an argument b, and2. a is a hyponym of b

a b

“I saw a boy” Entails “ I saw a child”

or 1. X contains an argument a and Y contains an argument b, and 2. b is a hyponym of a a “Children are a nuisance.”

b entails

“Boys are a nuisance.”

or 1. X contains a predicate P and Y contains a predicate Q, and 2. P is a hyponym of Q

“ Turpin stole a horse” Entails “Turpin took a horse” P Q

X is inconsistent with Y if X and Y are identical except that

1.X contains a predicate P and Y contains a predicate Q

2.P is incompatible with Q

Mary dislikes work. Mary likes work. P Q

The rules of entailment and inconsistency apply cumulatively, in the following ways:

(A)If X entails Y and Y entails Z, then X entails Z (i.e. entailment is a transitive relation)(B)If X entails Y and Y is inconsistent with Z, then X is inconsistent with Z.

These two supplementary rules may be illustrated by supposing X,Y,and Z to be the following:

(A)X: Boys ran down the street Y: Boys went down the street Z: Children went down the street(B)X: John was singing drunkenly Y: John was singing Z: John was silent.

Tautology arises, roughly speaking, when information contained in an argument of a prediction includes the information contained in the rest of the predication.

In a one-place predication, this means simply that the argument is hyponymous to the predicate:

( a : P ) HUMANADULT-MALE -MALE <who.LOVE. you>

“The woman you love is female”

The argument is hyponymous to the predicate:

In a two-place predication, a tautology arises wherever a qualifying predication in one of its arguments semantically includes the rest of the main predication.

( a .SELL. food )

HUMAN MALE<who.SELL.meat>

“ A butcher sells food”

These rules can be stated more precisely in linear notation:Rules of tautology:

a) If a is hyponymous to P, (a:P) is a tautology:

This boy is male.

The third type of deviation, semantic anomaly arises when one of the arguments or the predicate of the main predication is self-contradictory.

This orphan’s father drinks heavily.

This programme is for the music-lover who dislikes music.

Contradiction:

Contradiction arises when the information contained in an argument of a predication is incompatible with the information contained in the predicate.

That man is female.

In a two-place predication, a contradiction means the qualifying predication is inconsistent with the rest of the main predication, e.g.

This orphan has a father.