Semantics I acknowledgements
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- FEATURES PREDICATION ARGUMENTS PREDICATES
| 4. 10 Predication Analysis Before analyzing the predication, it is necessary to know what is meant by predication (it is wider than what is treated in chapter three). Geoffrey Leech noted that predication consists of arguments and predicates where arguments and predicates consists of features. It can be diagrammed as follows Consists of consists of FEATURES PREDICATION ARGUMENTS PREDICATES SEMANTICS Page For example, A man is in front of a woman can be put into this form below PREDICATION Predicate A man A woman : 128) DIRECTION LATERAL Argument (1) + Human+ Adult+ Male+ Singular Argument (2) + Human+ Adult+ Male+ Singular SEMANTICS Page So, here we find the features – it deals with the Semantic Features, or in other term Semantic components, that is a technique of analyzing the meaning of words (arguments) in features, like ; + human, -male, etc. such features are also called contrastive features. As a matter of fact, it is not only arguments that can be analyzed into features, but also predicate. Predicate like in front of is put into features such ; Spatial, direction, + horizontal, - lateral. To make clear the semantic oppositions are drawn as : DIRECTION ‘in front of” DIRECTION ‘behind, over, under, etc+ HORIZONTAL ‘horizontal’ + LATERAL side to side- HORIZONTAL ‘vertical’ - LATERAL back to back’ SPATIAL a is in spatial relation with bit is a reciprocal relation indicating that common ground of all these meanings+ HORIZONTAL requires SPATIAL. + LATERAL requires + HORIZONTAL. Thus in front of can put like this in front of ( SPATIAL) DIRECTION + HORIZONTAL- LATERAL SEMANTICS Page But how we analyze the predicate in ; He is around the house If requires not only + horizontal but also – horizontal, even it requires also, direction and Direction. Or if it is drawn it would be : Around SPATIAL DIRECTION DIRECTION + HORIZONTAL It seems that the spatial relationship of predicate is very complicated. How then if our example is ; He is face to face with me The features such direction and directions are not applied. In spite of this, the spatial relationship can help us to simplify the whole semantic descriptions. The predicate boiled in ; He boiled an egg can be analyzed into components like ; cook, in water, and past. Beside these three components, do we find another feature in the predicate above How if we put the component like + human. It will, of course, be redundant, as we have known that the Arg (1) ic predictable. Plays in ; honesty plays golf can be analyzed into : + human, present, etc. In this we know that Pis not agree with Arg (1), in the case that Arg (1) consists of human. This disagreement makes the sentences ungrammatical. Thus if the feature human is included in the predicate, it means that our work is to check the ungrammaticality of sentence. In generative grammar this case is concerning with selecting the appropriate features (selectional restriction). |