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Semantic or lexical fields

Lexical semantics

Loosely speaking, lexical semantics is the study of word meaning, but more technically it is the
study of the semantics of lexemes, including words and multiword lexical expressions.

Semantic field

Semantic field has two meanings. Descriptively, a semantic field is a set of related concepts,
typically lexicalized concepts in paradigmatic relation to one another. Semantic field can also
refer to a theoretical representation of a set of related vocabulary. Semantic, or lexical, field
theory concerns the relation of a conceptual, semantic field to a language’s vocabulary, and ways
in which these constrain each other.

Lexical hierarchy

A grouping of lexical items whose meanings are related in a way that can be represented by
means of a ‘tree-diagram’. There are two main sorts of lexical hierarchy, which differ in respect
of their constitutive sense relations. The first sort is the ‘taxonomy’, and the second is
‘meronomy’.

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the organization of a set of things (such as meanings) into proper inclusion
relations and is typically represented in tree structure. Taxonomy is a subtype of hyponymy
where the relationship between the hyponym and the hyperonym can be expressed in the frame X
is a kind of Y or X is a type of Y. Hyperonym–hyponym pairs whose relationship is not
taxonomic sound odd in such frames, although they can occur in the more general X is a Y frame.
Thus while spaniel and bitch are both hyponyms of dog, only spaniel is a taxonym (a taxonomic
hyponym) of dog, whereas bitch is a simple hyponym of dog: A spaniel is a kind of/type of dog.
A bitch is a kind of/type of dog. A bitch is a dog. The notion of taxonomy as a subtype of
hyponymy comes from the work of Alan Cruse, who proposes that taxonomy is the inclusion
relationship upon which well-formed taxonomies are founded. Thus spaniel, Alsatian and poodle
are good taxonyms of dog because they subdivide the species of dog into distinctive and
internally coherent categories. The category labeled by bitch, on the other hand, is not as
distinctive or internally coherent, in that it can include any dog as long as it is female.

Meronomy

Meronomy is the is-a-part-of or has-a relation. The term refers either to the directional relation
from whole to part or collectively to that relation and its converse, holonymy. So, for example,
yolk is a meronym of egg and egg is a holonym of yolk, and the relation between these two items
is meronomy. While meronomy is often included in lists of paradigmatic lexical relations, it is
generally regarded as less a relation among words as a relation among things that the words
denote. Nevertheless, meronomy is an important relation for definition – for example, it is
difficult to define yolk without reference to eggs or to define knife without reference to blades
and handles. Different types of meronomy can be distinguished – for instance, the relation
between a material and a whole (cloth–shirt) or a functional part and a whole (sleeve–shirt), and
these may differ in the logical relations they give rise to. For instance, I touched her shirt entails
I touched her clothing, but does not entail I touched her sleeve.

Lexical gap

A lexical gap is a concept for which a language has no word, especially in cases where there is a
gap in a pattern of lexicalization of other similar concepts. For example, English has general
terms for limb and digit as well as specific terms for the upper- and lower-body versions of these
– but no such general term that encompasses hand and foot. Thus, there is said to be a lexical gap
in the semantic field. It is not usual to speak of a lexical gap when a language does not have a
word for a concept that is foreign to its culture: we would not say, for instance, that there was a
lexical gap in Yanomami (spoken by a tribe in the Amazonian rainforest) if it turned out that
there was no word corresponding to modem. A lexical gap has to be internally motivated:
typically, it results from a nearly-consistent structural pattern in the language which in
exceptional cases is not followed. But just because there is no single word in some language
expressing an idea, it does not follow that the idea cannot be expressed.
 Circular and linear fields

The first systematic spatial organization of lexical items (their concepts) was put forward by
Raymundus Lullus. All conceptual systems of his Ars Magna are arranged in a linear order with
(normally) nine segments. Since the extremes of this 'belt' are joined, we have a circular field.
Every concept has two neighbors, and by adding specific figures (triangles, squares, etc.) one can
join three, four, etc. concepts to create a sub-network. The concepts of an area of knowledge may
be organized into a set of such nine-tuple 'fields'. On top of all the more specific conceptual
fields (arrays of nine concepts), stands a universal field, which contains those qualities of God
that are at the origin of all further entities and their concepts. The semantic system has an
ontological and metaphysical foundation in the tradition of Aristotelian and medieval logic. The
idea that concepts/words form linear arrays, that the extremes may be glued together, and that a
hierarchy of such arrays exists, is a first realization of 'field-semantics'. But Lullus did not stop at
the static idea of a (circular) field of concepts: he proposed a combinatory mechanism which
may have been motivated by the 'machinery' of medieval syllogistics, but which contained a new
mathematical impulse which allowed the later development of computing machines by Leibniz,
Pascal, and others.

Lullus’s first figure Lullus’s second figure

Bibliography:

Cruse, A. (2006). A Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh University Press.

Finegan, E. (2012). Language: Its Structure and Use. Sixth Edition. Boston: Wadsworth,
Cengage Learning.

Kreidler, C. W. (1998). Introducing English Semantics. London: Routledge.

Murphy, M. L. & Koskela, A. (2010). Key Terms in Semantics. London and New York:
Continuum International Publishing Group.

Widdowson, H. G. (1996). Linguistics. Oxford University Press.

Wildgen, W. (2000). The history and future of field semantics. From Giordano Bruno to dynamic
semantics. In L. Albertazzi (Ed.), Meaning and Cognition [Series: CERLC]. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.