In a similar way, the conceptual meanings of language can be studied in terms of contrastive features, so that (for example the meaning of the word woman could be specified as thuman, -male, +adult, a distinct from, say, boy, which could be defined" [+Human, +male adult
In a similar way, the conceptual meanings of a language can be studied in terms of contrastive features, so that (for example •)• the meaning of the word "woman" could be specified as [+human, -male, +adult], as distinct from, say, boy, which could be "defined" [+Human, +male, -adult]
The second principle, that of structure. is the principle by w hich l arge linguistic units are built up out of smaller units
The second principle, that of structure, is the princ iple by w h i c h l a r g e r linguistic units are b u i lt u p ou t o f s m a l l e r u n i t s
This aspect of the organization of language is o f ten given visual display in a tree-diagram
T h i s a s p e c t o f the organization o f l a n g u a g e i s o f t e n g i v e n visual display in •a tree-diagram:
The man hit the ball NP Det NP Det The man hit the ball
S NP VP Det N V NP Det N The man hit the ball The man hit the ball
Some of the simplest words harbor an amazingly explicit set of wayward traits. Digging them out, classifying them, and showing their relationships is termed componential analysis or feature analysis, and the traits themselves are semantic features, which supposedly do the same for meaning that distinctive features do for phonology
Some of the simplest words harbor an amazingly explicit set of wayward traits. Digging them out, classifying them, and showing their relationships is termed componential analysis or feature analysis, and the traits themselves are semantic features, which supposedly do the same for meaning that distinctive features do for phonology