Semantics: it refers to the study of meaning in language regardless of context. Meanwhile, it can be divided into two meanings-conceptual and associative meaning.

Conceptual meaning demonstrates the literal, dictionary and basic meaning whereas associative meaning represents connotative, implied and special meaning. However, semantics mostly concentrates on analyzing conceptual meaning.

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Semantic features: it is one of approaches to analyze the meaning of words. It can reduce some well-formed but odd sentences.

The hamburger ate the boy.? The syntactic structure: NP V NP

It should supplement some semantic features so as to prevent the familiar mistake.

NP[+HUMAN] V NP

Problems of semantic features

1.???? Some words cannot be defined by using semantic features, such as advice, threat…

2.???? As we know, the essence of semantic features is the metalanguage-using language to talk about language itself. For example, boy [+HUMAN, +YOUNG, +MALE]. However, we cannot know the definition of HUMAN, YOUND and MALE unless we continue to adopt another componential analysis. That’s endless but impossible.

Semantic roles

Subject: noun phrases

Agent: it refers to an entity that performs the action.

Theme/patient: it refers to an entity that is affected by the action.

Sometimes, agent is the same as theme or patient. For example, the boy cut himself.

Experiencers: it refers to the person who has a feeling, perception or state.

Instrument: it refers to an entity that can help agent to perform the action.

Location: it refers to an entity where it is located.

Source: it refers to an entity where it moves from.

Goal: it refers to an entity where it moves to.

Lexical relations

Synonymy: it is one of approaches to analyze the meaning of words. The two or more words with very closely related meaning are called synonymy. The main differences between these words rest on stylistic feature of words, formal or informal.

Antonymy: it is one of approaches to analyze the meaning of words. The two or more words with opposite meaning are called antonymy. It can be dissected into three types: gradable antonyms, complementary antonyms and converse antonyms.

Gradable antonyms can be used in comparative and superlative constructions. One member of a gradable pair does not necessarily imply the other. It also has cover term.

Converse antonyms refers to the reciprocal social roles, kinship, spatial and temporal relations. Some pairs still exhibit between converse antonyms.

Gradable antonyms: the denial of one is the assertion of the other.

Hyponymy: the meaning of one is included into the meaning of another. The relationship is called hyponymy. The higher-level term is called superordinate. The two or more hyponyms share the same superordinate are called co-hyponyms.

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Homonymy: It can be dissected into three types: homophones, homographs and complete hyponyms.

Homophone: the two or more words with different meaning are identical in sound.

Homograph: the two or more words with different meaning are identical in form.

Complete homonym: the two or more words with different meaning are identical in form and sound.

bare/bear? record (v.) / record (n.)? fast (v.) / fast (adj.)

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Prototype: it refers to the most characteristic entity which can represent one specific category. For example, when it comes to furniture, we are quick to recognize chair rather than bench or couch. It is concerned with our cognition towards world.

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Polysemy: it refers to one form with closely related meanings. It is known as polysemy.

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Metonymy: it refers to one form which can be substituted for the other. It can be dissected into three parts: a whole-part relation, a container-contents relation and a representative-symbol relation. For example, person/face, bottle/water and the White House/the President.

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Collocation: two or more words frequently occur together. For example, if we say hammer, most people will answer nail.

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Corpus linguistics: it mainly concentrates on the frequency of words and phrases in the sentence. Besides, it may reveal the hidden emotion, attitude and state of authors.