The Contrastive Componential Analysis of the English Verb to love

Tia Xenia(1*),

(1) Universitas Katolik Atmajaya Jakarta
(*) Corresponding Author

Abstract


It has been commonly understood that a word is rich in synonyms; however if those synonymous words are analyzed comprehensively, it shows that they do not exactly denote the same meaning. In order to distinguish one meaning to the other meaning, the features of each synonym are classified to obtain the distinctive features. The aims of this study are to identify the distinctive features of the lexical items that are synonymous with the English verb to love and to explain the polysemy of that English verb. The English verb to love was taken as the object since it is a basic general English word that appears frequently in everyday contexts. To analyse the data, the researcher listed down the synonyms of to love. After that, those synonyms were contrasted to obtain the distinctive features. By comparing the meanings of to love to the distinctive features obtained, the polysemy could be found and explained. This paper shows that there were sixteen synonymous verbs, 29 distinctive features that were classified into seven major features, and six polysemy of the English verb, to love.

Keywords: meaning, componential analysis



Keywords


meaning; componential analysis

Full Text:

PDF

References


Aitchison, Jane. (2003). Linguistic. London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd.

Cambridge Dictionary. (2018). Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/

English Oxford Living Dictionaries. (2018). Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/

Leech, Geoffrey. (1981). Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Second Edition. Suffolk: The Chaucer Press.

Longman Dictionary Online. (2018). Retrieved from http://global.longmandictionaries.com/

Merriam-Webster. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/

Nida, Eugine Albert. (1975). Componential Analysis of Meaning. Paris: The Hague.

Palmer, Frank Robert. (1983). Semantics. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.v19i1.1809

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Journal of Language and Literature (JOLL) is published by  Prodi Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

JOLL is indexed in:

       


This journal is is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License 

View My Stats