Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 
Sommersemester 1997
Institut für englische Philologie

Proseminar: Language and Psychology
Dozent: Dr. Günther Jehle

Seminararbeit

Semantic Features vs. Prototypes
What´s in a word ?

Verfasser: Thomas Glöckner

- Contents -

1 Introduction 3

2 Feature Semantics vs. Prototype Theory

2.1 Traditional Feature Theory: `Checklists´ and `Atomic Globules´ 3

2.2 Prototype Theory 6

2.3 Need FS and PT Really Be Conflicting Views ? 7

2.4 Lipkas Typology of Semantic Features 9

3 An Attempt to Decompose the Meaning Elements of Selected
English Verbs

3.1 Preliminary Remarks 12

3.2 The Word-Field of `to attack´ 12

3.3 The Word-Field of `to cry´ 14

3.4 The Word-Field of `to throw´ 14

4 Summary 15

Bibliography

1 Introduction

According to Aristotle, every word is to be defined by naming its genus proximum and differentia specifica.
The linguistic debate concerning the issue of word-meaning and its adequate description has split researchers into two opposing parties. Traditional linguists whose position is relatively close to Aristotle´s idea favour a theory called Feature Semantics (hereafter FS) whereas many scientists rather support a more modern approach which can be labelled Prototype Theory (hereafter PT).
The aim of this research paper is to describe and compare these two concepts. As a conclusion of the first (theoretical) part, it will try to show that the two approaches are not incompatible but that they even seem to function on a complementary basis. In the second (more practical) part, I will try to decompose the meaning elements of some verbs of selected English semantic fields and thus give an example for the use (and usefulness) of semantic features.

2 Feature Semantics vs. Prototype Theory
3 Traditional Feature Theory: `Checklists´ and `Atomic Globules´

Traditional semantic researchers believed that the meaning of every single word of a language is built up from a kind of pool of absolutely basic meaning components. These components were called atomic globules (or semantic primitives) since they were considered to be so basic that they could not be analysed or decomposed any further. Thus, the efforts of researchers focused on finding those atoms of meaning in order to arrive at a basic set of meaning elements, some kind of stencil that should enable them to describe and define any given word simply by naming the appropriate list of `atomic´ features. [...]