DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY

ILE-IFE.

EGL 605:
SEMANTICS OF ENGLISH

ASSIGNMENT:
SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

PREPARED BY:
EJABENA Harrison Oghenerukvwe
ARP15/16/H/0191
[kingejabs007@gmail.com]

SUBMITTED TO: PROF. Y.K YUSUF

DR. I.B OLAOSUN
DR. IFEANYI ARUA
DR. Y. FAMAKINWA
INTRODUCTION
In linguistics, semantic analysis is the process of relating syntactic structures from the levels of
phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to the level of the writing as a whole, to their
language-independent meanings. It also involves removing features specific to particular
linguistic and cultural contexts. Semantic analysis is examined at three basic levels: Semantic
features of words in a text, Semantic roles of words in a text and Lexical relationship between
words in a text.
In the analysis of texts, attention is paid to words and the way they are used in the projection of
the speaker’s thought; this is otherwise referred to as the ‘semantic features’ of words, The roles
and functions these words are used to perform are the ‘semantic roles’ they fulfil in the text.
While, the way and manner in which the particular word in the text relates to other words used in
the texts in the projection of meaning is referred to as lexical relation.

CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATIONS

1. SEMANTICS
Semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language; it is the study of the
meaning of words, phrases and sentences Yule (2010: 112). One of the insights of modern
linguistics is that speakers of a language have different types of linguistic knowledge, including
how to pronounce words, how to construct sentences, and about the meaning of individual
sentences. To reflect this, linguistic description has different levels of analysis. So phonology is
the study of what sounds a language has and how these sounds combine to form words; Syntax is
the study of how words can be combined into sentences; and semantics is the study of the
meanings of words and sentences. Saeed (2009: 3).
These linguistic components are in turn organized in such a way that we can convey meaningful
messages or receive and understand messages. We know that language is used to express
meanings which can be understood by others. But meanings exist in our minds and we can
express what is in our minds through the spoken and written forms of language (as well as
through gestures, action etc.). How language is organized in order to be meaningful is what is
treated at the level of semantics. Semantics is that level of linguistic analysis where meaning is
analyzed. It is the most abstract level of linguistic analysis, since we cannot see or observe
meaning as we can observe and record sounds.

2. LINGUISTIC SEMANTICS
In semantics, we study the meaning of words and sentences of languages. Linguistic semantics
studies meaning in a systematic and objective way, it is the goal of Linguistic semantics to
describe the meaning of linguistic elements and to study the principles which allow and exclude
the assignment of meaning to combinations of these elements in a way that makes it function as
the bridge between linguistic form and linguistic meaning.
Linguistic Semantics can be described as the scientific study of meaning in language; it is
comprised of ‘Word meaning’ and ‘Sentence Meaning’. In deciphering the word meaning, the
notions that should readily come to mind are the Sense and Referent. This answers the questions;
what is the information that words convey? And what is the information about? The information
the words convey corresponds to the ‘sense’ of the word, while, what the information is all about
is the ‘referent’ or the extension. In semantics, the meaning of words are usually elusive if
investigated in isolation, they are usually studied by paying attention to the relationship they
share with other words (Lexical relation). Lexical relations could either assume:
a. A paradigmatic or
b. Syntagmatic relationship
The syntagmatic relationship between lexemes entails compatible combinations i.e. Collocations
of words that are simultaneously used in speech. It views language at the horizontal level as a
system that functions like a ‘Chain’. According to J.R Firth, “The meaning of a word can be
discerned by the company it keeps”, such that the meaning of words becomes predictable in this
sense. For example: the word ‘rancid’ collocates with ‘butter’, ‘stale’ collocates with ‘news’ or
‘bread’ but not with ‘wine’ etc. Paradigmatic sense relations on the other hand see language as
entailing a plethora of choices that functions in a way that gives room for multiple words to be
used interchangeably to serve the same purposes in sentences or speech; these words may be
similar or differ in meaning. Paradigmatic relation denotes which words are likely to belong to
the same word class; as it allows items from a semantic set to be grouped together under an
umbrella term. For example: Cars, Tricycle and Motorcycles can be used interchangeably
because they are grouped into the umbrella term ‘Automobiles’, whereas Automobiles,
Computers, Aircraft etc. can be used interchangeably to be referred to as ‘Machines’.
The sense and referent synergy is deep rooted in cognitive linguistics and Generative tenets of
Chomsky with reference to his beliefs about the innateness of the grammatical rules of the
language of an individual which enables him to attach words conceptually to their referents in
the real world such that the very mention of ‘table’ entails the hearer conceptualizing an object
with four legs and a flat surface as a result of what has been previously registered in his linguistic
repertoire coupled with his experience about the world. In this regard it is right to state that
mental processing is the bedrock of sense and referent relationship just as Fodor (19750)
observes that “…Conceptual structure must be rich enough in expressive power to deal with all
things expressible by language. It must be rich enough to deal with the nature of all other
modalities of experience”.
Conceptual structure seems to be characterized by a finite set of inbred well-formedness rules
which are universal such that every human has eventually the same capacity to develop concepts
which to a large extent depends on experience. Since meaning as a concept is not static, a great
deal of the idea of meaning still depends on the context and participants in the act of
communication. There is a strong connection between meaning and communication in this sense.
Communication as used here is the exchange or relay of information, message, attitude, feelings
or values from one person to another; this is done mainly by the use of language. It is often
expressed that language is a system which uses a set of symbols agreed upon by a group. These
symbols can be spoken or written, expressed as gestures or drawings.

3. MEANING
A recursive concept in the study of semantics is ‘Meaning’, this is however the core essence of
the study of semantics in linguistic domain. Meaning is predictable by examining the nature of
complete semantic environment as well as the assessment of syntactic well-formedness. In their
book, The Meaning of Meaning (1923), C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards made an attempt to define
meaning. When we use the word ‘mean’, we use it in different ways. “I mean to do this” is a way
of expressing our intention. “An Olive branch means peace” is a way of indicating what the
‘Olive branch’ signifies. Since all language consists of signs, we can say that every word is a
sign indicating something. Ogden and Richards give the following list of some definitions of
“meaning”. Meaning can be any of the following: -
1. An intrinsic property of something,
2. Other words related to that word in a dictionary,
3. The connotations of a word,
4. The thing to which the speaker of that word refers,
5. The thing to which the speaker of that word should refer,
6. The thing to which the speaker of that word believes himself to be referring and,
7. The thing to which the hearer of that word believes is being referred to.
These definitions refer to many different ways in which meaning is understood. One
reason for the range of definitions of meaning is that words (or signs) in a language are of
different types. Furthermore, Meaning is related very closely to the human capacity to think
logically and to understand. So when we try to analyze meaning, we are trying to analyze our
own capacity to think and understand our own ability to create meaning. Semantics concerns
itself with “giving a systematic account of the nature of meaning” (Leech, 1981). The meaning
of words is to be derived from the relations between words, concepts and things in the real world
and not necessarily derived from their physically properties. It cannot be reduced to the real
world objects or their perception and it cannot be reduced to the particular image in our minds.
According to Gottlob Frege’s Principle of Compositionality; ‘the meaning of a sentence is a
function of the meaning of its component words and the way they are combined’. In this sense
we cannot study meaning without structure. The meaning of a complex expression is determined
by its structure and the meanings of its constituents, once we fix what the parts mean and how
they are put together; we have more insight regarding the meaning of the whole. While applying
the Principle of Compositionality to the meaning of a sentence such as; ‘Jordan kicked the Ball’,
the analysis of the sentence is guided by the following parameters:
a. The meanings of the individual lexemes and morphemes that make it up (Jordan,
kick[ed], the, Ball)
b. The morphological and syntactic structures of the sentence.
The Principle of Compositionality doesn’t just apply to sentences. It also implies that the
meaning of the verb phrase ‘kicked the ball’ is determined by the meanings of its parts and the
grammatical structure of the verb phrase, and that the meaning of the word ‘kicked’ is
determined by the meanings of the two morphemes that make it up [kick and (ed)]. The subfield
of semantics known as compositional semantics (or formal semantics) is especially concerned
with how the Principle of compositionality applies to semantic analysis. In sum, the connection
between a word and what it stands for is arbitrary. The arbitrariness of the linguistic sign is one
of the defining properties of the human language. (Ferdinand de Sassure, 1916. Cours de
linguistique generale).
According to John Locke, “There is no direct connection between a linguistic sign and the nature
of reality”. Thus, Locke argues by making a clear decision on an issue that has bothered
semanticists since Plato’s ‘Kratylos’. The meaning of words are regarded as mental
representations that gives the impression that meaningful words have a two-fold function: they
serve as “marks” which assist the memories of speakers, providing internal stability to human
consciousness, and they serve as signs which, when acoustically presented by speakers, ideally
call up identical ideas in the listeners. Language context has a bearing on meaning realization in
this sense, just as Locke maintained that “communication was achieved when the language-
bound ideas in the minds of the speakers and of the listener are identical”. What a linguistic sign
represents or refers to is determined by some publicly accepted convention. It is more than a
matter of intentions of individual speakers, but a matter of what is accepted and acknowledged
by the language users.

4. SEMANTIC THEORY
Due to the elusive nature of meaning, many theories have been propounded over the years in an
attempt to pin down meaning to a single definition. A total theory of linguistic understanding is
often taken to require three sub-theories: a syntactic theory, a semantic theory, and a pragmatic
theory. The semantic theory occupies an intermediary role; it takes as input structures generated
by the syntax, assigns to those structures meanings, and then passes those meanings on to the
pragmatics, which characterizes the conversational impact of those meanings.
Semantic theories thus seek to explain phenomena such as truth conditions of and inferential
relations among sentences/utterances, anaphoric relations among terms, and ambiguity and
incoherence of expressions. Dever (2006). Several theories such as the Referential, Speech Acts,
Componential, Componential Analysis Theory of Meaning, Truth-conditional, and Use Theories
of meaning have been developed over time.
Accordingly, Akmaijan, et al (2003) argues that a semantic theory should assign expressions in a
language their respective semantic properties and relationship that they actually have. Moreover,
it should be able to define those properties and relations. A complete and adequate linguistic
semantic theory must characterize the systematic meaning relations between words and
sentences of a language, and provide an account of the relations between words and linguistic
expressions and the things that they can be used to talk about (De Swart 1998, p. 2). The
Componential Theory of Meaning will however be elaborated upon in this work.

5. COMPONENTIAL THEORY OF MEANING

Componential Analysis theory is based majorly on Frege’s principle of compositionality which
sees words as having componential qualities that distinguishes it from other words. It is a
meaning approach which describes the sense components or semantic features of all the lexemes
in the vocabulary of a language. Word meanings are often distinguished by breaking such words
into features they are composed of. The Componential Theory is divided into the Componential
and Decompositional Principles as follows:

A. Principle of Compositionality
The principle of compositionality is propounded by Frege Gottlob (1892). It is the starting point
of Formal semantics and holds that the meaning of an expression is a function of the meanings of
its constituent parts and of the way they are syntactically combined into a coherent whole. A
central principle of formal semantics is that the relation between syntax and semantics is
compositional. It is needful to state that compositionality is the starting point of generative
grammar: there are infinitely many sentences in any natural language, and the brain is finite, so
linguistic competence must involve some infinitely describable means for specifying an infinite
class of sentences.
A speaker of a language knows the meanings of those infinitely many sentences, and is able to
understand a sentence he or she has never heard before or to express a meaning that is never
heard before. Innate grammar also influences meaning derivation in this regard; there must be a
finite way to specify the meanings of the infinite set of sentences of any natural language.
According to Jackendoff (1983), “the strongest version of compositionality is that every
syntactic constituent in a sentence must correspond to an independent and identifiable contiguous
piece of semantic structure. The weakest version is that each part of the sentence must somehow
contribute to the whole but not necessarily as a discrete piece; the contributions of the various
constituents may be freely interwoven” Jackendoff (1983). In compositionality, every major
phrasal constituent in a sentence corresponds to a conceptual constituent in the semantic
structure of the sentence. The principle of compositionality states that the meaning of complex
expression is a compositional function of the meaning of its part; that is to say that we work out
the meaning of an expression containing more than one meaningful element by combining the
meanings of its constituents. So, to get the meaning of an expression such as: ‘The Cat ate the
Fish’, we add together the meanings of the individual compositional items has in ‘The + Cat +
ate + the + Fish’; the appropriate way of combining the meanings given by the syntax. One way
or another, this must be true in general terms otherwise we would have to learn the meanings of
all multi-word expressions separately. Cruse (2006: 29)

B. Principle of Decompositionality
Ray Jackendoff 1983, in his book; ‘Semantics and Cognition’ posits that “…among the theories
of word meaning that have been (or can be) cast in mentalistic terms, by far the most numerous
and most detailed are based on the following premise:-
“The meaning of a word can be exhaustively decomposed into a finite set of conditions that
are collectively necessary and sufficient to determine the reference of a word, and these
conditions are stated in terms of finite set of semantic/conceptual primitives. Most theoretical
positions such as Generative semantics and the Tarskian Truth-conditions key into this
notion”.
Jackendoff gave an instance of decompositionality in his analysis of colour terms such as ‘Red’,
the application of this theory will entail the fact that it is a ‘colour’ so as to give room for
inferences and oppositions in meaning it assumes such as that of ‘Green’, ‘Black’, ‘Violet’ etc.
but once the decomposing element ‘colour’ is removed from the conceptualizing of ‘Red’,
making sense of its meaning becomes difficult since, because ‘redness’ as the quality of the
colour cannot be detached from its meaning inference.
The area of lexicon that the decomposition theory is most applicable is the class of verbs. The
extraction of components such as Causation, change and action from the readings of verbs such
as ‘kill’ to be analyzed as ‘Cause not to be Alive’, in the example stated, ‘Cause’, ‘Not’ and
‘Become’ are likely meaning postulates of ‘Kill’ but not ‘Alive’; it is contradictory to the sense
of ‘kill’. This is a major weakness of the decomposition theory which tends to leave ‘unanalyzed
semantic residue’.
However, Katz and Fodor (1983) in their book; ‘Theory of Word Meaning’ dealt with the
semantic residue of decomposition by dividing word meaning into two distinct parts as a
collection of ‘semantic markers’ and ‘a distinguisher’. The semantic markers were to constitute
the formal part of meaning, that is, the part that plays a role in determining semantic properties
of utterances. While, the distinguisher was to be an unsystematic part that played no role in
formal semantics. It was at this point that Katz and Fodor disposed of the semantic residue. Ray
S. Jackendoff (1983).
However, in reaction to this theory of Katz and Fodor, Bolinger (1965) demonstrates that the
notion of distinguisher is suspect, by constructing phrases that are disambiguated or anomalous
on the basis of material that Katz and Fodor had assigned to distinguishers. For instance, for the
most salient sense of the word ‘Bachelor’, Katz and Fodor proposed the semantic markers
‘HUMAN’ and ‘MALE’, and the distinguisher ‘NEVER MARRIED’. But an anomaly could
surface in the analysis of the phrase ‘The Bachelor’s legitimate daughter’. In this sense, the
information about ‘the nature of marriage and the legality of offspring’ casts a big question on
the sense of ‘Bachelor’; they tend to play a role in the semantic properties of the word. Hence,
‘NEVER MARRIED’ must be broken down into semantic markers to represent the fact that ‘he
has a daughter out of wedlock’. Through this illustration, Bolinger shows that ‘inference’ and
‘anomaly’ can turn on the most obscure aspects of a word’s meaning; the distinguisher must be
void of content and exhaustive decomposition should be applied where necessary.

6. SEMANTIC ANALYSIS
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. In semantic analysis,
there is always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what
an individual speaker might want them to mean on a particular occasion. This approach is
concerned with objective or general meaning and avoids trying to account for subjective or local
meaning. Doing semantics is attempting to spell out what it is we all know when we behave as if
we share knowledge of the meaning of a word, a phrase, or a sentence in a language. Yule (2010)
Semantic analysis is understanding language and lies majorly with the receiver of a linguistic
input generated by a speaker. It is the act of processing language to produce common-sense
knowledge about the world.
Semantic analysis draws ideas from lexical semantics (which treats the meaning of component
words; and word sense disambiguation in the case of polysemous words having more than one
meaning) as well as anomalous sentences which are syntactically correct, but semantically odd.
It also draws from compositional semantics (i.e. how words combine to form larger meanings in
sentences). Syntactic parsing is useful in exploring the deep surface of sentences also helps in
deciphering meaning in semantic analysis. The morphology of words also has a huge impact on
meaning inference; the addition or subtraction of a morpheme to a word can alter or give another
dimension to the meaning of a text as well as changing the class of the word.
It is the job of a semantic analyst to discover grammatical patterns, the meanings of colloquial
speech, and to uncover specific as well as various accruable meanings to words and expressions.
In linguistics, semantic analysis is the process of relating syntactic structures, from the level of
phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to the level of the sentence as a whole, to their
language independent meanings. Semantic analysis involves removing features specific to
particular linguistic and cultural contexts and relating it to the context of the writer, the hearer or
the semantic analyst himself. The elements of idioms, and figurative speech being cultural, are
often also converted into relatively invariant meanings in semantic analysis.
Semantic analysis can begin with the relationship between individual words. This requires an
understanding of lexical hierarchy such as: hyponymy, metonymy, polysemy, synonyms,
antonyms, homophones, prototype and homonyms. It also relates to concepts like connotation
and collocation, which is the particular combination of words that can be or frequently are
surrounding a single word; this can include idioms, metaphors, and simile and figurative speech.
In literature, semantic analysis is used to give the work meaning by looking at the writer’s point
of view.
Through semantic analysis the style of writing of a particular author can be deciphered through
the analysis of a good number of his or her written or spoken texts. The analyst examines how
and why the author structured the language of the piece as he or she did. When using semantic
analysis to study variations of the same language (dialects) and foreign languages, the analyst
compares the grammatical structure and meanings of different words to those in his or her native
language. Linguists study both semantic meaning and speaker’s meaning. In an attempt to
analyze a text semantically, we have to bring together three main components to bear in the
analysis of the text:
a. The roles that words play in a sentence or text. (Semantic function),
b. The meanings of the words in relation to other occurring words in the sentence or text.
(Lexical relations), and
c. The componential features of the sense of the words in a text or sentence. (Semantic
features).

A. SEMANTIC FEATURES OF LINGUISTIC ELEMENTS IN A TEXT

Semantic features concerns the different meaning of each word, phrase, clause, sentence,
paragraph to the text as a whole; each one of these syntactic elements work in tandem in giving
the text meaning. Semantic features helps in the resolution of ambiguity as regards the oddness
encountered in sentences that are syntactically correct but semantically odd.
Ambiguity is a common phenomenon in semantic analysis of text that originates from
sentences that have more than one conceptual or contextual meaning, polysemy on the other
hand as another form of ambiguity concerns words having more than one ascribable meaning.
However, there are two distinct types of Ambiguity namely: Lexical and structural ambiguity.
Lexical ambiguity occurs when the presence of a specific word leads to multiple interpretation of
the whole sentence. For example:
a. The team has many goals. (Objectives of the team/Goal as regarding the sport)
b. She prepared tables. (Dressing the table/Putting the dishes on the table)
Structural ambiguity on the other hand is achieved by the organization of elements in a
sentence, such that there are different possible meanings to the text. In this sense, the conceptual
components of the syntactic elements have a huge bearing on meaning. Semantic analysis
resolves ambiguity in meaning inferred and meaning implied; it profers solution to the ‘oddness’
we experience when we read sentences such as the following:
i. The Grass ate the Cow.
ii. The shooting of the soldiers.
iii. I made her duck
We should note that the oddness of this sentence does not derive from its syntactic structure.
According to the basic syntactic rules for forming English sentences, we have well-formed
structures seeing that it is syntactically correct, but semantically odd; since the sentence ‘The
Cow ate the Grass’ is perfectly acceptable, we may be able to identify the source of the
problem. The components of the conceptual meaning of the noun ‘grass’ must be significantly
different from those of the noun ‘cow’, thereby preventing one, and not the other, from being
used as the subject of the verb ‘ate’. The kind of noun that can be the subject of the verb ‘ate’
must denote an entity that is capable of ‘eating’. The noun ‘grass’ does not have this property
and the noun ‘cow’ does.
In addition, in the second sentence, ‘the shooting of the soldiers’, the ambiguity in the
sentence is bound to have a significant impact on the comprehension of the hearer. The sentence
is syntactically correct as well but, the oddness in the sentence arises from the difficulty of
differentiating between linguistic meaning and speaker meaning; the hearer tend to be confused
as to whether it is the soldiers that carried out the action of shooting or it is actually the enemy
forces that shot the soldiers during a cross-fire. A statement as this further underscores the
elusiveness of meaning, the only way the hearer of such a statement would understand the
intended meaning of the speaker is when he is conversant with the subject matter and the context
in which both he and the speaker exists. in this respect, the semantic implications of the word
‘shooting’ influences the overall meaning attachable to the statement as a whole.
With reference to the third example, ‘I made her Duck’; a statement such as this is ambiguous
in nature considering the different meaning that is attachable to it, the statement can be
interpreted as follows:
a. I made her duck stew
b. I made her lower her head
c. I turned her into a duck
Ambiguity and oddness can equally be resolved by paying attention to the semantic properties of
individual words. The semantic features includes a componential analysis of the meaning of
words as the collection of properties and features typically with two possible values that can be
classified into positive or negative (+/-). For example:

Table Boy Horse Man Girl Woman

Animate _ + + + + +

Human _ + _ + + +

Female _ _ _ _ + +

Adult _ _ + + _ +

From the illustration above, through the componential analysis, we able to identify the features
that make these words stand out from each other in the sequence. This way it will be easier to
resolve any form of ambiguity in the comprehension of these words in a text. This approach
would give us the ability to predict which nouns make this sentence semantically odd. Some
examples would be ‘table’ and ‘horse’ because none of them have the required feature [+human].
The approach just outlined is a start on analyzing the conceptual components of word meaning,
but it is not without problems.
For many words in a language it may not be as easy to come up with neat components of
meaning. If we try to think of the components or features we would use to differentiate the nouns
advice, threat and warning, for example, we may not be very successful. Part of the problem
seems to be that the approach involves a view of words in a language as some sort of
“containers” that carry meaning components. There is clearly more to the meaning of words
than these basic types of features. The conceptual idea of the words informs the meaning
attached to them. From a feature analysis like this, we can say that at least part of the meaning of
the word ‘girl’ involves the elements [+animate, +human, +female, −adult]. We can also
characterize the feature that is crucially required in a noun in order for it to appear as the subject
of a particular verb, supplementing the syntactic analysis with semantic features. For example:

a. The _____________ is reading the newspaper.

N [+human]
a. The _____________ is an Amphibian.
N [-human]
b. My _____________ attends the Crèche down the road.
N [-Adult]

B. SEMANTIC OR THETA ROLES OF LINGUISTIC ELEMENTS OF A TEXT

Semantic or Thematic roles define the role a participant plays in the situation described
by the predicate. Words are not just ‘containers’ of meaning, they can be described by the roles
they fulfill within the situation described in the sentence. It is a way of characterizing the
meaning relationship between a nominal element or noun phrase and the verb of a sentence.
The Noun phrase in the sentence describes the roles of entities such as people and things
involved in the action. The roles have to do with processes, events and states of affairs involving
participants in sentences; but differ from the syntactic roles of words (Subject, Object,
Compliment etc.). That is semantic roles is not an inherent property of a noun phrase, since a
given noun phrase can have different semantic roles in different sentences (Joseph, 2015). These
semantic roles include:
i. Agent,
ii. Theme,
iii. Object,
iv. Patient,
v. Instrument,
vi. Location,
vii. Source,
viii. Experiencer and
ix. Goal.
These roles are defined as follows:
A. Agent refers to the ‘doer’ of the action, an entity that performs the action, although
agents are typically human, they can also be non-human forces, machines, or creatures.
For Example:
i. Donald slapped the boy
ii. Okondo stole the goat etc.

B. Theme refers to the entity that is involved in or affected by the action; it is the entity that
is moved by the action or event denoted by the predicate. It can be human or non-human
as well. For example:
iii. Jordan gave me his keys
iv. Dan collected his gratuity.
 C. Location is the place from which an action takes place. It refers to the place an entity is
situated. For example:
i. The UN General meeting is taking place in Switzerland
ii. John sleeps in the villa

D. Source refers to a place from which an action originates; it specifies the origin or
direction from which something comes. For example:
i. They came all The way from Kaduna.
ii. He left the Village for the town.

E. Experiencer is a term used to refer to a noun phrase is used to designate an entity as the
person who has a feeling, perception or state. If we see, know or enjoy something, we’re
not really performing an action (hence we are not agents). We are in the role of
experiencer. For example:
i. I feel joyous
ii. Did you hear that noise?
iii. Mark injured himself.

F. Instrument refers to another entity used by the agent in performing an action. For
example:
i. Nora plucked the Pawpaw with an iron pole
j. Messi scored the goal with his head

G. Goal is the place where the action is directed. For example:

i. We drove from Ondo to Port-Harcourt.
ii. I transferred funds from my current account to my savings account

While applied to sentences, the semantic roles of participants or elements of a sentence can be
represented as follows:
a. The boy kicked the ball.
AGENT THEME

b. Trump and Hillary are running for the White House.

AGENT AGENT GOAL

c. The boy opened the door with a key.

AGENT THEME INSTRUMENT

d. The car ran over the ball.

INANIMATE AGENT THEME

e. With a stick, the prophet beat the Donkey.

INSTRUMENT AGENT THEME

f. The Horses ran from the Starting line to the finish line.
AGENT SOURCE GOAL

g. Mary saw a Cockroach on the wall.

EXPERIENCER THEME LOCATION
 h. Please, pass the bottle to the lady at the bar.
THEME GOAL LOCATION

i. Julie gave Jessica the book

SOURCE RECEPIENT THEME
GOAL

In the sentences above, we can see that the Noun phrases describe the role of entities (animate
and inanimate) involved in the actions and the verbs, which indicates the way and manner in
which these actions take place. All these sentential components have semantic roles that they
fulfill in the sentences above.

C. LEXICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN LINGUISTIC ELEMENTS IN A TEXT

Semantic analysis in terms of lexical relations explains the meaning of a text on the basis of
the relationship that exists between a particular word and other words that make up a text. A
contra-distinction between words informs the relationship that gives way to meaning in a text.
For example, in a bid to decipher the meaning of the word ‘Big’, a similar or oppositional word
is usually employed to arrive at the meaning which makes it different from other naturally
occurring words in its sequence. The word ‘Big’ could relate to ‘Large’ or the opposite of
‘Small’. Semantic analysis in terms of Lexical relations can be observed through the following
lexical tools:
a. Synonymy: this refers to word that have the same meanings or very closely -related
meanings, which are often, but not always, intersubstitutable in sentences. It should be
noted that the idea of ‘sameness of meaning’ in synonymy is not necessarily ‘total
sameness’. Examples of synonyms are: flourish/thrive, answer/reply, almost reply,
broad/wide, freedom/liberty etc. The context of usage or use in a stretch of utterance or
discourse may not give room for total substitution between words; in this case, one word
tends to be more suitable to the context at play than the other, in some cases this
dichotomy is highlighted by the formality that a particular word has in contrast to its
synonym. For example: Buy/Purchase, Automobile/Car.
b. Antonym: This refers to a relationship of oppositeness in meaning between words e.g.
hot and cold. Antonymous pairs can either be gradable or non-gradable. Gradable
antonyms can be used in comparative constructions. The negative of one member does
not necessarily imply the other e.g. ‘not old’ does not necessarily mean ‘young’. Non-
gradable antonyms can be used in comparative constructions. The negative of one
member does imply the other e.g. Dead/Alive, Present/Absent, Married/Single, Fast/Slow
or in a sentence as; Now we right the wrongs in history.
c. Homonymy: It is when a word has two or more unrelated meanings, but have the same
pronunciation and spelling; e.g. bank (of a river) and bank (financial institution). They
have quite different meanings but accidently have the same form.
d. Hyponymy: When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, the
relationship is called ‘hyponymy’. In this category, we are looking at the meaning of
words in some type of hierarchical relationship e.g. animal-horse, animal-dog. We can
say that two or more terms which shares the same superordinate term are called co-
hyponyms. So, ‘Dog’ and ‘Horse’ are co-hyponyms and ‘Animal’ is the superordinate.
The Hyponymy captures the idea of ‘is a kind of’ e.g. Viper is a kind of snake. Terms for
 actions can also be hyponyms; e.g. cut, punch, shoot, and stab can all be found as co -
hyponyms of the superordinate term ‘injure’. Men, women, boys and girls are hyponyms
of human or Man as the super-ordinate.
e. Metonymy: This relationship is essentially based on a close connection in
everyday experience. It may be container-content relation (can-juice); a whole-part
relation (car-wheels); or a representative-symbol relation (king-crown). Sometimes
making sense of many expressions depends on context, background knowledge and
inference.
f. Polysemy: It has its origin in the Greek word “poly” meaning “many” and “semeion”
meaning “sign”. It refers to a situation where the sense of a word has multiple meanings
which are all related by extension. e.g. head refers to top of your body, top of a glass of
beer, top of a company. If two words are treated as homonyms, they will typically have
two separate entities.
g. Prototype: It explains the meaning of certain words like bird not in terms of component
feature (e.g. ‘has wings’) but in terms of resemblance to the clearest exemplar; e.g. native
speakers of English might wonder if ‘ostrich’ or ‘penguin’ should be hyponyms of bird,
probably due to their inability to ‘fly’, but have no trouble deciding about ‘sparrow’ or
‘pigeon’. The last two are prototypes for what birds should look like.
h. Homography: When two or more forms are the same only in writing but different in
pronunciation and meaning they are described as homographs such as lead ([lid]) and
lead ([led]).
i. Homophony: When two or more differently written forms have the same pronunciation
but different meaning; e.g. sea-see, bat-bath, tyre-tire, pail-pale, to-tow, right-rite, flower-
flour etc.

7. CONCLUSION
Words and sentences as constituents of a text are analyzed conceptually and contextually in
deriving meaning. By paying close attention to the semantic roles of linguistic elements in the
text, the componential features of linguistic elements in the sentence as well as the relationship
they have with other words within the text we would easily arrive at a resolution as regards the
actual meaning of the text.
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