A Study on the Conceptual Meaning through Semantic Feature Analysis

Abstract

This paper aims at the qualitative study of conceptual meaning through semantic feature analysis. As a basic unit of meaning, the semantic feature may be related to associated meanings, yet it has been argued that the feature is fundamentally a component of a conceptual meaning. In this study, the semantic components have conceptually and contrastively been analyzed to justify the sense relations among the words and examined how a word is made up of its own components which set its referential meaning. Following Katz (Saeed, 2003) and Leech’s (1981) theories respectively the paper also tried to exemplify how the semantic units fixed with the conceptual meaning make a word distinct from other words. The conceptual framework of a language is determined by a limited set of principles and such finiteness of the conceptual meaning which makes the linguistic system accessible was explored and measured in the inquiry. Finally, the feature analysis in relation to linguistic organisation was interpreted to analyze the determinateness of conceptual meaning which may allow the users to be coherent to generate basic senses and comprehend the existing possible meaning of any basic unit of a language.