Eckhard Bick - VISL

fact
+ ABSTRACT
÷ LIFE + LIFE
dinner jacket
clothing
suit school gang
- 371 -
AA HH
blazer flock group
÷ ABSTRACT
The diagram places two lists of related words in a semantic field, relating them to each
other and to prototypical notions (medium size green circles) or feature combinations
(big blue circles). The nuclear meanings of the word are marked by small red dots, and
their semantic reach by ordinary circles of varying size. The graphical representation
illustrates how 'suit', 'blazer' and 'dinner jacket' are difficult to distinguish, since they all
belong to the same prototype, 'clothing'. However, a single atomic feature, ±LIFE is
enough to distance all three words from others like 'flock' or 'gang'. In order to make a
distinction between words within one LIFE/ABSTRACT quadrant, more features are
necessary, for instance, ±ANIMAL for the distinction between the AA-word 'school' (of
fish) and the HH-word 'gang'. 'Flock' and 'gang' have a semantic overlap - the priest
lectured his flock - , which is best described in a metaphorical way: 'lecture' projects its
+HUM-object selection restriction features at the valency bound 'flock'. The feature
combination +ABSTRACT/+LIFE is empty, since ±LIFE is a binary subdivision of
÷ABSTRACT.
A. Atomic semantic features
÷