Semantic Properties, Semantic Features, Semantic

Postulates and Redundancy Rules

As firstly, semantics is a study of linguistics meaning that is the meaning of words,
phrases, and sentences (Nirmalasari, 1988: 41-42). In a language we have sentences, in a
sentence we have words, and in word we have morphemes. Words and morphemes have
meanings. But related to the semantics properties, we shall talk about the meaning of words,
even though words may be composed of several morphemes.
Semantics is the study of meaning in a language. It is a fact that meaning is a part of
language, but this definition has not been clearly delineated and given fair treatment in the study
of language until very recently. In the study of language, language definitions are sometimes
based on meaning and sometimes on function. The outstanding achievement in the study of
meaning in traditional linguistics is etymology the study of the origin of word meaning. The
study of meaning in traditional linguistics has not clearly shown what meaning is.
Concepts, the meaning, lie in the human brain. Concepts become the source of the ideas
to be communicated, which are found in words, sentences, and utterances. The study of
semantics must, therefore, include the concept of words, sentences, and utterances.
Here there are some aspects in semantic,
1. Semantic Properties
Definition of semantics properties
The meaning of all nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (the content words) - and even some of
function words.
Semantic properties are the components of meaning of a word.
Shortly, both of content words and function words are include in semantics properties. Its mean
both of them are use to give knowledge of the words meaning, includes knowing that the
individual or something refers. These pieces of information given are showing how the semantics
properties are express/reflect the meaning of words.
e.g:
Word

Semantics properties

Father

male, adult, parents

Moreover the same semantics properties may be part of the meaning of many different words.
e.g:
Semantics properties ---> it can to refer to indicates:
Female

Actress

- hen

Girl

- doe

Women

- mare

In relation to that case, semantics properties were classify into 2, namely: general semantics
properties and specifics semantics properties.
e.g:
Word

General semantics First meaning

properties

Specific semantics Target

properties
meaning

Father

Human

Father

Parents

Male

Uncle

Father

Adult

The same semantics properties may occur in words in different categories.

e.g:
Semantics properties
Female ---> n: mother
---> V: breast feed
---> Adj: pregnant
In addition, there are other semantics properties that help account for the meaning of verbs:
Semantics properties

Verbs

Motion

Bring, fall, plod, walk, run,

Contact

Hit, kiss, touch,

Creation

Build, imagine, make,

Sense

See, hear, feel,

2. Semantic Feature
Semantic feature is a notational device for expressing the presence or absence of semantic
properties by pluses and minuses. Word may be intersecting semantic classes. For example
woman in the class with the property female; child is in the class young and girl is in the
intersecting class with the two properties female and young.
Additionally, there are semantic relations between words, and certain semantic categories
may imply other. For example, the property human implies animate.

Such relationships can be expressed by semantic feature. In this case the lexical entries for
words such as father, girl, and mare would have the following (incomplete) appearance:
Woman

Man

Girl

+ female
+ human
- young

+ male
+human

+female
+human
+young

Mare
+female
-human
-young
+horseness

The function of this feature is helps us to recognize the sentence which is semantically odd, so
we can make the right one if we know the rules.
Example:
1. The hamburger ate the man
2. My Cat studied linguistic
Notice that the oddness of these sentences does not derive from their syntactical structure.
According to some basic syntactic rules forming English sentences (such as those presented in
syntax), we have well-structured sentences:
The hamburger
NP

ate
V

the man
NP

This sentence is syntactically good, but semantically odd. Since the sentence The man ate
hamburger is perfectly acceptable, what is the source of the oddness we experience? One answer
may related to the components of the conceptual meaning of the noun hamburger which is differ
significantly from those of the noun man, especially when those nouns are used as subject of the
verb ate. The kinds of nouns which can be subjects of the verb ate must denote entities which are
capable of eating. The noun hamburger does not have this property (and man does), hence the
oddness of the first sentence above.
We can, in fact, make this observation more generally applicable by trying to determine the
crucial component of meaning which a noun must have in order to be used as the subject of the
verb ate. Such a component may be as general as animate being. We can then take this
component and use it to describe part of the meaning of the words as either + animate (= denotes
an animate being) or animate (= does not denote an animate being).
3. Meaning Postulates
In semantics, a meaning postulate is the notion that lexical items (words) can be defined
in terms of relations with other lexical items. The classic example (formulated by Rudolf
Carnap [citation needed]) is: bachelor = unmarried male. Alumni = graduated students.
A device whereby implicitly ANALYTIC sentences, like Bachelors are male, are
introduced into a formal language (one whose terms are rigorously defined) by postulates like
anything, if it is a bachelor, is (to count as) male. More interestingly, Anything, if it is a raven,
is (to count as) black could be used as a meaning postulate to fix a sense of raven.

Anything we refuse to call black we will then refuse to call a raven.

Philosophy of language, logic A term introduced by Carnap in 1953 and originally intended to
explicate but not strictly define an analytical statement that is not logically true. It was later
extended to any statement or rule that specifies or clarifies the meaning of a predicate and hence
determines the entailments that derive from that predicate in the non-logical vocabulary of a
natural language. Examples of this kind of meaning postulate include recursive definitions and
definitions in use. The advantage of this device is that it avoids a sharp distinction between the
logical and non-logical vocabulary of the object language. We draw an analytic-synthetic
distinction formally only in connection with formalized languages whose inventors list some
statements and rules as meaning postulates. That is, it is stipulated that to qualify as correctly
using the language one must accept those statements and rules.Putnam, The Analytic and the
Synthetic, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science,
4. Redundancy Rules
Redundancy (linguistics), the construction of a phrase that presents some idea using more
information, often via multiple means, than is necessary for one to be able understand the idea.
For example, we know that human implies animate, could be state using redundancy
rules on this feature (look the semantic feature above).
e.g : PIN number (Personal Identiffication Number) number
RAID array (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)

REFERENCES
Mariani, Nanik & Fatchul Muin.2007.An Introduction to linguiatics.Banjarmasin:PT.LKIS
Pelangi Aksara.
Adisutrisno, D.Wagiman.2003. Semantics an Inttroduction to the basic concepts.
Surabaya:Airlangga University Press.