SEMANTICS FIELD

Dewi Khana
0811202169
A. INTRODUCTION
Language is the medium of communication. By using language people
can transfer certain information and express their feeling to another person.
Linguistics is the science which attempts to understand language from
the point of view of its internal structure. One of the fields in linguistic which
study about meaning is semantics. The study of semantics includes the study
of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified and illustrated. An
understanding of semantics is important for understanding language in social
contexts, as these are likely to affect meaning.
Some important areas of semantic theory include conception of
meaning, words and lexemes, pragmatics, ambiguity, semantic fields,
semantic change and etymology, etc.
One of the important areas of semantic theory above, semantics field is
a technical term in the discipline of linguistics to describe a set of words
grouped in a certain way.
B. DISCUSSION
Adrienne Lehrer (1985), define semantics field more specifically as a
set of lexemes which cover a certain conceptual domain and which bear
certain specifiable relations to one another. Semantics field also known as
word field, lexical field, domain, field of meaning. The words in a semantic
field share a common semantic property. Most often, fields are defined by

subject matter, such as body parts, landforms, diseases, colors, foods, or

kinship relations.
In studying the lexicon of English (or any language) we may group
together lexemes which inter-relate, in the sense that we need them to define
or describe each other. For example we can see how such lexemes as cat,
feline, muggy; puss, kitten, tom, queen and meow occupy the same semantic
field. We can also see that some lexemes will occupy many fields: noise will
appear in semantic fields for acoustics, pain or discomfort and electronics
(noise = interference).
Andersen (1990) identifies the traditional usage of "semantic field"
theory as:"Traditionally, semantic fields have been used for comparing the
lexical structure of different languages and different states of the same
language." The set of lexemes in any one language system which cover the
conceptual area and, by means of the relations of sense which hold between
them, give structure to it is lexical field, and each lexeme will cover a certain
conceptual area, which may in turn be structured as a field by another set of
lexeme (as the area covered by red in English is structured by scarlet,
crimson, vermillion, etc.). The sense of a lexeme is therefore a conceptual
area that is associated with a lexeme, as its sense, is a concept.
C. CONCLUSION
Semantics field is a technical term in the discipline of linguistics to
describe a set of words grouped in a certain way. Semantics field also known
as word field, lexical field, domain, field of meaning. Semantic fields have

been used for comparing the lexical structure of different languages and
different states of the same language.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lyons, John. 1969. Introduction to Theoritical Linguistics. Great Bretain:
Cambridge University Press.
www.google.semantics+semantics field.com