Semantic Feature Analysis
Semantic Feature Analysis, or Componential Analysis, is a method for understanding word meaning by decomposing concepts into minimal meaningful units called semantic features or components. Developed by Ward Goodenough in 1956, this approach represents the meaning of words as bundles of features (e.g., 'woman' = [human] [adult] [female]), enabling systematic analysis of semantic relationships, kinship systems, plant classifications, and lexical fields. The method is grounded in structural linguistics and has applications in anthropology, cognitive linguistics, and lexicography.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Goodenough, W. H. (1956). Componential analysis and the study of meaning. Language, 32(2), 195-216. · DOI 10.2307/410665
- Nida, E. A. (1975). Componential Analysis of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. · URL
- Cruse, D. A. (2000). Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. · URL
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.