Definition and Usage
Brinton (2000: p. 112) defines "semantic field" or "semantic domain" and relates the linguistic concept to hyponymy:
"Related to the concept of hyponymy, but more loosely defined, is the notion of a semantic field or domain. A semantic field denotes a segment of reality symbolized by a set of related words. The words in a semantic field share a common semantic property."
A general and intuitive description is that words in a semantic field are not synonymous, but are all used to talk about the same general phenomenon. A meaning of a word is dependent partly on its relation to other words in the same conceptual area. The kinds of semantic fields vary from culture to culture and anthropologists use them to study belief systems and reasoning across cultural groups.
Andersen (1990: p. 327) 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."
Read more about this topic: Semantic Field
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