[Lexicog] Semantic domain dictionaries

[Fritz Goerling]

I have just worked on one semantic domain of religious vocabulary in  depth
(God's benevolence)
comparing this semantic field in the Bible, the Qur'an, and in a West
African language with
a view of translation and bridge-building. My best informant was a professor
of linguistics and
specialist of the Qur'an, native speaker of the African language in
question.
As the language has borrowed almost all of its religious language from
Arabic, it was interesting
to see how some of these terms have undergone semantic shifts and been
thoroughly africanized.
I shared already on this list that BARAKA (from Arabic barakat = blessing)
has come to mean
"power" in this language so it had to be treated in the semantic domain of
"power" words,
not in the "God's benevolence" domain.
Now when we are talking about semantic domain dictionaries, how does they
differ from
"synonym dictionaries"? According to Eugene Nida, co-author of the 2 volume
Greek-English
Lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic domains , "there are no
synonyms." I share that
view in the sense that, connotatively speaking, there are in fact no
synonyms. From the point
of view of denotation, or referentially speaking, there are synonyms.
I think the semantic field/domain approach represents one of the greatest
advances in
modern lexicology. It works on the premise that the meanings of words are to
be understood
in terms of their paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. Semantic fields do
not have to be
organized in a fixed way using Aristotelian categorization of "necessary and
sufficient features".
Semantic field theory can incorporate a prototype model of meaning which has
the advantage
of more closely approximating reality than classification based on rigid
"pigeon-hole"
distinctions. The advantage of the semantic domain approach is that it
compares and
contrasts all the words for a concept, and so brings out more fully how each
individual word
differs, from, or is simliar to, other words. It helps to determine
precisely distinctive
differences between so-called "synonyms" by comparing their common and
contrastive
features and by analyzing their sense relations.
Here is a challenge. What do "mercy" and "grace" have in common and how do
they differ in English? And what sense components do they share and how do
they differ in
another language?
Examples can be given from religious or from secular use.

Fritz Goerling

  Have you ever worked on a semantic domain dictionary of a language? If so,
  would you please share with list subscribers how the native speakers of
the
  language responded to studying semantic domains? For instance, did they
seem
  to approach the lexicon of their language more naturally by semantic
domains
  than they would approach it alphabetically?

  I would appreciate comments from as many of you on the list as possible. I
  would especially find interesting anecdotes about how native speakers of
the
  language took to researching natural semantic groupings of terms within
  their lexicon.

  Thanks,
  Wayne
  -----
  Wayne Leman
  Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language


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