Consider the idea each of us thinks of as part of the meaning of the words "chair", "stone", "man", "building", "planet", etc., but not part of the meaning of such words as "truth", "togetherness", "feeling", "shadow", "integer", "departure", etc.,-the idea that we take to express what is common to the meaning of the words in the former group and that we use to conceptually distinguish them from those in the latter. Roughly, we might characterize what is common to our individual ideas as the notion of a spatially and contiguous material thing. The semantic marker (physical object) is introduced to designate that notion. (Quoted by Lyons, 1968, p. 474.)
One standard example of attempts to specify semantic features is the analysis of kinship terms. This type of analysis was first attempted by Good enough (1956), an anthropologist who was interested in comparing the kinship terms and relations of various cultures. Others who have done related studies of this semantic field include Wallace and Atkins (1960), Romney and D'Andrade (1964), and Haviland and Clark (in pre,ss).
The kinship terms of English can be defined in terms of three dimensions:
A partial analysis of some English kinship terms would therefore appear as:
| Term | Sex | Generation | Linearity |
|---|---|---|---|
| father | M | +1 | Direct |
| mother | F | +1 | Direct |
| daughter | F | -1 | Direct |
| uncle | M | +1 | Collateral |
| niece | F | -1 | Collateral |
| cousin | M or F | 0 | Collateral |
| brother | M | 0 | Collateral |
| grandfather | M | +2 | Direct |
Other languages may require additional components. For example, some languages use different terms for father's brother and mother's brother, both of whom are "uncles" in English. This requires a dimension Good enough calls "bifurcation." Other languages differentiate between alder brother and younger brother; this requires a "seniority" dimension.