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cow — a full grown female of any animal of the ox family calf — the young of the cow
The first definition contains all the elements we have previously obtained from proportional oppositions. The second is incomplete but we can substitute the missing elements from the previous definition. We can, consequently, agree with J. N. Karaulov and regard as semantic components (or semes) the notional words of the right hand side of a dictionary entry.
It is possible to describe parts of the vocabulary by formalising these definitions and reducing them to some standard form according to a set of rules. The explanatory transformations thus obtained constitute an intersection of transformational and componential analysis. The result of this procedure applied to collective personal nouns may be illustrated by the following.
e. g. team → a group of people acting together in a game, piece of work, etc.
Procedures briefly outlined above proved to be very efficient for certain problems and find an ever-widening application, providing us with a deeper insight into some aspects of language.1
1 For further detail see: Арнольд И.В. Семантическая структура слова в современном английском языке и методика ее исследования. Л., 1966.
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Chapter 4 SEMANTIC CHANGE
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