STRUCTURAL SEMANTICS, SEMANTICS FIELDS

AND

SENSE RELATIONS

Jahanzeb Jahan

I.D: 100784-006

STRUCTURAL SEMANTICS, SEMANTICS FIELDS

AND

SENSE RELATIONS

Contents:

(1): Structuralism and Structural Semantics

(2): Semantic Field Theory

(3): Sense Relations

(4): References.

Structuralism and Structural Semantics:

The father of structuralism (and many would say of the modern science of linguistics)

was the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). But Saussure was a reluctant

father whose seminal Cours de linguistique générale (Course in General Linguistics,

1916) was edited and posthumously published by two colleagues and a student who

assiduously took notes at his lectures. The peculiar nature of its composition has resulted

in a work that is fraught with contradictions and puzzling self-doubts cheek by jowl with

superbly confident, dogmatic assertions. Despite all the vagaries of its composition,

Cours de linguistique générale is a hugely influential work and has probably done more

to establish linguistics as an independent discipline than any other single book.

Although Saussure had a background in the historical study of language and had made

significant advances in the understanding of the Indo-European vowel system, he was

unusually critical of neogrammarian philology, which he accused of being overly

absorbed in diachrony (that is, issues of the evolution of languages). Saussure also

criticized traditional grammarians for neglecting entire aspects of language and for

lacking overall perspective, but allowed that their method was fundamentally correct and

that they properly emphasized synchrony. Hence, whereas the discipline of historical

linguistics that grew up in the nineteenth century was almost wholly diachronic in its

orientation, linguistics in the first half of the twentieth century—following the lead of

Saussure—became a largely synchronic enterprise. It was not long before European

structuralism crossed the Atlantic to become the predominant methodology of American

linguistics.

The German-born American anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884–1939) was responsible

for many enduring concepts in linguistic research. Author of the landmark volume

Language (1921), Sapir emphasizes that language is tightly linked to culture. For Sapir,

language is an acquired function of culture rather than being biologically determined.

This view is diametrically opposed to that of the transformationalists (see below), who

believe (but have not proved) that human beings possess a genetically determined

predisposition for language—including many of its most specific and distinguishing

features—that is already present at the moment of birth. Sapir is undoubtedly correct

when he points out that, sans society, an individual will never learn to talk in meaningful

terms—that is, to communicate ideas to other persons within a given community. This

can easily be demonstrated by observation of feral or mentally abused children and in

children suffering from autism or other psychological disorders that affect the acquisition

and manipulation of language. Similarly, infants who are born into one linguistic

environment but are adopted into a completely different linguistic environment will

obviously not grow up speaking the language of their biological parents. If there is any

"hardwiring" of linguistic abilities, it occurs around puberty, after which time it becomes

increasingly difficult to attain full fluency in a second language or to lose all ability in

one's mother tongue. Sapir, of course, could not have foreseen the degree to which the

transformationalists would divorce language from its social and cultural matrix, but he

would undoubtedly have been horrified by this turn of events and would have regarded it

as a fallacious approach to language. While Sapir may not be around to point out the

speciousness of the transformationalists' so-called LAD (Language Acquisition Device,

also styled the "language module," "language instinct," and so forth), which stipulates

hardwired language ability at birth, that has been done ably by Jerome Bruner (b. 1915)

with his cognitive learning theory that builds on the cultural-cognitive developmental

model of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934).

Although Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949) was a contemporary and colleague of Sapir,

and the two are widely regarded as the founders of American structuralism, they were

quite dissimilar in temperament and outlook. Whereas Sapir was more dramatic and

imaginative, Bloomfield tended to be methodical and preferred as much as possible to

rely strictly upon evidence in formulating his positions. In 1914 he wrote Introduction to

the Study of Language, which in later editions was called simply Language (1933).

Bloomfield was responsible for an enormously influential synthesis that brought together

three earlier traditions of language study (historical, philological, and practical), and

forged them into a coherent whole. He was fiercely determined to establish linguistics as

a science. In particular, he wished to distinguish linguistics from the speculative

philosophers who assumed that the structure of their own language embodied universal

forms of human thought or even the cosmic order. In addition to the speculative

philosophers, Bloomfield censured the grammarians of the old school tradition who

strove to apply logical standards to language, ignoring actual usage in favor of

prescriptive rules. Bloomfield was especially critical of those who took the features of

Latin as the normative form of human speech. He was much more favorably disposed

toward the grammatical studies of the ancient Indians because the latter were themselves

excellent phoneticians who had also developed an intelligent systematization of grammar

and lexicon.

In Europe, structuralism did not remain a monolithic linguistic monopoly. The Prague

School (which grew out of the Prague Linguistic Circle) is a branch of structuralism, but

with a difference. The members of this school hold language to be a system of

functionally related units and focus on the observation of linguistic realia at discrete

moments. They are interested in language change, not in maintaining a strict dichotomy

of langue and parole (linguistic system versus linguistic utterance)—a key tenet of

Saussure—or of synchrony and diachrony. The starting point of the Prague School is to

clarify the function of the various elements of actual utterances. The Prague School has

made a lasting impact upon many areas of modern linguistics, particularly with regard to

the analysis of the sounds of language and their effect in literature.

Another noteworthy structuralist school is the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle. One of its

leading theoreticians was Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965), whose Prologomena (1943;

English edition 1953) is intended as a series of preliminary statements essential for the

formulation of any theory of language. Laying down the most basic ground rules for

linguistics, Hjelmslev faults the humanities for being overly descriptive and insufficiently

systematizing. He is opposed to the confusion of philosophy of language with theories of

language. Hjemslev views language as a self-sufficient totality of its own. He foresees the

emergence of an "algebra of language," which he calls "glossematics." This novel

linguistic approach, which strongly emphasizes form, is intentionally designed to

distinguish the ideas of the Copenhagen School from more traditional forms of structural

linguistics, such as those of the Prague School. Hjelmslev does adhere to Saussure's basic

principles of structuralism, but attempts to make his theory more axiomatic, having been

influenced by the logical empiricism of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), Russell,

and Carnap. With the ostensible goal of eliminating confusion between the object

(language) being studied and the methodology used to describe it, Hjelmslev tries to

create noncontradictory descriptive terminology by employing carefully crafted

abstractions and mathematical logic.

Around the middle of the twentieth century, Morris Swadesh (1909–1967), a student of

Sapir, devised a statistical method for determining the family relationships of languages

and the probable dates of their separation from a common parent. This technique, which

is called lexico-statistics or glottochronology, is premised upon the idea that the

vocabulary of a language is replaced at a constant rate, much like the steady radioactive

decay of carbon-14 that is used to date organic remains. The Swadesh lists select a core

vocabulary of one hundred or two hundred words consisting of body part terms, lower

numerals, pronouns, primary kinship terms, common flora and fauna, words for ordinary

topographical features, and so forth. Widely used in the 1960s and 1970s,

glottochronology provoked an emotional debate, with all manner of objections being

raised against it: the rate of decay is not universal, cognates may be partial and may or

may not be recognizable, even core terms may be borrowed, and so forth. Despite the

outcry, glottochronology is still employed, but in mathematically increasingly complex

and conceptually more sophisticated models. For example, a geographical dimension may

be incorporated into the tree, and more careful attention is paid to historical

reconstruction.

The first is distinction of langue and parole. Little need be said about this, since

essentially the same distinction has already Saussure’s doctrine of the language system in

the certain respects unclear; and the precise nature of the distinction he wish to draw has

been the subject of considerable controversy. He emphasize the supra individual and

social character of the language -system

(in terms which owed much to durkheim); and yet he also insisted that it had some

psychological validity, being stored in the brain of every member of the language-

community. Linguist will argue about the degree of abstraction and idealization involved

in the postulation of an underlying relatively uniform, language-system; and many of

them will deny that the system they postulate internalized, as such, in the brains of native

speakers of the languages they are describing. But most linguist do now a days draw

some king distinction between language-behaviour and the system of units and relations

underlying that behavior.

The second Saussurean distinction is that of substance and form. In view of the

fact that ‘form’ is widely employed in linguistics in other senses (cf.1.5) we will

substituted for it in discussion in alternative term structure. The Saussurean notion of

substance is very close to the Aristotelian and scholastic concept of matter. (‘substance’

has a quiet different sense in philosophical traditions which stems from Aristotle, but it is

know well establish in linguistic in the Sausserean sense.) to take a traditional example:

when a sculptor cavers a statue out of a block of marble he takes something which, for

the present purpose, we may think of as shapeless and internally undifferentiated and

gives to it, by the process of sculpting, a definite and distinctive shape, so that it becomes,

for example a statue of Apollo or Pagasus. The marble, considered as substance, is

potentially many things, but in actuality it is none; it becomes one thing rather than

another by the imposition of one structure rather than another on the undifferentiated

substratum.

So it is, says Saussure, with language. But languages result from the imposition of

structure on two kinds of substance: sound and thought. The phonological composition of

a word-form is a complex of phonemes, each of which, as we have seen, derives its

essence and its existence from the structure on the otherwise nebulous and inchoate

continuum of thought.

The distinction of substance and structure is crucial in Saussrean structuralism.

The third of Saussure’s dichotomies has to do with the relationships which hold between

units in the language units in the language-system. These relationships are of two kinds:

Paradigmatic and syntagmatic. The syntagmatic relation which a unit contracts are those

which it contracts by virtue of its contributions (in a syntagm, or construction) which

other units of the same level¤. For example, the lexeme ‘old’ is syntagmatically related

with the definite article ‘the’ the noun man’ in the expression ‘the old man’; the letter i is

syntagmaically related with p and t in the written word-form pit. It is important to note

that, although syntagmatic relation is actualized, as it were, in language-behaviour, they

are nonetheless part of the language –system. The fact that the old man can occur in

English utterances as a grammatically correct phrase (as a form of the expression ‘the old

man’) depends upon the fact that the constituent lexemes belong to parts of speech whose

combinatorial possibilities are determined in the underlying language system. The form

the old man in one of the a whole set of forms, the young man, the tall man, the young

woman, etc., all of which can be described as noun phrases with the internal structure

Article+Adjective+Noun. The cation in English (whereas ‘the cylindrical cube’ for

example, is not) depends upon the meaning associated with the constituent lexemes in the

language-system. We shall have more to say about syntagmatic relations in grammar and

semantics later.

The paradigmatic relations contracted by units are those which hold between a

particular unit in given syntagm. For example, ‘old’ is paradigmatically related with

‘young’, ‘tall’, etc., as ‘man’ is paradigmatically related with the ‘woman’, ‘dog’ , etc.

similarly the letter I, e and are intersubstitutable for one another in the word-forms pit

pet and pat.

One further point should be stressed here with reference to lexical structure.

When we consider the distinctions of meaning that are lexicalized in particular language-

systems, we see that it is frequently the case that one language will pack into a single

lexical items (i.e. will make paradigmatic) information which in another language must

be conveyed if it can be at all in the system, by means of a collection (i.e. by syntagmatic

modification). For example, in Turkish there is no word meaning “brother” and “sister” is

lexeme ‘krades’ covers both, and it must be combined with another lexeme in order to

draw the distinction (which English is lexicalize) between ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. On the

other hand, there are languages in which the distinction between “elder brother” and

“younger brother” is lexicalized.

Little need be said that stage about the fourth Saussurean distinction: between the

synchronic and the diachronic investigation of languages. By the synchronic analysis of a

language is meant the investigation of the language as it is, o was, at a certain time ; by

the diachronic analysis of language is to be understood the study changes in language

between two given points in times.

The paradigmatic and syntagmatic interrelations of these complexes are unique to

particular languages; the ultimate components of sound and meaning are language-

neutral. According to this view, neither the substance of sound nor the substance of

meaning is an undifferentiated continuum within which languages draw purely arbitrary

distinctions.

 Semantic Field Theory:

What has now come to be known as the theory of semantic fields (or field-theory)

was first put forward as such by a number of German and Swiss scholars in 1920s and

1930s: notably Ipsen 1924, Jolles (1934), Porzig(1934), Trier(1934). Its orgins, however,

can be traced back at least to the middle of the nineteenth century (cf. Geckler, 1971:

86ff) and in a more general way, to the ideas of Humboldt (1836) and Herder (1772).

There can be no question of attempting here a comprehensive treatment of field theory,

still less of reviewing the very considerable body of descriptive work based on the theory

which has appeared in the last forty years. this task has been more than adequately

performed by others (cf. Ohman, 1951; Ullmann. 1957: Oksaar, 1958: Kuhlwein,1967).

We will restrict our attention for the most part to Trier’s version of field-theory, which,

despite the criticisms that can be directed against it, is widely and rightly judged to have

“opened a new phase in the history of semantics’’ (Ullmann,1962:7). It should be pointed

out, however, that Trier published nothing on field-theory after 1938 (cf. malkiel, 1974).

His ideas were further developed by students and also by L. Weisgerber, who associated

himself in with Trier in the 1930s and continued to elaborate to collection of articles

celebrating trier work.

Trier has worked upon sense relations but he does not explain what he means by ‘sense’

and what he means by ‘meaning’ and how each of these is to be distinguished from the

obviously Saussurean ‘value’. Trier looks upon the vocabulary of a language as an

integrated system of lexemes interrelated in sense. The system is in constant flux. Not

only we do find previously existing lexemes disappearing and new lexemes coming into

being throughout the history of a language; the relation of sense which hold between a

given lexeme and neighbouring lexemes are constantly changing through time. 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. The semantic field of a

given word shifts over time — see "semantic shift." For example, the English word

"man" used to mean "human being" exclusively, while today it predominantly means

"adult male," but its semantic field still extends in some uses to the generic "human" (see

Mannaz).Overlapping semantic fields are problematic, especially in translation. Words

that have multiple meanings (called polysemous words) are often untranslatable,

especially with all their connotations. Such words are frequently loaned instead of

translated. Examples include "chivalry" (literally "horsemanship," related to "cavalry"),

"dharma" (literally, "support"), and "taboo."

 

Semantic relations (meaning relations):

Semantic relations in the narrow sense are semantic relations between concepts or

meanings. The concept [school] should be distinguished from the word ‘school’. [School]

is a kind of [educational institution]. This indicates a hierarchical (or generic) relationship

between two concepts or meanings, which is one kind among a long range of kinds of

semantic relations. The relation between ‘school’ and ‘schoolhouse’ is a (synonym)

relation between two words, while the relation between ‘school’ and ‘place for teaching’

is a relation between a word and an expression or phrase. The relations between words

are termed lexical relations. 'School' also means [a group of people who share common

characteristics of outlook, a school of thought]. This is a homonym relation: Two senses

share the same word or expression: ‘school’.  Synonyms and homonyms are not relations

between concepts, but are about concepts expressed with identical or with different signs.

 

Relations between concepts, senses or meanings should not be confused with relations

between the terms, words, expressions or signs that are used to express the concepts. It is,

however, common to mix both of these kinds of relations under the heading "semantic

relations" (i.e., Cruse, 1986; Lyons, 1977; Malmkjær, 1995 & Murphy, 2003), why

synonyms, homonyms etc. are considered under the label "semantic relations" in in a

broader meaning of this term.

 

 

Some important kinds of semantic relations are:

Active relation: A semantic relation between two concepts, one of which

expresses the performance of an operation or process affecting the other.

Antonymy (A is the opposite of B; e.g. cold is the opposite of warm)

Associative relation: A relation which is defined psychologically: that (some)

people associate concepts (A is mentally associated with B by somebody). Often

are associative relations just unspecified relations.

Causal relation: A is the cause of B. For example: Scurvy is caused by lack of

vitamin C.

Homonym. Two concepts, A and B, are expressed by the same symbol. Example:

Both a financial institution and a edge of a river are expressed by the word bank

(the word has two senses).

Hyponymous relationships ("is a" relation or hyponym-hyperonym), generic

relation,  genus-species relation: a hierarchical subordinate relation. (A is kind of

B; A is subordinate to B; A is narrower than B; B is broader than A). The "is a"

relation denotes what class an object is a member of. For example, "CAR - is a -

VEHICLE" and "CHICKEN - is a - BIRD". It can be thought of as being a

shorthand for "is a type of". When all the relationships in a system are "is a", is

the system a taxonomy. The "generic of" option allows you to indicate all the

particular types (species, hyponyms) of a concept. The "specific of" option allows

you to indicate the common genus (hypernym) of all the particular types.

Instance-of relation. (“instance”, example relation) designates the semantic

relations between a general concept and individual instances of that concept. A is

an example of B. Example: Copenhagen is an instance of the general concept

'capital'.

Locative relation: A semantic relation in which a concept indicates a location of a

thing designated by another concept. A is located in B; example: Minorities in

Denmark.

Meronymy, partitive relation (part-whole relation): a relationship between the

whole and its parts (A is part of B) A meronym is the name of a constituent part

of, the substance of, or a member of something. Meronymy is opposite to

holonymy (B has A as part of itself). (A is narrower than B; B is broader than A).

Passive relation:  A semantic relation between two concepts, one of which is

affected by or subjected to an operation or process expressed by the other.

Paradigmatic relation. Wellisch (2000, p. 50): “A semantic relation between two

concepts, that is considered to be either fixed by nature, self-evident, or

established by convention. Examples: mother / child; fat /obesity; a state /its

capital city”.

Polysemy: A polysemous (or polysemantic) word is a word that has several sub-

senses which are related with one another. (A1, A2 and A3 shares the same

expression)

Possessive: a relation between a possessor and what is possessed.

Related term. A term that is semantically related to another term. In thesauri are

related terms often coded RT and used for other kinds of semantic relations than

synonymity (USE; UF), homonymity (separated by paranthetical qualifier) ,

generic relations and partitative relations (BT; NT). Related terms may, for

example express antagonistic relations, active/passive relations, causal relations,

locative relations, paradigmatic relations.

Synonymy (A denotes the same as B; A is equivalent with B).

Temporal relation: A semantic relation in which a concept indicates a time or

period of an event designated by another concept. Example: Second World War,

1939-1945.

Troponymy is defined in WordNet 2 as: the semantic relation of being a manner

of does something (or sense 2: "the place names of a region or a language

considered collectively"). 

 

How many kinds of semantic relations exist?

Is the number of semantic relations finite or infinite? What determines this number? In

the quotation below (Rosario & Hearst, 2001) it is stated that there are contradictory

views in theoretical linguistics regarding the semantic properties of noun compounds

(NCs). Some argues that there exists a small set of semantic relationships that NCs may

imply. Others argue that the semantics of NCs cannot be exhausted by any finite listing of

relationships. Green (2001, p. 5-6) argues that the inventory of semantic relationships

includes both a closed set of relationships (including mainly hierarchical and equivalence

relationships) and an open set of relationships. Every time a new verb is coined, for

example, the potential for the introduction of a new conceptual relationship arises.

    The answer is propably that any relation between objects (or processes or anything

else) may be reflected in languages between the corresponding concepts. "Love" is a

relation between some people, e.g. Tom and Clare. 'Tom' and 'Clare' are thus (individual)

concepts with the semantic relation 'love'.

    In addition to relations in the world, semantic relations may reflect relations in

language including relations between objects and their symbols (as in synonyms). The

limit to the number of semantic relations seems to be  relations that nobody have found

interesting to conceptualize. Different domains develop  continuously new kinds of

semantic relations. Rosario & Hearst (2001) thus identified 38 semantic relations within

medicine.

"In this work we aim for a representation that is intermediate in generality between

standard case roles (such as Agent, Patient, Topic, Instrument), and the specificity

required for information extraction. We have created a set of relations that are sufficiently

general to cover a significant number of noun compounds, but that can be domain

specific enough to be useful in analysis. We want to support relationships between

entities that are shown to be important in cognitive linguistics, in particular we intend to

support the kinds of inferences that arise from Talmy’s force dynamics (Talmy, 1985). It

has been shown that relations of this kind can be combined in order to determine the

“directionality” of a sentence (e.g., whether or not a politician is in favor of, or opposed

to, a proposal) (Hearst, 1990). In the medical domain this translates to, for example,

mapping a sentence into a representation showing that a chemical removes an entity that

is blocking the passage of a fluid through a channel. The problem remains of determining

what the appropriate kinds of relations are. In theoretical linguistics, there are

contradictory views regarding the semantic properties of noun compounds (NCs). Levi

(1978) argues that there exists a small set of semantic relationships that NCs may imply.

Downing (1977) argues that the semantics of NCs cannot be exhausted by any finite

listing of relationships. Between these two extremes lies Warren’s (1978) taxonomy of

six major semantic relations organized into a hierarchical structure.

    We have identified the 38 relations shown in Table 1 [omitted here]. We tried to

produce relations that correspond to the linguistic theories such as those of Levi and

Warren, but in many cases these are inappropriate. Levi’s classes are too general for our

purposes; for example, she collapses the “location” and “time” relationships into one

single class “In” and therefore field mouse and autumnal rain belong to the same class.

Warren’s classification schema is much more detailed, and there is some overlap between

the top levels of Warren’s hierarchy and our set of relations." (Rosario & Hearst, 2001).

The most commonly used semantic relations have resemblance with lists of categories,

for example, with Aristotle’s famous 10 categories:

1. substance

2. quantity

3. qualification (quality)

4. a relative (relation)

5. where (place)

6. when (time)

7. being-in-a-position (position)

8. having (state)

9. doing , (action)

10. being-affected (affection)

 They have also resemblance with commonly used grammatical categories. Such

categories and grammatical relations represent abstractions or generalizations. The

former example "love" may thus be seen as a special case of "being affected". Although

the number of semantic relations appears to be unlimited, in most cases a limited number

of generalized kinds are used in practice. 

 

How are semantic relations determined? (What are their "warrants")?

Hjørland (2007) discusses the following possibilities:

 

a) Query/situation specific or idiosyncratic 

b) Universal, Platonic entities/relations

c) “Deep semantics” common to all languages (or inherent in cognitive structures)

d) Specific to specific empirical languages (e.g. Swedish)

e) Domain or discourse specific

f) Other (e.g. determined by a company or by a workgroup, “user oriented”)

 

In information retrieval the basic functions for semantic relations may be conceived as

contributing to the increase of recall and precision. The inclusion of synonyms and

broader terms in a query may, for example, contribute to increased recall. The

differentiation of homonyms and the specification of terms may increase precision. In

this way may the widely use of standard semantic relations used in thesauri be explained

functionally. There are, however, recommendations that the number of relations should

be expanded: 

"The participants [in a NISO 1999 workshop on standards for electronic thesauri]

recommended that a much richer, hierarchically organized, set of relationships be

developed. . . . There is reason to expect that provision for semantic relations in

controlled vocabularies will become much more extensive in a future standard . . ."

(Milstead, 2001, p. 65).

 

How should we explain this demand for a much richer set of relationships than ordinarily

used in, for example, thesauri? The answer may imply a criticism of the traditional

recall/precision way of understanding information retrieval.  What information searchers

need are maps that inform them about the world (and the literature about that world) in

which they live and act. They need such maps in order to formulate questions in the first

hand. In order to formulate queries and to interact with information sources are advanced

semantic tools often very useful. This is propably especially so in the humanities, where

concepts are more clearly associated with world views. In Germany the concept of

conceptual history ("Begriffsgeschichte") is an illustration of this point: Historians and

other humanist researchers have realized that in order to use sources from a given period,

you have to know what the terms ment at the time. Therefore they have developed

impressive historical dictionaries which provide detailed information about conceptual

developments within different domains just as they have developed methodological

principles on how to work with historical information sources (cf., Hampsher-Monk;

Tilmans & Vree, 1998). 

 

An example of a semantic tool developed in this tradition is Reallexikon der deutschen

Literaturwissenschaft (Weimar, 1997-2003), which provide the following information for

each term:

The term (e.g. 'bibliographie')

A definition (e.g. definition of 'bibliography')

A history of the word (its etymology, e.g. the etymology of the word

'bibliographie')

A history of the concept. (e.g. the history of the meanings of 'bibliography')

A history of the field (e.g. the history of bibliographies themselves) and 

A history of research about the field (e.g. the history of research on

bibliographies, i.e. library science)

This example is mentioned because it illustrates the existence of important work which

may inspire LIS to a broader approach to semantic relations.

Not much research has investigated whether different domains need different kinds of

semantic tools displaying different kinds of semantic relations. Roberts (1985) is an

exception arguing for the importance for specific kinds of relations in the social sciences.

Hjørland (2004) argued that "traditional standardized and universal tools like thesauri

may perhaps be better suited for technological fields, while historical dictionaries in the

tradition of Begriffsgeschichte may be better suited for the humanities."

References:

Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics I: Cambridge University Press. New York

Hardy, Christine. 1998. Networks of meaning : A bridge between mind and matter. Westport , CT : Praeger/Greenwood.

Hjørland, B. (2007). Semantics and Knowledge Organization. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 41, 367-405.