(1) The meaning of a word Ls an analyzable unit. It may be seen as a complex of different semantic features. There are semantic units smaller than the meaning of a word By showing the semantic components of a word, we may betta account for sense relations. Componential analysis is a way proposed by the structural semanticists to analyze word meaning. The approach is based upon the belief that the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic features. Usually, componential analysis is applied to a group of related words which may differ from one another only by one or two components.

(2) Plus and minus signs are used to indicate whether a certain semantic feature is present or absent in the meaning of a word, and these feature symbols are written in capitalized letters. For example， the word “woman” is analyzed as comprising the features of +HUMAN, +ADULT, +ANIMATE, +FEMALE.

(3) Componential analysis provides an insight into the meaning of words and a way to study the relationships between words that are related in meaning. However, as have been found, there are also difficulties in the approach to analyze the meaning of a word in terms of semantic components. First, many words are polysemy. They have more than one meaning; consequently they will have different sets of semantic components. Second, some semantic components are seen as binary taxonomies. However, sometimes the distinction to differentiate two semantic components such as “ADULT” and “YOUNG” is rather vague. Third, apart from the neatly organized parts of the vocabulary, there are words whose semantic components are difficult to ascertain. For example, the semantic components themselves, like HUMAN, ADULT, are not ordinary words of English; they belong to a meta-language. To someone who does not know the meta-language, the semantic components explain nothing.