4.2 Advantages of the Componential Analysis
One advantage of CA is that decomposing the meaning of words into semantic features allows us to capture lexical relationships. For example, antonyms such as man and woman contain at least one contrasting feature: man has [-female] whereas woman has [+female] as part of their feature specifications. The features of a superordinate such as woman are contained in the feature specification of a hyponym such as wife, as shown in (29). Associated with more semantic features, the referent of the hyponym is more specific and is included in the more general referent of the superordinate term. Accordingly, whenever we use the word wife, the meaning of woman is automatically implied.