Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ORCID IDs
Date of this Version
8-17-2005
Abstract
Master's Thesis, University of Idaho, 1999. This thesis is a contrastive analysis of a semantic field, a group of words with related but not identical meanings that all describe or pertain to one domain or semantic area. The semantic field grace is compared in English, German, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The source of the data is selected books from the Bible, both the Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament (NT). The English words include grace, mercy, kindness, favor, compassion, and pity, as well as lovingkindness, goodness, and thanks. Data was compiled by beginning with the words grace and mercy in the King James version (KJV) of the Bible, and then finding correspondences in the original Greek and Hebrew, Martin Luther’s German Bible, and the Latin Vulgate. This study begins with a discussion of semantic analysis, semantic fields, translation theory, and a survey of some other semantic field studies. Etymologies of the major words in all the languages except Hebrew follow, along with a componential analysis of the field in each language, and a pairwise comparison of the field grace in each language. The thesis ends with further conclusions from the data, including major correspondences, problem areas, and areas for further study.