Semantic-Based Description of Jose Garcia Villa’s Select Poetic Texts

Abstract

This study deals with the semantic-based elements in English of the select poetic texts of Jose Garcia Villa, namely: ‘If My Sun Set in the West,’ ‘Lyric 17,’ and ‘Poem Written beneath a Blue Lampshade.’ The sentences' surface structure or syntax and deep structure or semantics are dissected by idealizing the raw data, immediate constituent analysis, and identification of functions, notions, and sentence transform, respectively. This study uses semantic-based descriptions to determine the essential variables of a scheme from a format that establishes their relation. A semantic-based description is an approach to linguistics that treats language as an interwoven structure. Every item acquires identity and validity only with the other things in the system. It is found that some linguistic categories are retrieved, like nouns and pronouns; some are omitted; archaic words are changed and relocated in the select poetic texts. Some sentences undergo restructuring, from inverted to regular utterances. The immediate constituent analysis of each idealized sentence reveals the nouns, pronouns, verbs, auxiliary verbs, linking verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunction, determiner, interjection, and particles for the infinitives. The functions revealed in the sentences include representational, regulatory, personal, directive, and interactional. The notion of the first poem is the speaker trying to stop a usual event from happening. The second poem talks about the inability to feel because of numbness in emotion. The third text is a dedication to a loved one, a poem solely written for the addressee. All sentences of the three select texts are restructured into three cases, namely: the nominative, possessive, and objective focus, respectively.