The relationship between the semanteme of the modern Chinese character and the meaning of the formed word has stable patterns and regulations, which can be divided into eleven categories.
In the meaning of a big ant, the semanteme ‘big’ is a unary predicate whose argument is the semanteme ‘ant’.
Origin
Early 20th century: from French sémantème, from sémantique(see semantic), on the pattern of words such as morphème 'morpheme'.