Antonymy
Antonymy refers to the relationship between words that have opposite meanings. In linguistics, antonyms are words that are considered to be the most opposite in meaning within a language. They are often used to provide contrast and to express nuances in communication.
6 Key excerpts on "Antonymy"
eBook - ePubAntonymy
A Corpus-Based Perspective
- Steven Jones(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In general, two ways of defining Antonymy have emerged: the first involves semantic criteria; the second involves lexical criteria. The relative merits of each approach will now be evaluated. Semantic definitions The Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (Richards, Platt and Weber 1985) defines an antonym as ‘a word which is opposite in meaning to another word’ (1985: 14). Similarly, in his Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Crystal 2 says of Antonymy that ‘in its most general sense, it refers collectively to all types of semantic oppositeness’ (1985: 18). These definitions both reflect semantic criteria; indeed, Antonymy is often defined simply as ‘oppositeness of meaning’ (see Palmer, who relies on this gloss despite claiming that Antonymy ‘can be defined fairly precisely’ (1976: 94)). The problem with an exclusively semantic definition of Antonymy is that it fails to explain, or even acknowledge, the tendency for certain words to become enshrined as ‘opposites’ in language while others do not. Antonyms are semantically opposed words, but not all semantically opposed words are antonyms. Consider rich and poor, a pair of words which operate along a given scale, namely the scale of wealth. Affluent and broke also operate along this scale, but, intuitively, one would be reluctant to describe them as antonyms (or, at least, one would not want to describe them as having the same degree of antonymity as rich / poor). Cruse exemplifies this with the words tubby and emaciated (1986: 262) – without question, these words are ‘opposite in meaning’ to one another, yet it is difficult to imagine any native speaker of English volunteering them as ‘opposites’. Indeed, almost all established antonyms have synonyms which resist the label of Antonymy...
eBook - ePubAntonyms in Mind and Brain
Evidence from English and German
- Sandra Kotzor(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It originated as an alternative to counterterm and was defined simply as ‘a term which is the opposite or antithesis of another, a counter-term’ (OED ; Simpson, 1989). In Lyons’ (1977) and Cruse's (1986) definitions, antonym came to refer to only a subgroup of opposites defined by certain specific properties (adjectival, gradable opposite pairs). When the notion of Antonymy began to be investigated from a cognitive perspective, the term was used to refer to the relationship between two antonyms and its lexical, semantic and conceptual properties. The question, raised by Cruse (1986), of what qualifies as Antonymy is one which has been raised repeatedly and does not only relate to, for instance, whether the category of converses should be considered part of lexical opposition but also whether any pairs beyond those central ‘canonical’ opposites are included in this category. Making this distinction, of course, already presupposes a categorical approach either to Antonymy itself or to the degree of Antonymy, in that is places a pair in one of two categories: canonical or non-canonical. Earlier views which consider only those pairs which have become entrenched on the lexical level to constitute Antonymy proper (e.g. Miller, 1990; Jones, 2002) have now made way for a more holistic consideration of phenomena of opposition within cognitive usage-based proposals in which any pair of words, when subjected to binary bounded construal, can be considered antonymous (e.g. Jones et al., 2012). This approach is supported by a wealth of evidence from a diverse range of studies which emphasises the conceptual nature, dynamic construal, context-sensitivity and wide range of use of Antonymy in discourse. The fundamentally conceptual nature of Antonymy receives strong support from recent empirical studies, and the data presented in this book is no exception. The cross-linguistic analyses provide particularly convincing evidence that the locus of Antonymy lies in the conceptual domain...
eBook - ePub- Howard Jackson(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...135), it is used extensively in the definition of lexemes in the dictionary. It is also an important principle in establishing and describing lexical fields (see Chapter 14). Antonymy We turn now to Antonymy, a sense relation of a quite different kind than synonymy. Antonyms are not differentiated for formality or dialect or technicality: antonyms occur within the same style, dialect or register. But the relation of Antonymy is not uniform; there are different kinds of antonym. As a beginning to our discussion, list the antonyms of the following lexemes: [10] alive male narrow open over receive relinquish sell small tall weak wife It will be noted that a number of word-classes are represented by the lexemes in [10] : verb (e.g. receive, sell), noun (wife), preposition (over), adjective (e.g. alive, narrow). There is a preponderance of adjectives, however; and it is in this word-class that the relation of Antonymy operates most widely. We might list the antonyms of the items in [10] as follows: alive – dead, male – female, narrow – wide, open – shut, over – under, receive – give, relinquish – retain/keep, sell – buy, small – large/big, tall – short, weak – strong, wife – husband. A careful examination will reveal three kinds of oppositeness of meaning represented by the pairs of antonyms discussed. We can group them into three sets, with four pairs of antonyms in each set, as follows: [11] narrow – wide small – large tall – short weak – strong [12] alive – dead male – female open – shut relinquish – retain [13] over – under receive – give sell – buy wife – husband The antonyms represented in [11] are called gradable antonyms. They are adjectives which do not refer to absolute qualities, but which may be subject to comparison or qualification. For example, we could say of a road that it is ‘very narrow’ or ‘very wide’, ‘quite narrow’ or ‘quite wide’, or that one road is ‘wider’ or ‘narrower’ than another...
eBook - ePub- Kristin Denham, Anne Lobeck(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...6 The study of meaning Semantics and pragmatics In Chapter 1, we introduced some semantic concepts to help illustrate our unconscious knowledge of meaning. We briefly discussed ambiguity, entailment, and quantifier scope, to show that our knowledge of meaning goes far beyond understanding the meanings of words. Here, we will provide some more examples of the kinds of phenomena that linguists study when they study word and sentence meaning, or semantics. In addition to semantics, linguists also study conversational interactions and how we convey meaning in certain contexts. The study of meaning in context is called pragmatics, and we provide some examples of topics linguists might study in this area as well. Semantic relationships among words We all learn about the -nyms in school: homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, and more. We think of these relationships as fairly obvious and easy to explain; synonyms are words that mean the same thing, and antonyms are words that have opposite meanings. But these meaning relationships are actually quite a bit more complex, and the topic of much investigation in linguistics. Take synonyms for the adjective angry, for example. We might think of furious, mad, irate, wrathful as synonyms. But do these adjectives all mean exactly the same thing? In fact, linguists argue that synonyms usually differ in meaning in what may be subtle ways. If you are angry are you also furious? Wrathful? Is mad a closer match to angry than these other adjectives? Why/why not? We can imagine a child being talkative, but perhaps not verbose, even if the two words seem synonymous. Antonymy is similarly complex. In terms of the physics of light and the color spectrum, black and white might be considered exact antonyms, or opposites. But what about hot and cold ? Are these antonyms? You can imagine that not all of us would agree on what we consider hot coffee, nor on what outdoor temperature we consider to be cold...
eBook - ePub- Charles Kreidler(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Ten such pairs of nouns are given below. For each pair try to decide how the two words differ – a context in which one is possible but the other is not or a difference in connotation. You may also wish to say which is from French and which goes back to Old English. ache, pain error, mistake altitude, height force, strength center, middle labor, work cord, string pace, step dale, valley sight, vision In the phrase a funny story we can replace funny with humorous, a synonymous adjective. In a funny feeling a better synonym for funny is peculiar, but humorous and peculiar are not synonymous with each other. Two adjectives appear below, each in three contexts. Give a synonym for each context and test to see whether a single term can be synonymous in more than one of the contexts. a clear sky, a clear stream, a clear speech a wild party, wild geese, wild rice 5.5 Antonymy 14a Christian is watching television now. 14b Christian isn't watching television now. Two sentences that differ in polarity like these are mutually contradictory. If one is true, the other must be false. Two sentences that have the same subject and have predicates that are antonyms are also mutually contradictory. 15a The television is on now. 15b The television is off now. 16a Mr. Adams is an old man. 16b Mr. Adams is a young man. 17a The road is wide here. 17b The road is narrow here. Words such as on and off, old and young, wide and narrow are pairs of antonyms. Antonyms are opposite in meaning and when they occur as predicates of the same subject, the predications are contradictory. Antonyms may be nouns such as Communist and non-Communist or verbs such as advance and retreat. Among antonyms are pairs of measure adjectives such as old/young, wide/ narrow, and long/short. In such pairs one member is the global member. For example, when we say, “the baby is a week old,” we are not saying that the baby is old; we use “old” as the global member...
eBook - ePub- Sebastian Loebner(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...We shall see below that pairs of this form (X vs un-X, etc.) are not necessarily antonyms. The pattern also occurs with pairs of expression that form different types of opposition. Antonymy is not restricted to adjectives. There are antonymous pairs of nouns such as war/peace, love/hate and some antonymous pairs of verbs: love/hate or encourage/discourage. The pair alllno (thing) is antonymous, as are pairs of adverbs such as always/never, often/seldom, everywhere/nowhere. 8.3.3 Directional opposites Pairs such as in front of/behind, left/right, above/below have much in common with antonyms. For each such pair there is a point of reference from which one looks in opposite directions on a certain axis. Imagine yourself standing in a normal upright position, your head not turned or bent. Then the direction in which you look is what is denoted by in front of (you) and behind (you) denotes the opposite direction. The two directions are distinguished in several ways: the body has a front, which includes the face, the breast, etc., and it has a back; when one walks in the usual way, one walks into the direction that is in front of one. Thus, the body defines an axis in space, the front-back axis, or primary horizontal axis. Another axis defined by the body is the vertical head-feet axis. The extension of the direction from the body centre to the head defines the direction above ; the opposite direction is denoted by below. Finally, the body with its two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs and its general lateral symmetry defines another horizontal axis, the left-right axis. The three axes and how they relate to the corresponding expressions are depicted in Fig. 8.4. Figure 8.4 Directions D EFINITION 4 Directional opposition Two expressions are directional opposites iff they express opposite cases with respect to a common axis. The type of opposition represented by in front of/behind is called directional opposition...
