Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Donate Now
Opposite (semantics)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Antonym) Jump to: navigation, search This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.
WikiProject Linguistics or the Linguistics Portal may be able to help recruit one. If a more appropriate WikiProject or portal exists, please adjust this template accordingly. (November 2008)
In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male : female, long : short, up : down, and precede : follow. The notion of incompatibility here refers to fact that one word in an opposite pair entails that it is not the other pair member. For example, something that is long entails that it is not short. It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members in a set of opposites. The relationship between opposites is known as opposition. A member of a pair of opposites can generally be determined by the question What is the opposite of X ? The term antonym (and the related antonymy) has also been commonly used as a term that is synonymous with opposite; however, the term also has other more restricted meanings. One usage has antonym referring to both gradable opposites, such as long : short, and (non-gradable) complementary opposites, such as male : female, while opposites of the types up : down and precede : follow are excluded from the definition. A third usage (particularly that of the influential Lyons 1968, 1977) defines the term antonym as referring to only gradable opposites (the long : short type) while the other types are referred to with different terms. Therefore, as Crystal (2003) warns, the terms antonymy and antonym should be regarded with care. In this article, the usage of Lyons (1963, 1977) and Cruse (1986, 2004) will be followed where antonym is restricted to gradable opposites and opposite is used as the general term referring to any of the subtypes discussed below.
Contents
[hide]
1 General discussion 2 Subtypes o 2.1 Complementaries o 2.2 Antonyms (gradable opposites) o 2.3 Directional opposites
An example of an incompatible pair of words is cat : dog: It's a cat entails It's not a dog [4] This incompatibility is also found in the opposite pairs fast : slow and stationary : moving, as can be seen below: It's fast entails It's not slow [5] It's stationary entails It's not moving Cruse (2004) identifies some basic characteristics of opposites:
[edit] Subtypes
[edit] Complementaries
Complementary opposites are pairs that express absolute opposites, like mortal and immortal.
Gradable antonyms are two ends of the spectrum (slow and fast) but can have variations.
Though the word antonym was only coined by philologists in the 19th century, such relationships are a fundamental part of a language, in contrast to synonyms, which are a result of history and drawing of fine distinctions, or homonyms, which are mostly etymological accidents or coincidences. Languages often have ways of creating antonyms as an easy extension of lexicon. An example is the English prefixes in- and un-. Unreal is the antonym of real and indocile is of docile. Some planned languages abundantly use such devices to reduce vocabulary multiplication. Esperanto has mal- (compare bona = "good" and malbona = "bad"), Damin has kuri- (tjitjuu "small", kuritjitjuu "large") and Newspeak has un- (as in ungood, "bad").
antipodals reversives converses (or relational opposites) pseudo-opposites Relational antonyms (Converses) are pairs in which one describes a relationship between two objects and the other describes the same relationship when the two objects are reversed, such as parent and child, teacher and student, or buy and sell.
[edit] Auto-antonyms
Auto-antonyms are the same words that can mean the opposite of themselves under different contexts or having separate definitions o enjoin (to prohibit, issue injunction; to order, command) o fast (moving quickly; fixed firmly in place) o cleave (to split; to adhere) o sanction (punishment, prohibition ; permission) o stay (remain in a specific place, postpone; guide direction, movement)
[edit] Notes
1. ^ Incompatibility can be compared to exclusive disjunction in logic. 2. ^ There are four types of entailment useful to lexical semantics:
unilateral entailment: It's a fish unilaterally entails It's an animal. (It is unilateral, i.e. one-directional, because It's an animal does not entail It's a fish since it could be a dog or a cat or some other animal.) o logical equivalence (or multilateral entailment): The party commenced at midnight entails The party began at midnight AND The party began at midnight also entails The party commenced at midnight. o contrariety: It's a shoe unilaterally entails It's not a person. (But, It's not a person does not entail It's a shoe since it could be a dog or something else.) It's a shoe and It's a person are said to be in a contrary relation. o contradiction: It's dead entails It's not alive AND It's not alive entails It's dead AND It's alive entails It's not dead AND It's not dead entails It's alive. It's dead and It's alive are said to be in a contradictory relation. 3. ^ Stated differently, if the proposition expressed by the sentence A is X is TRUE, then the proposition expressed by the sentence A is not Y is also TRUE. 4. ^ It is assumed here that it has the same referent. 5. ^ It is also assumed here the reference point of comparison for these adjectives remains the same in both sentences. For example, a rabbit might be fast compared to turtle but slow compared to a sport car. It is essential when determining the relationships between the lexical meaning of words to keep the situational context identical.
o
[edit] Bibliography
Crystal, David. (2003). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics (5th ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Cruse, D. Alan. (1986). Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cruse, D. Alan. (1992). Antonymy revisited: Some thoughts on the relationship between words and concepts. In A. J. Lehrer & E. F. Kittay (Eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization (pp. 289-306). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cruse, D. Alan. (2002). Paradigmatic relations of exclusion and opposition II: Reversivity. In D. A. Cruse, F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.-R. Lutzeier (Eds.), Lexikologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wrtern und Wortschtzen: Lexicology: An international handbook on the nature and structure of words and vocabularies (Vol. 1, pp. 507-510). Berlin: De Gruyter. Cruse, D. Alan. (2004). Meaning in language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cruse, D. Alan; & Togia, Pagona. (1995). Towards a cognitive model of antonymy. Journal of Lexicology 1, 113-141.
Davies, M. (2007) The Attraction of Opposites: The ideological function of conventional and created oppositions in the construction of in-groups and out-groups in news texts, in Jeffries, L., McIntyre, D. and Bousfield, D. (eds) Stylistics and Social Cognition, pp. 79-100. Jeffries, L. (2009, forthcoming) Opposition in Discourse: The Construction of Oppositional Meaning London: Continuum. Jones, S. (2002), Antonymy: A Corpus-based perspective London and New York: Routledge. Lehrer, Adrienne J. (1985). Markedness and antonymy. Journal of Linguistics, 21, 397421. Lehrer, Adrienne J. (2002). Paradigmatic relations of exclusion and opposition I: Gradable antonymy and complementarity. In D. A. Cruse, F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.-R. Lutzeier (Eds.), Lexikologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wrtern und Wortschtzen: Lexicology: An international handbook on the nature and structure of words and vocabularies (Vol. 1, pp. 498-507). Berlin: De Gruyter. Lehrer, Adrienne J.; & Lehrer, Keith. (1982). Antonymy. Linguistics and Philosophy, 5, 483-501. Lyons, John. (1963). Structural semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyons, John. (1968). Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyons, John. (1977). Semantics (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mettinger, Arthur. (1994). Aspects of semantic opposition in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Murphy, M. Lynne. (2003). Semantic relations and the lexicon: Antonymy, synonymy, and other paradigms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics: A new outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saeed, John I. (2003). Semantics (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Bibliography of Antonymy: English Sources Thesaurus.com - also provides for antonyms. Translation of the word - Antonym
Look up opposite in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposite_(semantics)" Categories: Lexical semantics | Types of words Hidden categories: Linguistics articles needing expert attention | Articles needing expert attention since November 2008 | Articles to be expanded since May 2008 | All articles to be expanded
Views
Article
Personal tools
Navigation Search
Interaction Toolbox
About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia Donate to Wikipedia Help
What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Printable version Permanent link Cite this page
Languages
Eesti Espaol Esperanto Euskara Franais Galego Hrvatski Bahasa Indonesia slenska Italiano Latvieu Lietuvi Bahasa Melayu Nederlands Norsk (bokml) Polski Portugus Romn Simple English Slovenina Slovenina Srpskohrvatski / Basa Sunda Suomi Svenska Trke
This page was last modified on 23 November 2008, at 06:50. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers