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Opposite (semantics)

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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. The notion of binary refers that are only 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 refering 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.

General discussion

Opposites are interestingly simultaneously different and similar in meaning. Typically, they differ in only one dimension of meaning, but are similar in most other respects, including similarity in grammar and positions of semantic abnormality. Additionally, not all words have an opposite. Some words are non-opposable. For example, the word purple has no word that stands in opposition to it (hence, the unanswerability of What is the opposite of purple?). Other words are opposable but have an accidental gap in a given language's lexicon. For example, the word devout lacks a lexical opposite, but it is fairly easy to conceptualize a parameter of devoutness where devout lies at the positive pole with a missing member at the negative pole.

Opposites may be viewed as a special type of incompatibility. Words that are incompatible create the following type of entailment (where X is a given word and Y is a different word incompatible with word X):

sentence A is  X   entails  sentence A is not  Y 

An example of an incompatible pair of words is cat : dog:

It's a cat  entails  It's not a dog

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
It's stationary  entails  It's not moving

Cruse (2004) identifies some basic characteristics of opposites:

  • binarity
  • inheritness
  • patency

Subtypes

Complementaries

Complementary opposites are pairs that express absolute opposites, like mortal and immortal.

  • interactives
  • satisfactives
  • counteractives

Antonyms

Antonyms, from the Greek anti ("opposite") and onoma ("name") are word pairs that are opposite in meaning, such as hot and cold, fat and skinny, and up and down. Words may have different antonyms, depending on the meaning. Both long and tall are antonyms of short. Antonyms are of four types:

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").

Interlingua, a naturalistic planned language, also uses such prefixes to reduce the vocabulary and ease learning: certe = "certain", incerte = "uncertain"; pare = "appear", dispare = "disappear". Interlingua also permits many antonym pairs: bon = "good", mal = "bad"; rapide = "fast", lente'' = "slow". To cleave is an English verb with two synonyms that are antonyms of each other: to separate and to adhere.

Directional opposites

  • 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.

Notes

See also

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 Wörtern und Wortschätzen: 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.
  • Lehrer, Adrienne J. (1985). Markedness and antonymy. Journal of Linguistics, 21, 397-421.
  • 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 Wörtern und Wortschätzen: 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.

External links



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