Good and bad opposites

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to combine corpus methodology with experimental methods to gain insights into the nature of antonymy as a lexico-semantic relation and the degree of antonymic canonicity of word pairs in language and in memory. Two approaches to antonymy in language are contrasted, the lexical categorical model and the cognitive prototype model. The results of the investigation support the latter model and show that different pairings have different levels of lexico-semantic affinity. At this general level of categorization, empirical methods converge; however, since they measure slightly different aspect of lexico-semantic opposability and affinity, and since the techniques of investigation are different in nature, we obtain slightly conflicting results at the more specific levels. We conclude that some antonym pairs can be diagnosed as "canonical" on the strength of three indicators: textual co-occurrence, individual judgement about "goodness" of opposition, and elicitation evidence.

A Database of Paradigmatic Semantic Relation Pairs for German Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives

“…These results are in line with previous findings for English and Swedish by Paradis and Willners (2006) and Paradis et al (2009), who argue against the strict contrast between 'direct' and 'indirect' antonyms which has been assumed in the literature (see, for example, Gross et al (1989)) in favour of a scale of 'canonicity' where some word pairs are perceived as more antonymic than others. In particular, they propose that the weaker the degree of canonicity, the more different responses the target items will yield in an elicitation experiment.…”

Once again on norms and comparison classes

“…E. Eilers et al 1974). These relations between (+Pol) and (-Pol) terms seem to persist in the language of adults as well (Paradis et al 2007(Paradis et al , 2009. The fact that the position vis-à-vis a norm dominates over objective spatial properties in the construals of dimensional relations reinforces the importance of this reference point in the treatment of relative dimensional adjectives.…”

Lexical Semantics

“…For instance, Firefliers prefer tall grass to mowed lawns where tall and mowed are used as antonyms. Antonymy seems to have special status as a lexical semantic relation in language in that antonyms are typically members of one-to-one relations, rather than one-to-many or many-tomany, and they are severely constrained in their relationship and by their alignment along the same meaning dimension within a domain (Paradis, Willners & Jones, 2009, Paradis & Willners 2011.…”