Oppositeness or Dissimilarity of Sense Antonymy

A traditional view of antonymy is that it is simply oppositeness of meaning. But words may be opposite in meaning in different ways, and some words have no real opposites. Eg. hot cold borrow lend thick thin dead alive Hot is not the opposite of cold in the same way as borrow is the opposite of lend; thick is not the opposite of thin in the same way as dead is the opposite of alive. That is why we cannot talk of simple oppositeness of meaning. We can distinguish four types of antonymy. Gradable antonyms Gradable antonyms are pairs like wide narrow, old young, big small, that may be seen in terms of degrees of the quality involved. For instance, a road may be wide, very wide or wider than another; one boy older than another, etc. We may have gradation of width, size, age, etc. Gradable antonyms may be seen as the opposite ends of a continuous scale of values. For instance, hot and cold are gradable antonyms. Between them there is a continuous scale of values that includes: warm, cool, lukewarm, etc. The scale typically varies according to the context of use. What is called hot in one context (eg. the oven temperature in a cook book) could well be considered as cold in another context (eg. the temperature of stars). Such adjectives are not only gradable, but they are graded according to different norms, according to the context of use. For instance, if we say that not many people were present, this may mean 5 or 6 if we are talking about an intimate party, but perhaps as many as 5000 if we are talking about tha attendance at an important football match. Geoffrey Leech identifies three types of norms according to which gradable antonyms can be graded: 1. object-related norms these norms shift their position on the scale according to the object being described; eg. a young man differs from a young bishop, who is typically over 45 years of age

for evaluative adjectives like good bad, beautiful ugly, kind unkind, there is not only an object-related norm, but also a subjective, speaker-related norm. For instance, whether a woman is beautiful depends on the taste of the speaker. 3. there is also a role-related norm, again with some evaluative pairs of antonyms like good bad, clever stupid, etc. For instance, a good boss is not only good as bosses go (considering the objectrelated norm), or a boss who is good according to Mr. X (considering the speaker-related norm), but also a boss who is good at being a boss (his role). These norms account for the apparent paradox of a small elephant being bigger than a big mouse, for small means small as elephants go, and big means big as mice go (according to the object-related norm).
2.

Binary antonyms Binary antonyms come in pairs that are mutually exclusive, that is if one lexeme is applicable, then the other cannot be and the other way round. It is the case of such pairs of antonyms as male female, married single, alive dead, true false, etc. For instance, if a sentence is true, it cannot be false at the same time, and if it is false, it cannot be true; if someone is dead, he cannot be alive at the same time, and the other way round, etc. Binary antonyms are in some ways similar to gradable antonyms. Both pairs of binary antonyms and pairs of gradable antonyms are incompatible. To say that something is wide is to say that something is not narrow; to say that somebody is old is to say that somebody is not young (gradable antonyms). Similarly, to say that somebody is married is to say that he/she is not single; to say that somebody is male is to say that he is not female (binary antonyms). But there is one striking difference between gradable and binary antonyms from this point of view of incompatibility. With binary antonyms, to say that something/somebody is not true/dead/married/male, is to say automatically that it/he/she is false/alive/single/female. Eg. If Peter is not married, he is automatically single. This results from the fact that there are only two possibilities. In contrast, with gradable antonyms, although there are only two terms, it is not the case that to say that something/somebody is not X
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(small/narrow), is to say automatically that something/somebody is Y (big/wide). The possibility of it being neither small nor big, neither narrow nor wide is left open, depending on the object-related norm (see the case of a big mouse/small elephant!). !!! Gradable antonyms if something is X, it is not Y Binary antonyms if something is not X, it is automatically Y Converseness If a lexeme describes a relationship between two things or people and some other lexeme describes the same relationship when the two things or people are mentioned in the opposite order, then the two lexemes are converses of each other. Geoffrey Leech calls this type of antonyms converses, but Frank Palmer prefers the term relational opposites, because he feels it important to to point out their essential relational characteristics. For instance, parent and child are converses of each other because X is the parent of Y (in one order) describes the same situation or relationship as Y is the child of X (in the opposite order). The same with husband wife, fiance fiancee, debtor creditor, etc. There are several verbs that are pairs in this way: buy sell, lend borrow, rent let, own belong to, etc. A number of terms referring to spatial position also belong to this category of antonyms: above below, in front of behind, north of south of, etc. In grammar too, active and passive constructions exhibit relational opposition: if X hits Y, then Y is hit by X. Some converses exhibit a relation of transitivity, that is if X is a converse of Y, and Y is a converse of Z, then X is a converse of Z. For instance, if the lamp is above the picture, and the picture is above the table, then the lamp is above the table. Contradictoriness Antonymy, with the three types discussed so far, is a relation between lexical items; the corresponding relation between sentences is called contradictoriness. A proposition is a contradictory of another proposition if it is impossible for both of them to be true at the same time and of the same circumstances. Or, a sentence/proposition contradicts another sentence/proposition if it entails the negation of the other sentence/proposition. For instance, This person is alive is a contradictory
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of This person is dead, or John killed Bill is a contradictory of John did not kill Bill. We can establish a relationship between contradictoriness and antonymy in the same way we established one between entailment and hyponymy. Starting from the examples This cat is male and This cat is female, we can draw the conclusion that: given two sentences, both identical except that one contains a word X where the other contains a word Y, and X is an antonym of Y, then the two sentences are contradictories of each other. However, this does not hold true for all sentences that contain antonyms. If we consider the sentences Tom has three male cats and Tom has three female cats, the rule does not hold, given that both sentences can be true at the same time: Tom may own both three male and three female cats.