FAQ

The Prototypicality of Semantic Opposition in the Light of Linguistic Studies and Psycholinguistic Experiments

Publication date: 06.04.2018

Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 13 (2018), Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp. 1 - 23

https://doi.org/10.4467/23005920SPL.18.001.8463

Authors

Nawoja Mikołajczak-Matyja
Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2282-8960 Orcid
All publications →

Titles

The Prototypicality of Semantic Opposition in the Light of Linguistic Studies and Psycholinguistic Experiments

Abstract

This paper aims to use the results of linguistic analyses, including corpus studies, and psycholinguistic experiments to present the relation of semantic opposition in terms of the prototype theory of concepts. A synthesis of linguists’ views on the factors defining the prototype of the category of semantic opposition is presented, and an attempt is made to determine the relationship between these factors. The need to distinguish prototypical and canonical examples of the relationship is also indicated. The results of the most important corpus studies concerning the relation of opposition are analysed in order to find ways of delineating the peripheral zones and the boundaries of the relation based on real contexts of use. The particular role of opposition pairs extracted from cohyponymic multi-element sets in forming the boundary areas of the category of opposition is highlighted. It is determined, on the basis of selected studies, which psycholinguistic techniques can provide evidence of the psychological reality of the prototypical nature of the category of semantic opposition, and which may serve as a basis for distinguishing the prototype of the category from the canon. In conclusion, some semantic, corporal, and psycholinguistic criteria are proposed for locating particular examples of the relation within the structure of the category of semantic opposition – that is, conditions for classifying examples as, accordingly: a) belonging to the strict centre of the category, b) lying near the centre, c) located in the peripheral part, or d) forming the fuzzy boundary of the category.

References

Download references

Bańczerowski Jerzy, Pogonowski Jerzy, Zgółka Tadeusz (1982). Wstęp do języko-znawstwa. Poznań: UAM.

Bednarek Adam, Grochowski Maciej (1997). Zadania z semantyki językoznawczej. Toruń: UMK.

Cacciari Cristina, Pesciarelli Francesca, Gamberoni Tania, Ferlazzo Fabio, Russo Leo Lo, Pedrazzi Francesca, Melati Ermanno (2015). Is black always the opposite of white? An investigation on the comprehension of antonyms in people with schizophrenia and in healthy participants. Behavioral Sciences 5(1), 93–112; doi:10.3390/bs5010093.

Chaffin Roger J.S., Herrmann Douglas J. (1987). Relation element theory: A new account of the representation and processing of semantic relations. In Memory and Learning. The Ebbinghaus Centennial Conference, David S. Gorfein, Robert R. Hoffman (eds.), 221–245. Hillsdale, Hover, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Chan Wing-tsit (1967). The story of Chinese philosophy. In The Chinese Mind, Charles A. Moore (ed.), 31–76. Honolulu: East-West Center Press.

Charles Walter G., Miller George A. (1989). Contexts of antonymous adjectives. Applied Psycholinguistics 10(3), 357–375.

Clark Herbert H. (1970). Word associations and linguistic theory. In New Horizons in Linguistics, John Lyons (ed.), 271–286. Penguin, Baltimore.

Cruse David Alan (1994). Prototype theory and lexical relations. Rivista di Linguistica 6(2), 167–188.

Cruse David Alan (1995). Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cruse David Alan (2000). Meaning in Language. An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crutch Sebastian J., Williams Paul, Ridgway Gerard R., Borgenicht Laura (2012). The role of polarity in antonym and synonym conceptual knowledge: Evidence from stroke aphasia and multidimensional ratings of abstract words. Neuropsychologia 50(11), 2636–2644.

Davies Matt (2012). A new approach to oppositions in discourse: The role of syntactic frames in the triggering of noncanonical oppositions. Journal of English Linguistics 40(1) 41–73. doi: 10.1177/0075424210385206.

Fellbaum Christine (1998) (ed.). WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Grochowski Maciej (1982). Zarys leksykologii i leksykografii. Zagadnienia synchroniczne. Toruń: UMK.

Herrmann Douglas J., Chaffin Roger J.S., Conti Gina, Peters Donald, Robbins Peter H. (1979). Comprehension of antonymy and the generality of categorization models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 5(6), 585–597.

Herrmann Douglas. J., Chaffin Roger, Daniel Margaret P., Wool R.S. (1986). The role of elements of relation definition in antonym and synonym comprehension. Zeitschrift für Psychologie 194, 133–153.

Hofmann Thomas R. (1993). Realms of MeaningsAn Introduction to Semantics. London: Longman.

Hornby Albert Sydney. (1988). Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: University Press.

Hurford James R., Heasley Brendan, Smith Michael B. (2007). Semantics. A Coursebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Imiołczyk Janusz (1987). Prawdopodobieństwo subiektywne wyrazów. Podstawowy słownik frekwencyjny języka polskiego. Warszawa, Poznań: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Jones Steven (2002). Antonymy: A Corpus Based Perspective. London: Routledge.

Jones Steven (2006). A lexico-syntactic analysis of antonym co-occurrence in spoken English. Text & Talk – An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies 26(2), 191–216.

Jones Steven (2007). ‘Opposites’ in discourse: A comparison of antonym use across four domains. Journal of Pragmatics 39(6), 1105–1119.

Jones Steven, Paradis Carita, Murphy M. Lynne, Willners Caroline (2007). Googling for ‘opposites’: a web-based study of antonym canonicity. Corpora 2(2),

129–154.

Jones Steven, Murphy M. Lynne, Paradis Carita, Willners Caroline (2012). Antonyms in English: Construals, Constructions and Canonicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Justeson John S., Katz Slava M. (1991). Co-occurrences of antonymous adjectives and their contexts. Computational Linguistics 17(1), 1–19.

Kleiber Georges (2003). Semantyka prototypu. Kategorie i znaczenie leksykalne. Kraków: Universitas.

Kostić Nataša (2015). Antonym sequence in written discourse: A corpus-based study. Language Sciences 47(A), 18–31.

Kurcz Ida (1967). Polskie normy powszechności skojarzeń swobodnych na 100 słów z listy Kent-Rosanoffa. Studia Psychologiczne 8, 122–255.

Kurcz Ida (1976). Psycholingwistyka. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Leech Geoffrey (1987). Semantics. The Study of Meaning. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.

Lévi-Strauss Claude (2010). Surowe i gotowane. Warszawa: Aletheia.

Lloyd Geoffrey Ernest Richard (1966). Polarity and Analogy. Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lobanova Anna, van der Kleij Tom, Spenader Jennifer (2010). Defining antonymy: A corpus-based study of opposites by lexico-syntactic patterns. International Journal of Lexicography 23(1), 19–53.

Lyons John (1977). Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lyons John (1984). Semantyka. T. 1. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Łobacz Piotra, Mikołajczak-Matyja Nawoja (2002). Skojarzenia słowne w psycholeksykologii i onomastyce psycholingwistycznej. Poznań: Sorus.

Markowski Andrzej (1986). Antonimy przymiotnikowe we współczesnej polszczyźnie na tle innych typów przeciwstawień leksykalnych. Wrocław: Ossolineum.

Markowski Andrzej (2012). Wykłady z leksykologii. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Mettinger Arthur (1994). Aspects of Semantic Opposition in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Muehleisen Victoria, isono Maho (2009). Antonymous adjectives in Japanese discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 41(11), 2185–2203.

Murphy M. Lynne (2003). Semantic Relations and the Lexicon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Murphy M. Lynne, Paradis Carita, Willners Caroline, Jones Steven (2009). Discourse functions of antonymy: A cross-linguistic investigation of Swedish and English. Journal of Pragmatics 41(11), 2159–2184.

Murphy M. Lynne., Jones Steven, Koskela Anu (2015). Signals of contrastiveness: But, oppositeness, and formal similarity in parallel contexts. Journal of English Linguistics 43(3), 227-249.

Okuniewska Hanna (2004). Asymetria. Antonimia. Nacechowanie. Studium psycholingwistyczne. Warszawa: Matrix.

Paradis Carita, Willners Caroline, Jones Steven (2009). Good and bad opposites. Using textual and experimental techniques to measure antonym canonicity. The Mental Lexicon 4(3), 380-429.

Phillips Catherine I., Pexman Penny M. (2015). When do children understand “opposite”? Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research 58(4), 1233–1244.

Roehm Dietmar, Bornkessel-Schlesewsky Ina, Rösler Frank, Schlesewsky Matthias (2007). To predict or not to predict: Influences of task and strategy on the processing of semantic relations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19(8),

1259–1274.

Rosch Eleanor (1975). Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 104(3), 192–233.

de Saussure Ferdinand (1961). Kurs językoznawstwa ogólnego. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Szymczak Mieczysław (ed.). (1981). Słownik języka polskiego. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Taylor John R. (2001). Kategoryzacja w języku. Prototypy w teorii językoznawczej. Kraków: Universitas.

Willners Caroline (2001). Antonyms in Context. A Corpus-Based Semantic Analysis of Swedish Descriptive Adjective. Travaux de l’Institut de Linguistique de Lund 40. Lund: Lund University.

van de Weijer Joost, Paradis Carita, Willners Caroline, Lindgren Magnus (2014). Antonym canonicity: Temporal and contextual manipulations. Brain & Language 128(1), 1–8.

Information

Information: Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 13 (2018), Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp. 1 - 23

Article type: Original article

Titles:

English:

The Prototypicality of Semantic Opposition in the Light of Linguistic Studies and Psycholinguistic Experiments

Authors

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2282-8960

Nawoja Mikołajczak-Matyja
Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2282-8960 Orcid
All publications →

Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu

Published at: 06.04.2018

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND  licence icon

Percentage share of authors:

Nawoja Mikołajczak-Matyja (Author) - 100%

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

English