Lexical opposition : an investigation into canonical and peripheral phenomena of antonymy
This thesis presents a multi-method approach to the investigation of lexical opposition, taking into account central as well as peripheral opposites. One of the distinguishing factors of the present research is the investigation of a wide variety of opposite pairs (e.g. converses) alongside the canonical gradable adjectival antonym pairs which have thus far been the focus of most of the research on lexical opposition. Three main questions concerning lexical opposition are addressed from a data-driven perspective. Firstly, the question of which factors determine the antonymic strength of a pair of opposites. Secondly, whether there is a clear distinction between good and bad opposites or whether the internal structure of the category of antonymy can be described in term of prototype theory. Lastly, whether antonymy is a relation between cognitive concepts (Murphy & Andrew 1993) or between the words which encode these concepts (Gross et al. 1989). This study employs a wide range of methodologies: corpus analysis, judgement tasks, attribute listing and behavioural lexical decision tasks in English and German. This allows for the detection of discrepancies between the results of the separate investigations which
Kotzor, Sandra
Linguistics
Lexical opposition : an investigation into canonical and peripheral phenomena of antonymy. This thesis presents a multi-method approach to the investigation of lexical opposition, taking into account central as well as peripheral opposites. One of the distinguishing factors of the present research is the investigation of a wide variety of opposite pairs (e.g. converses) alongside the canonical gradable adjectival antonym pairs which have thus far been the focus of most of the research on lexical opposition. Three main questions concerning lexical opposition are addressed from a data-driven perspective. Firstly, the question of which factors determine the antonymic strength of a pair of opposites. Secondly, whether there is a clear distinction between good and bad opposites or whether the internal structure of the category of antonymy can be described in term of prototype theory. Lastly, whether antonymy is a relation between cognitive concepts (Murphy & Andrew 1993) or between the words which encode these concepts (Gross et al. 1989). This study employs a wide range of methodologies: corpus analysis, judgement tasks, attribute listing and behavioural lexical decision tasks in English and German. This allows for the detection of discrepancies between the results of the separate investigations which
lexical opposition investigation canonical peripheral phenomenon present_multi method investigation lexical opposition take_account central well peripheral opposite one_distinguish factor present_investigation wide_variety opposite pair converse alongside canonical gradable adjectival pair thus_far focus lexical opposition three_main question_concern lexical opposition address data_driven perspective firstly question factor_determine strength pair opposite secondly whether clear_distinction good_bad whether internal_structure category described term prototype_theory lastly whether relation cognitive concept and word encode concept gross study employ wide_range methodology corpus_analysis judgement_task attribute list behavioural lexical_decision task english_german allow detection discrepancy separate investigation