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Swedish opposites - a multi-method approach to antonym canonicity

Willners, Caroline LU and Paradis, Carita LU orcid (2010) Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa.
Abstract
In spite of the fact that antonymy is considered to be an important organising lexico-semantic principle, very little research has been conducted to get a better grasp of what ‘goodness’ of binary opposition in human language and thought really is. The focus of this study is what distinguishes antonyms such as bra-dålig ‘good-bad’, lång-kort ‘long-short’, tunn-tjock ‘thin-thick’ from other types of contrast such as seg-mör ‘tough-tender’, dunkel-tydlig ‘obscure-clear’ and rask-långsam ‘speedy-slow’. There are indications in the literature that there are various converging reasons for perceptions of ‘goodness of antonymy’, e.g. frequency of co-occurrence, co-occurrence in certain constructions, stylistic co-occurrence preferences, pairwise... (More)
In spite of the fact that antonymy is considered to be an important organising lexico-semantic principle, very little research has been conducted to get a better grasp of what ‘goodness’ of binary opposition in human language and thought really is. The focus of this study is what distinguishes antonyms such as bra-dålig ‘good-bad’, lång-kort ‘long-short’, tunn-tjock ‘thin-thick’ from other types of contrast such as seg-mör ‘tough-tender’, dunkel-tydlig ‘obscure-clear’ and rask-långsam ‘speedy-slow’. There are indications in the literature that there are various converging reasons for perceptions of ‘goodness of antonymy’, e.g. frequency of co-occurrence, co-occurrence in certain constructions, stylistic co-occurrence preferences, pairwise acquisition and clarity of the antonymic dimension (e.g. Muehleisen 1997, Willners 2001, Jones 2002, Murphy 2003, Paradis et al.). The purpose of this paper is to examine some of those aspects through a multi-method approach to the study of ‘goodness of oppositeness’ of Swedish antonyms and to evaluate the converging and diverging results of the methods in the light of this particular issue. Three main methodologies are used. Corpus-driven methods ground the study of Swedish antonyms in text. These data are then used as the test set for an elicitation experiment and a judgement experiment to find patterns of ‘goodness of antonymy’ in Swedish. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
semantics, elicitation, psycholinguistic, antonymy, corpus, judgement, antonym canonicity
host publication
Lexical-semantic relations from theoretical and practical perspectives
editor
Storjohann, Petra
volume
Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa
publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
8f3bc54c-d44a-4e70-8d6a-32858c72513e (old id 1504488)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 11:24:56
date last changed
2019-03-08 02:28:53
@inbook{8f3bc54c-d44a-4e70-8d6a-32858c72513e,
  abstract     = {{In spite of the fact that antonymy is considered to be an important organising lexico-semantic principle, very little research has been conducted to get a better grasp of what ‘goodness’ of binary opposition in human language and thought really is. The focus of this study is what distinguishes antonyms such as bra-dålig ‘good-bad’, lång-kort ‘long-short’, tunn-tjock ‘thin-thick’ from other types of contrast such as seg-mör ‘tough-tender’, dunkel-tydlig ‘obscure-clear’ and rask-långsam ‘speedy-slow’. There are indications in the literature that there are various converging reasons for perceptions of ‘goodness of antonymy’, e.g. frequency of co-occurrence, co-occurrence in certain constructions, stylistic co-occurrence preferences, pairwise acquisition and clarity of the antonymic dimension (e.g. Muehleisen 1997, Willners 2001, Jones 2002, Murphy 2003, Paradis et al.). The purpose of this paper is to examine some of those aspects through a multi-method approach to the study of ‘goodness of oppositeness’ of Swedish antonyms and to evaluate the converging and diverging results of the methods in the light of this particular issue. Three main methodologies are used. Corpus-driven methods ground the study of Swedish antonyms in text. These data are then used as the test set for an elicitation experiment and a judgement experiment to find patterns of ‘goodness of antonymy’ in Swedish.}},
  author       = {{Willners, Caroline and Paradis, Carita}},
  booktitle    = {{Lexical-semantic relations from theoretical and practical perspectives}},
  editor       = {{Storjohann, Petra}},
  keywords     = {{semantics; elicitation; psycholinguistic; antonymy; corpus; judgement; antonym canonicity}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{John Benjamins Publishing Company}},
  title        = {{Swedish opposites - a multi-method approach to antonym canonicity}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/5768487/1590151.pdf}},
  volume       = {{Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa}},
  year         = {{2010}},
}