Dr. Mustapha Aabi/Semantics/Topic 4 / 2025
1
Sense Relations II: Antonymy
ANTONYMY oppositeness of meaning: 'X is the opposite of Y'
incompatibility
= entailment + negation {X ⇒ ~ Y}
1. Complementaries (binary pairs) {Saeed, p. 66}}
• Normally non-gradable opposites;
• between them the pair exhaust all possibilities; i.e. if the one predicate is
applicable, the other cannot be.
e.g.
(i) true : false
(ii) off : on
(iii) same : different
(iv) dead : alive
(v) male : female
But: He is more dead than alive
2. Reverses {Saeed, p. 67}
• Relation describing movement.
• One term describes movement in one direction and the other the same
movement in the other direction
• Also processes that can be reversed
e.g.
(i) push: pull
(ii) come: go
(iii) up: down
-----------------------
(iv) inflate/deflate
(v) expand/contract
(vi) knit/unravel
3. Converses {Saeed, p. 67}
• Describe a relation between two entities from alternate view points.
(i) husband : wife
Hillary is Bill’s wife. Bill is Hilary’s husband
(ii) father : daughter
Bill is Chelsea’s father. Chelsea is Bill’s daughter.
(iii) buy : sell
If I bought this car from you, then you sold this car to me.
