3.Antonymy:Gradable,complementary,converses

Antonyms аrе words belonging to the same part of speech different in sound, and characterised by semantic polarity of their denotational meaning. According to the character of semantic opposition antonyms are subdivided into antonyms proper, complete and conversitives. The semantic polarity in antonyms proper is relative, the opposition is gradual, it may embrace several elements characterised by different degrees of the same property. They always imply comparison. Large and little or small denote polar degrees of the same notion, i.e. size.

Complementaries are words characterised only by a binary opposition which may have only two members; the denial of one member of the opposition implies the assertion of the other e.g. not male means female.

Conversives are words which denote one and the same referent as viewed from different points of view, that of the subject and that of the object, e.g. buy-sell, give-receive.

This is the commonest type of antonymy. When we say two words are antonyms, we usually mean pairs of words like good: bad, long: short, big: small. As the examples show, they are mainly adjectives. And they have three characteristics.

      First,  as the name suggests,  they are gradable. That is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. The denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other. Something which is not "good" is not necessarily "bad". It may simply be "so-so" or "average". As such, they can be modified by "very". Something may be very good or very bad. And they may have comparative and superlative degrees. Something may be better or worse than another. Something may be the best or worst among a number of things. Sometimes the intermediate degrees may be lexicalized. They may be expressed by separate words rather than by adding modifiers. For example, the term for the size which is neither big nor small is medium. And between the two extremes of temperature hot and cold, there are warm and cool, which form a pair of antonyms themselves, and may have a further intermediate term lukewarm.

      Second, antonyms of this kind are graded against different norms. There is no absolute criterion by which we may say something is good or bad, long or short, big or small. The criterion varies with the object described. A big car is in fact much smaller than a small plane. A microcomputer is giant by the standard of microorganism.

     Third, one member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term. We ask somebody "How old are you ?" and the person asked may not be old in any sense. He may be as young as twenty or three. The word old is used here to cover both old and young. The sentence means the same as "What is your age ?"

Technically, the cover term is called "unmarked", i.e. usual; and the covered "marked", or unusual. That means, in general, it is the cover term that is more often used. If the covered is used, then it suggests that there is something odd, unusual here. The speaker may already know that somebody/something is young, small, near and he wants to know the extent in greater detail. This characteristic is also reflected in the corresponding nouns, such as length, height, width, breadth and depth, which are cognates of the cover terms.

     (2) Complementary antonymy

       Antonyms like alive: dead, male: female, present: absent, innocent: guilty, odd: even, pass: fail ( a test ), hit: miss ( a target ), boy: girl are of this type. In contrast to the first type, the members of a pair in this type are complementary to each other. That is, they divide up the whole of a semantic field completely. Not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, the denial of one also means the assertion of the other. Not only He is alive means "He is not dead", He is not alive also means "He is dead". There is no intermediate ground between the two. A man cannot be neither alive nor dead. The Chinese expression半死不活can only be used for somebody who is still alive. If he is really not alive, then he is dead completely, not just half-dead. In other words, it is a question of two term choice: yes or no; not a multiple choice, a choice between more or less. So the adjectives in this type cannot be modified by "very". One cannot say somebody is very alive or very dead. And they do not have comparative or superlative degrees either. The saying He is more dead than alive is not a true comparative. The sentence actually means "It is more correct to say that he is dead than to say he is 'alive". After all we do not say John is more dead than Peter. An example supporting this view is that we can say John is more mad than stupid in the sense that "It is more correct to say John is mad than to say John is stupid". The word mad is not used in the comparative degree, since its comparative form is madder.

To some extent, this difference between the gradable and the complementary can be compared to the traditional logical distinction between the contrary and the contradictory. In logic, a proposition is the contrary of another if both cannot be true, though they may both be false; e.g. The coffee is hot and The coffee is cold. And a proposition is the contradictory of another if it is impossible for both to be true, or false; e.g. This is a male cat and This is a female cat.

     Secondly, the norm in this type is absolute. It does not vary with the thing a word is applied to. The same norm is used for all the things it is applicable to. For example, the criterion for separating the male from the female is the same with human beings and animals. There will be no such a situation that a creature is male by the standard of human being, but female by the standard of animal. And the death of a man is the same as that of an elephant, or even a tree, in the sense that there is no longer any life in the entity. If anything, the difference between the death of a man and that of a tree is a matter of kind, not of degree.

   Thirdly, there is no cover term for the two members of a pair. If you do not know the sex of a baby, you ask "Is it a boy or a girl ?" not "How male is it ?" The word male can only be used for boys, it cannot cover the meaning of girl. As a matter of fact, no adjective in this type can be modified by how. This is related to the fact that they are not modifiable by words like very.

Now the pair of antonyms true: false is exceptional to some extent. This pair is usually regarded as complementary. True equals not false, and not true equals false. But there is a cover term. We can say "How true is the story?" And there is a noun truth, related to this cover term. We can also use "very" to modify true. It even has comparative and superlative degrees. A description may be truer than another, or is the truest among a number of descriptions, though false cannot be used in this way.

  (3) Converse antonymy

    Pairs of words like buy: sell, lend: borrow, give: receive, parent: child, husband: wife, host: guest, employer: employee, teacher :student,  above : below,  before : after belong to this type of antonymy. This is a special type of antonymy in that the members of a pair do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship between two entities. X buys something from Y means the same as Y sells something to X. X is the parent of Y means the same as Y is the child of X. It is the same relationship seen from two different angles.

This type of antonymy is typically seen, as the examples show, in reciprocal social roles,  kinship relations,  temporal and spatial relations. It is in this sense that they are alsoknown as RELATIONAL OPPOSITES. There are always two entities involved. One presupposes the other. This is the major difference between this type and the previous two.

  With gradable, or complementary, antonyms, one can say "X is good", or "X is male", without presupposing Y. It is, as it were, a matter of X only, which has nothing to do with Y. But with converse antonyms, there are always two sides. If there is a buyer, there must also be a seller. A parent must have a child. Without a child, one cannot be a parent. If X is above Y, there must be both X and Y. Without Y, one cannot talk about the aboveness of X. And one cannot simply say "He is a husband'. One must say whose husband he is. Similarly, one cannot simply say "He is a son" without mentioning his parents. Now some people may argue that we can say "He is a child". However,  this is a different sense of child. The word child here means "somebody under the age of 18". In this sense, it is opposite to adult. When a man is above 18, he is no longer a child. In contrast, used in the sense of child opposite to parent, a man is always a child to his parents. Even when he is 80, he is still a child to his father and mother. Another word which may cause some trouble is teacher. It can be used in the sense of a profession. So one can say "He is a teacher", as against any other occupation, such as, journalist, writer, actor, musician, or doctor. In the sense opposite to student, however, a man is a teacher only to his students. To other people, he is not a teacher. And to his own teacher, he becomes a student.