Page 412 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes 32.6.1 Complementarity
Complementarity is the relation of oppositeness in pairs of lexical items where the denial of the
one implies the assertion of the other and the assertion of the one implies the denial of the other.
Thus James is not married implies James is single; and James is married implies James is not
single. In the case of those terms for which Lyons reserves the term ‘antonymy’ (e.g. good-bad;
high-low). Only the second of these implications holds James is good implies the denial James is
bad but James is not good does not imply the assertion of James is bad.
32.6.2 Antonymy
Antonymy is the relation of oppositeness in pairs of lexical items where the assertion of one
implies the denial of the other. For example, big and small, little and much, few and many. These
are ‘opposites par excellence.’ They are regularly gradable, that is, bound up with the operation of
comparison : e.g.
Our house is bigger than yours used to be both implies, and is implied by, your house used to be
smaller than ours is; Our house is bigger than yours implies and is implied by your house is
smaller than ours; and our house is bigger than it used to be implies and is implied our house
“used to be smaller than it is (now).
32.6.3 Converseness
“The third sense-relation which is frequently described in terms of “oppositeness” is that which
holds between buy and sell or husband and wife. We will use the term converseness to refer to
this relation. The word buy, is the converse of sell, and sell, is the converse of buy.” (John Lyons)
Since parallelisms exist between antonymy and complementarity, a number of linguists do not
make such distinctions and regard all relations of oppositeness as ‘antonyms’.
32.7 Polysemy

Polysemy or poly semantic is generally defined as “having several, often quite different, meanings,
all derived from the basic idea or concept” (Dictionary of Linguistics, 1954). The lexicographer lists
homonyms as different words, whereas polysemy is a term used in traditional semantics for the
words having multiple meaning but given under one entry by the lexicographer. For example,
‘human head’, ‘head of department’, ‘bridgehead’. Hence polysemy means that one word can
have more than one sense. The distinction between homonymy and polysemy is by and large
indeterminate and arbitrary, resting upon either the lexicographer’s judgment about the plausibility
of the assumed ‘extension’ of meaning or some historical evidence that the particular ‘extension’
has in fact taken place.
The most prevalent type of polysemy is the result of ordinary contextual shifts in application.
Adjectives are particularly prone to this kind of shift. For instance the different meaning of red in
red ink, red deer, red cabbage and Red Indian.
Specialization in milieu is another common cause of polysemy, e.g. partner, in business partner,
marriage partner, partner in crime, room partner. Partner contains the basic meaning of a type of
a relationship between two (or more) people. But a business partner is not what a marriage
partner is.
Another, and very frequent type of polysemy, is that created by metaphor, e.g. human body,
heavenly body, body politic, body (of a liquid), etc.

32.8 Collocation

While studying the structure of the vocabulary, collocation can be defined as the association of a
lexical item with other lexical items. It refers to the syntagmatic, horizontal relationship of lexical
items (derived from the Latin colloco to be in same place with). Ink, for example, collocates with
(is found with) words such as pen, paper, letter, note-book, inkpot, blue, red, green, royal blue,

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