A Construction Grammar Approach to Antonym Pairs.
Eugene Chung, EUGENE CHUNG · Journal of Linguistic Studies · 2018
This paper presents a constructional approach to antonym pairs based on Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) data. We automatically extract antonym pairs occurring in coordination constructions, comparison constructions, negation constructions, and transition constructions to identify lexico-syntactic relationships. We briefly introduced complementaries, opposites, and directional antonyms. Antonym pairs frequently co-occur with each other in a number of lexico- syntactic patterns, namely, constructions. Goldberg (1995) suggested that constructions are learned pairings of form and meaning (function). This work identifies that the uses of antonyms and each construction conveys specific functions. For example, antonyms and co-ordinated patterns represent inclusion; antonyms and comparison as well as negation constructions often show the function of choice; antonyms and transition constructions conveys changes. We also identified new context-dependent antonyms by extracting constructions along with the co-occurrence of antonym paris. Our understandings of antonyms will extend to further research of the syntagmatic dimension of constructions.