Abstract
Antonymous Adjectives in Disyllabic Lexical Compounds in Mandarin: A Cognitive Linguistics Perspective
Highlights
Antonymy is traditionally regarded as a paradigmatic relation
This study is a cognitive account of Mandarin disyllabic compound constructions composed of two antonymous adjective roots, such as 长短 chang duan, literally long-short, ‘length’, 左右 zuo you, literally left-right, ‘control’, and 反 正 fan zheng, literally back-face, ‘anyway’
The perspective of cognitive grammar being taken, this paper proposes that the component adjectives have their own characteristics which provide part of predictability for their co-occurrence in constructions
Summary
Antonymy is traditionally regarded as a paradigmatic relation. the members of a antonym pair present relatively higher co-occurrence tendency than synonyms and hyponyms (e.g. Justeson & Katz [17]; Mettinger [22]; Fellbaum [8]; Willners [36]). Justeson and Katz [17] extended Charles and Miller’s study They argued that the co-occurrence takes place by substitution which yields the antonym alignment, and the alignment makes the association possible. Literature review shows that antonymous adjectives in discontinuous constructions have been focused on a lot, but little research concerns their co-occurrence in lexical compounds. This study is a cognitive account of Mandarin disyllabic compound constructions composed of two antonymous adjective roots, such as 长短 chang duan, literally long-short, ‘length’, 左右 zuo you, literally left-right, ‘control’, and 反 正 fan zheng, literally back-face, ‘anyway’. The perspective of cognitive grammar being taken, this paper proposes that the component adjectives have their own characteristics which provide part of predictability for their co-occurrence in constructions.
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