Contrast, concessive, and corrective: Toward a comprehensive study of opposition relations

Abstract

This paper presents a unifying analysis of opposition relations within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Although numerous studies have been conducted to explain the semantics of opposition relations, there has been no general consensus about their classification and terminology, nor has there been any satisfactory accounts that unify all the semantic categories of opposition relations. The goal of this study is to propose a classification of opposition relations supported by linguistic evidence and to clarify commonalities and differences among the semantic categories. On the basis of data from English and other languages, it is shown that opposition relations are classified into three major categories: contrast, concessive, and corrective. These categories are compared along four parameters (the mutual exclusiveness of different compared items, the number and kind of compared items, the involvement of an assumption/assumptions, and the validity of segments combined). The comparison reveals that the three categories share the first parameter and their differences are described in terms of the remaining three parameters. This result shows that mutual exclusiveness accounts for our pre-theoretical notion of ‘conflict (or clash),’ which has often been employed for the semantic description of opposition relations.