Antonyms in Mind and Brain: Evidence from English and German

Description

Antonyms in Mind and Brain presents a multi-method empirical investigation of opposition with a particular focus on the processing of opposite pairs and their representation in the mental lexicon. Building on recent cognitive accounts of antonymy which highlight the fundamentally conceptual nature of antonymy, this book outlines previous literature to draw out criteria for good opposites and establish the state of the art on the question whether the strong connection of certain opposite pairs is primarily of a conceptual or lexical nature. presents a detailed cross-linguistic empirical study combining corpus data, speaker judgements and behavioural experiments for a wide range of central (e.g. big:little) and peripheral (e.g. buy:sell; wife:husband) opposite pairs to establish the contribution of individual factors. proposes a model of the representation of opposite pairs in the mental lexicon and illustrates how the processing consequences of such a model account for the patterns observed in the data. The approach taken in this book highlights the importance of using a number of different methods to investigate complex phenomena such as antonymy. Such an approach forms the empirical foundation for a dynamic psycholinguistic model of opposition based on the conventionalisation and entrenchment of the conceptual and lexical relationship of antonyms. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Figures Tables List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Part I: Theoretical foundations 1. Introduction 1.1 Background and aims 1.2 Focus 1.3 Structure of the book Notes 2. Previous perspectives on antonymy 2.1 What is lexical opposition? 2.2 A Structuralist account of opposition 2.2.1 Classifications of opposition: and 2.2.2 Criteria for 'good' opposites 2.3 Opposites in discourse: corpus perspectives 2.3.1 Syntactic frames and co-occurrence patterns 2.3.2 Semantic range and match of non-propositional meaning 2.3.3 Textual functions 2.3.4 Antonym order 2.3.5 Key contributions of corpus research 2.4 Opposites in the mind: a lexical or conceptual relation? 2.4.1 A cognitive-pragmatic approach 2.4.2 Cognitive proposals 2.5 Opposites in the brain: psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic evidence 2.5.1 Psycholinguistic investigations 2.5.2 Neurolinguistic evidence 2.5.3 Key findings of cognitive and psycholinguistic antonym research 2.6 Towards a psycholinguistic model of antonymy - criteria for good antonyms Notes Part II: Empirical Investigation 3. Antonymic and associative strength: evidence from English and German 3.1 Antonym selection 3.1.1 Type of antonymic relation 3.1.2 Morphological relatedness 3.1.3 Word class 3.1.4 Control items 3.2 Corpus data: measuring frequency of co-occurrence 3.2.1 Corpora 3.2.2 Analysis procedure 3.3 Assessing antonymic strength: a judgement task 3.3.1 Task and procedure 3.3.2 Participants 3.4 From best to worst: a judgement task analysis 3.4.1 Associative strength as a predictor for antonymic strength 3.4.2 Morphological relatedness 3.4.3 Gradable opposites: the role of symmetry and conceptual distance 3.4.4 Semantic range and semantic generality 3.4.5 Antonym order 3.4.6 Antonym type 3.4.6.1 Verbal converses 3.4.6.2 Nominal converses 3.4.7 Extending purity of opposition: the effect of conceptual category structure 3.5 Conclusions Notes 4. Processing opposite pairs: an antonym decision task 4.1 Rationale and design 4.1.1 Task design 4.1.2 Stimuli 4.1.3 Participants 4.1.4 Data cleaning and analysis procedure 4.2 Overview of results 4.2.1 Antonymic strength (judgement task scores) 4.2.2 Associative strength: frequency of co-occurrence 4.2.3 Antonym sequence 4.2.4 Symmetry of distribution 4.2.5 Morphological relatedness 4.2.6 Word class 4.2.7 Antonym type 4.3 Conclusions Notes 5. Case studies 5.1 Case study I: borrow:lend and rent:let - a cross-linguistic comparison 5.2 Case study II: a matter of size 5.3 Case study III: complementaries: pairs clustered around male:female Notes Part III: Theoretical Implications 6. Antonyms in mind and brain: towards a psycholinguistic model of opposition 6.1 Antonym canonicity: what makes an opposite pair canonical? 6.1.1 Minimal and sufficient difference 6.1.2 Morphological relatedness 6.1.3 Purity and salience of opposition 6.1.4 Symmetry 6.1.5 Semantic range and generality 6.1.6 Associative strength: a result of frequent co-occurrence 6.2 Opposites in the mind: cognitive construal and entrenchment of opposition 6.2.1 Antonymy as a prototype category 6.2.2 The conceptual construal of opposites 6.2.2.1 Complexity of category structure 6.2.2.2 Salience and context effects 6.2.2.3 Conceptual entrenchment 6.3 Antonymy in the brain: a psycholinguistic model of representation and processing 6.3.1 Lexical entries and the mental lexicon 6.3.2 Looking up or working out? 6.3.3 A psycholinguistic model of opposition Notes 7. Conclusions 7.1 What is antonymy? 7.2 Methodological considerations 7.3 Further implications Appendix 1. English and German word pairs included in the judgement task (glosses provided for pairs which are not translation equivalents) Appendix 2. Frequencies, t-scores and judgement ratings for all English pairs Appendix 3. Frequencies, t-scores and judgement ratings for all German pairs Appendix 4. Target stimuli for the antonym decision task (only pairs which are not translation equivalents are glossed) Bibliography Corpora and databases Dictionaries References Index