A diachronic view on antonymy in English

A diachronic view on antonymy in English

Student: Facultatea: Litere, Englez-SpaniolAnul III, Sem. IA diachronic view on antonymy in EnglishIn this paper we attempt to present a diachronic perspective on antonymy by focusing on three elements: what diachronic linguistics is, types of antonyms and examples of words whose meaning change resulted in their association with new antonyms. DiachronicorDiachronous, from the Greek word (Diahronikos), is a term for something happening over time. It is used in several fields of research.Diachronic linguistics (also calledhistorical linguistics) is the study oflanguagechange. It has five main concerns: to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages

to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them intolanguage families(comparative linguistics)

to develop general theories about how and why language changes

to describe the history ofspeech communities to study the history of words, i.e.etymology.Evolution into other fields: Initially, all modern linguistics was historical in orientation, even the study of modern dialects involved looking at their origins. Ferdinand de Saussure's distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics is fundamental to the present day organization of the discipline. Primacy is accorded to synchronic linguistics, and diachronic linguistics is defined as the study of successive synchronic stages. Saussure's clear demarcation, however, is now seen to be idealised.The Recent developments in historical semantics by Ferenc Kiefer, 2001 offers the following overview of current research in the diachronic investigation into meaning:

in sum, then, in historical semantics three main lines of research can more or less clearly be distinguished:

i) research based on semantic fields (the structuralist tradition);

ii) the application of prototype theory to historical semantics as well as cognitive linguistic accounts of metonymy and metaphor;

iii) the use of semantics as well as pragmatic principles in order to account for grammaticalization phenomena

Apart from the recent productive co-operation of linguistics and psychology in the exploration of prototype phenomena, this quotation makes no mention of links to other cultural sciences. A closer investigation of current literature in diachronic semantics will confirm this impression. In this line of research, the principles and methods of structuralism were systematically applied to diachronic investigation. Language is perceived as a closed coherent whole where changes never occur in isolation but, rather, affect the entire system. The advances in the field of diachronic semantics in the last decades cannot conceal the fact restriction to just only language-internal considerations alone severely limits the insights that we can hope to gain.

With the advent of generative grammar emphasis was switched from the meaning of words to the meaning of sentences. Semantic analysis will accordingly be required to explain how sentences are understood by the speakers of language. Also, the task of semantic analysis is to explain the relations existing among sentences, why certain sentences are anomalous, although grammatically correct, why other sentences are semantically ambiguous, since they admit of several interpretations, why other sentences are synonymous or paraphrases of each other.

In some theorists opinion the change of language can be very well accounted from the diachronic analysis of antonymy. We shall further try to present the categories of antonyms in accordance to Andrei Bantass theory. For the purposes of this article (see introduction), we can state that antonyms, from the Greek anti ("opposite") and onoma ("name"), are gradable opposites. Gradable opposites lie at opposite ends of a continuous spectrum of meanings; examples are hot and cold, slow and fast, and fat and skinny. Words may have several different antonyms, depending on the meaning of the word, which also depends on the context in which it is used: both long and tall can be antonyms of short.

Though the word antonym was only created by philologists in the 19th century, such relationships are a fundamental part of a language, in contrast to synonyms, which are a result of history and drawing of fine distinctions, or homonyms, which are mostly etymological accidents or coincidences.

Languages often have ways of creating antonyms as an easy extension of lexicon. For example, English has the prefixes in- and un-, so unreal is the antonym of real and indocile is of docile.

The termantonym(and the relatedantonymy) has also been commonly used as a term that is synonymous withopposite; however, the term also has other more restricted meanings. One usage hasantonymreferring to both gradable opposites, such aslong: short, and (non-gradable) complementary opposites, such asmale: female, while opposites of the typesup: downandprecede: followare excluded from the definition.

Antonymy, or oppositeness of meaning, has long been recognized as one of the most important semantic relations. However, it has been the subject of a good deal of confusion, partly because it has generally been regarded as complementary to synonymy and partly because most semanticists have failed to give sufficient attention to different kinds of oppositeness. Synonymy and antonymy are sense-relations of a very different kind.A relation of oppositeness to be discussed is that which holds between such pairs of words as single: married, male: female, etc. It could be used the term complementarity for this, saying that single and married, or male and female, are complementaries. It is characteristic of such pairs of lexical items that the denial of the one implies the assertions of the other and the assertion of the one implies the denial of the other. Thus, John isnt married implies John is single; and John is married implies John is not single. In the care of those pairs for which we use the term antonymy (e.g. good: bad, high: low), only the second of these implications holds. John is good implies the denial of John is bad; but John is not bad does not imply the assertion of John is good.Complementariness may be regarded as a special case of incompatibility holding over two-term sets. The assertions of one member of a set of incompatible terms implies the denial of each of the other members in the set taken separately (red implies blue, green, etc.); and the denial of one member of a set incompatible terms implies the assertion of the disjunction of all the other members (red implies either green or blue or).

Logically, converses involve a two-place predicate, one cannot be a husband without wife, one cannot buy something else selling it, and inversely. On the other hand, one can be a king without having a queen.

The meanings of words can be examined in two ways. They can be studied historically, that is by examining how they were used in the past and how their meaning has changed in time. This is considered a diachronic analysis of words. Words can also be analysed within a given period, which is called synchronic word analysis. Although words have changed their meaning(s) in time, they may be still used with the initial meaning in certain contexts. Their change is also a result of contextual changes, such as cultural, economic, social etc. The change of the meaning of a word is implicitly reflected in the change of the antonymous relations with other words, since the new meaning brings new opposites. Further on I shall try to give some examples of words whose change of meaning in time has also changed the antonyms. 1. The example provided in Diachronic perspectives on domain-specific English (p. 120): nouther in writ (OE) nor word (OE) can show us show that antonymous relation writ:word has evolved to writing:oral/speaking/listening. The meaning of word has enlarged, in certain contexts engulfing writing, as it refers to expressing something in words or even, due o some intertextual relations and theories, expressing something in written words. 2. Another example I would like to mention is abroad. According to contemporary dictionaries abroad means in or to another country (that is not your own) and it can be used for a feeling or a piece of news that is felt or known by other people too. Therefore it can in antonymous relation with: in your own country, inner/internal. In the Bible, St Mathew 12:30, the following sentence allows another interpetation: He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. In this case abroad stands in opposition with me.

In Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe (the 18th century) abroad means the land that is not his own property, the yard and the house. It can stand in antonymous relation with outdoors/outside the yard: This day went abroad with my gun and my dog, and killed a wild cat; or Great heats, and no breeze, so that there was no stirring abroad, except in the evening, for food; this time I spent in putting all my things in order within doors. In Dylan Thomas Poem in October the meaning of abroad is outside/outdoors and is opposed to home: And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in the shower of all my days.

3. For the third example I used Rita Tammemans study of the evolution of the word splicing. She used different discourses to succeed in establishing the diachronic analysis of the word splicing. She states that Special language users will also have different perceptions of the meaning constituents of this lexeme according to whether they are involved in sailing (rope splicing), film editing (film splicing) or molecular biology and genetic engineering (mRNA splicing and gene splicing). To the diachronic representation, according to Tammerman, we added several antonyms showing the evolution of the meaning of the word changes the antonymic series:A. rope, cable, cord, etc.: the joining of two pieces of a string-like object by untwisting and interweaving the strands (OED 1524) / separate

B. timber, metal beam, etc.: the joining of two pieces by overlapping or scarfing the two ends together (OED 1626) / separateC. film, tape, etc.: the joining of two pieces of film or audio tape (OED 1912) / cutD1. genetic material (DNA, RNA) (Boyer & Cohen, 1973): the joining of two pieces of a strand of genetic material after the insertion of new genetic material / extract, dissectD2. mRNA splicing (Berget, 1977): the joining of the pieces of a string-like object after removing introns / insert, dissect, separate.Splicing also means tying: untying, marrying: divorcing, separating.As linguists have stated and as we have attempted to demonstrate above, the diachronic change of words is reflected in the antonymic relations of these words.Bibliography

1. Marina Dossena, Irma Taasavitsainen. Diachronic perspectives on domain-specific English. Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2006;

2. Regine Eckardt, Klaus von Heusinger, Christoph Schwarze. Words in time: diachronic semantics from different points of view, 2003;3. John Lyons. Introduction to theoretical linguistics, 1968; 4. Terttu Nevalainen, Juhani Klemola, Mikko Laitinen. Types of variation: diachronic, dialectical and typological interfaces; 2006;5. Andrei Banta, Rodica Albu, Mariana Popa, Carmen Ciobanu, Aurel Trofin. English for advanced students, 1993;6. Rita Temmerman. Sociocultural situatedness of terminology in the life sciences: The history of splicing To be published in Frank, Roslyn & Rene Dirven & Jordan Zlatev & Tom Ziemke (2006) Body, Language and Mind. Vol II. Interrelations between Biology, Linguistics and Culture. Tbingen: Springer Verlag;7. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.