Misunderstanding Taxonomy And Antonymy

Martin & Rose (2007: 80):

These taxonomies give rise to several types of lexical relation in discourse, including class-member and co-class, whole-part and co-part. We can also include here repetition, in which the same lexical item is repeated, sometimes in different grammatical forms, such as marry - married - marriage. There is also synonymy, in which a similar experiential meaning is shared by a different lexical item, such as marriage - wedding.

Then of course there are contrasts between lexical items. The most familiar is perhaps antonymy, in which two lexical items have opposing meanings, such as marriage - divorce. But another type of opposition is converse roles, such as wife - husband, parent - child, teacher - student, doctor - patient, and so on. Although these are oppositional relations, they are not strictly speaking antonyms.

In addition to such oppositions, another type of contrast is series. These include scales such as hot - warm - tepid - cold, but also cycles such as days of the week Sunday - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday and so on.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, repetitions and synonyms do not constitute taxonomies, since the relation between items, in each case, is one of elaborating identity, rather than elaborating attribution (hyponymic taxonomy) — the general sense of 'taxonomy' — or extension (meronymic taxonomy).  Incidentally, Plotkin (1995: 44-5) terms hyponymic and meronymic taxonomies 'structural hierarchies'.

Consequently, Martin & Rose's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's lexical cohesion as discourse semantic 'taxonomic relations' is based on a fundamental misunderstanding.

[2] To be clear, these are generally known in linguistics as complementary antonyms.

[3] To be clear, these are generally known in linguistics as relational antonyms.

[4] To be clear, these are generally known in linguistics as graded antonyms.

[5] To be clear, these "oppositions" can be interpreted as co-meronyms of 'week' and co-hyponyms of 'day'.