Misunderstanding 'Opposite' As 'Contrast'

Martin & Rose (2007: 86-7):

Contrasts

Contrasts are elements that differ significantly in meaning. They include elements that are opposed in meaning, such as win-lose, happy-sad or married-single, and series of differing meanings such as hot-warm-tepid-cold. Opposed elements include antonyms and converses. Antonyms come in pairs, e.g.:

win - lose
married - single
quickly - slowly

Converses are associated with converse social roles or locations, e.g.:

victim - perpetrator
mother - son
give - receive
on top of - underneath
before - after

Series include scales and cycles. Scales have outermost poles of meaning, e.g.:

hot - warm - tepid - cold
pass - credit - distinction - high distinction
tutor - lecturer - senior lecturer - associate professor - professor

Cycles order items between two others, such as days of the week or years:

Sunday - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday
2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003...

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this definition does not sufficiently specify the relation under discussion, not least because, on the paradigmatic principle, meaning is contrast.  An example of elements that differ significantly in meaning but which do not fit the Martin & Rose category of 'contrast' is transubstantiation-truck.

[2] As previously noted, what Martin & Rose term "antonyms" are generally known in linguistics as complementary antonyms: opposite meanings that do not lie on a continuous spectrum.  However, their example 'quickly - slowly' is not a complementary antonym, but a graded antonym, what the authors term a scale.

[3] As previously noted, what Martin & Rose term "converses" are generally known in linguistics as relational antonyms: words that refer to a relationship from opposite points of view.  To be clear, prepositions are (closed-class) grammatical items, not lexical items.

[4] As previously noted, what Martin & Rose term "scales" are generally known in linguistics as gradable antonyms: pairs of words with opposite meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum.  The authors' examples are not pairs, and except for the polar opposites hot and cold, not opposites.

[5] To be clear, what Martin & Rose term "cycles" do not feature opposites.  Days of the week can be interpreted as co-meronyms of 'week' and co-hyponyms of 'day', but Sunday is not the opposite of Saturday, for example.  Moreover, the names of years are neither opposites — the year 2001 is not the opposite of 2003 — nor a cycle, since, although history often repeats itself, the year 2001 is not expected to return in the foreseeable future.