Some Remarks on Antonymy

Abstract

The notion of ‘antonymous adjective’, as used in recent and not-so-recent literature, is discussed here; and the criteria for antonymy suggested by different researchers are found to yield largely the same results. It is suggested that only noun-based adjectives can be ‘antonymous’, and that a useful delimitation of the term 'antonymous adjective can be achieved in terms of the inherentness of the underlying nouns: all scalar nouns taken to be inherently possessed by some entity may serve as the base for a set of an-tonymous adjectives. This conclusion is supported by a comparison with adjectives derived from so-called inalienable nouns: the two types of adjective are found to share many characteristics. Finally, some implications for grammatical descriptions are discussed.

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