Home Linguistics & Semiotics A corpus-based study on the functions of antonym co-occurrences in spoken Chinese
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

A corpus-based study on the functions of antonym co-occurrences in spoken Chinese

  • Chan-Chia Hsu

    Chan-Chia Hsu received his PhD from the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Taiwan University, and is currently assistant professor at National Taipei University of Business. His research is in corpus linguistics, lexical semantics, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics. His most recent publications and presentations are on Chinese antonyms, Chinese multi-word expressions, and learner corpora. Address for correspondence: Center for General Education, National Taipei University of Business, No. 321, Sec. 1, Jinan Rd., Zhongzheng District, Taipei City 10051, Taiwan (R.O.C.), Email: chanchiah@gmail.com

    EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: May 25, 2019

Abstract

Previous corpus-based research has demonstrated that antonyms co-occur frequently and serve essential functions in discourse. However, these studies are mostly based on written corpus data. Therefore, the present study investigates how antonyms are used in spoken Chinese. Antonyms co-occurring within five turns were manually identified in the National Chengchi University (NCCU) Corpus of Spoken Taiwan Mandarin (27 transcripts, approximately 11 hours) and categorized by their functions. It is found that antonyms that are dialogic in nature prevail in spoken Chinese, and the results reconfirm that antonyms are often used to signal a nearby contrast or to express inclusiveness/exhaustiveness. Compared with written Chinese, spoken Chinese shows a stronger preference for three functional categories, i.e. Interrogative Antonymy, Corrective Antonymy, and Negated Antonymy, which clearly reflect the spontaneous, interactive nature of conversation. The comparison between spoken and written Chinese also shows that antonyms in spoken Chinese co-occur in particular lexico-syntactic frames less often, and that the morphosyllabic structure of antonyms, a crucial factor that influences the functional distribution of antonyms in written Chinese, occupies a minor role in spoken Chinese. This study reveals how the use of antonyms varies across spoken and written Chinese, complementing previous corpus-based studies of antonymy that have drawn conclusions mostly from formal written texts.

About the author

Chan-Chia Hsu

Chan-Chia Hsu received his PhD from the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Taiwan University, and is currently assistant professor at National Taipei University of Business. His research is in corpus linguistics, lexical semantics, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics. His most recent publications and presentations are on Chinese antonyms, Chinese multi-word expressions, and learner corpora. Address for correspondence: Center for General Education, National Taipei University of Business, No. 321, Sec. 1, Jinan Rd., Zhongzheng District, Taipei City 10051, Taiwan (R.O.C.), Email: chanchiah@gmail.com

References

Charles, Walter G. & George A. Miller. 1989. Contexts of antonymous adjectives. Applied Psycholinguistics 10(3). 357–375.10.1017/S0142716400008675Search in Google Scholar

Cheung, Candice Chi-Hang. 2016. Chinese: Parts of speech. In Sin-Wai Chan (ed.), The Routledge encyclopedia of the Chinese language, 242–294. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Chien, Lynn & Randy Allen Harris. 2010. Scheme trope chroma chengyu: Figuration in Chinese four-character idioms. Cognitive Semiotics 10(6). 155–178.10.3726/81610_155Search in Google Scholar

Chui, Kawai & Huei-Ling Lai. 2008. The NCCU corpus of spoken Chinese: Mandarin, Hakka, and Southern Min. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics 6(2). 119–144.Search in Google Scholar

Chui, Kawai, Huei-ling Lai & Huei-Chen Chan. 2016. Taiwan spoken Chinese corpus. In Rint Sybesma, Wolfgang Behr, Yueguo Gu, Zev Handel, C. T. James Huang & James Myers (eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics, 257–259. Netherlands: Brill.Search in Google Scholar

Cruse, D. Alan. 1986. Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Cruse, D. Alan. 2000. Meaning in language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Crystal, David. 1985. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Deese, James. 1964. The associative structure of some English adjectives. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 3(5). 347–357.10.1016/S0022-5371(64)80001-3Search in Google Scholar

Deese, James. 1965. The structure of associations in language and thought. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.Search in Google Scholar

Fellbaum, Christiane. 1995. Co-occurrence and antonymy. International Journal of Lexicography 8(4). 281–303.10.1093/ijl/8.4.281Search in Google Scholar

Feng, Shengli. 2009. On modern written Chinese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 37(1). 145–161.Search in Google Scholar

Freed, Alice F. 1994. The form and function of questions in informal dyadic conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 21(6). 621–644.10.1016/0378-2166(94)90101-5Search in Google Scholar

Han, Jingti & Dehui Song. 2001. Antonym dictionary. Chengdu: Sichuan People’s Publishing House.Search in Google Scholar

Hoey, Michael. 2005. Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56(2). 251–299.10.1353/lan.1980.0017Search in Google Scholar

Hsu, Chan-Chia. 2015. A syntagmatic analysis of antonym co-occurrences in Chinese: Contrastive constructions and co-occurrence sequences. Corpora 10(1). 47–82.10.3366/cor.2015.0066Search in Google Scholar

Hsu, Chan-Chia. 2017. A corpus-based study on the functional distribution of different morphostructural antonyms in Chinese. Language Sciences 59. 36–45.10.1016/j.langsci.2016.08.001Search in Google Scholar

Jones, Steven. 2002. Antonymy: A corpus-based perspective. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203166253_chapter_11Search in Google Scholar

Jones, Steven. 2006. A lexico-syntactic analysis of antonym co-occurrence in spoken English. Text & Talk 26(2). 191–216.10.1515/TEXT.2006.009Search in Google Scholar

Jones, Steven & M. Lynne Murphy. 2005. Using corpora to investigate antonym acquisition. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 10(3). 401–422.10.1075/ijcl.10.3.06jonSearch in Google Scholar

Jones, Steven, Carita Paradis, M. Lynne Murphy & Caroline Willners. 2007. Googling for ‘opposites’: A web-based study of antonym canonicity. Corpora 2(2). 129–154.10.3366/cor.2007.2.2.129Search in Google Scholar

Justeson, John S. & Slava M. Katz. 1991. Co-occurrence of antonymous adjectives and their contexts. Computational Linguistics 17(1). 1–19.Search in Google Scholar

Justeson, John S. & Slava M. Katz. 1992. Redefining antonymy. Literary and Linguistic Computing 7(3). 176–184.10.1093/llc/7.3.176Search in Google Scholar

Kagan, Jerome. 1984. The nature of the child. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar

Kostić, Nataša. 2015. Antonym sequence in written discourse: A corpus-based study. Language Sciences 47(1). 18–31.10.1016/j.langsci.2014.07.013Search in Google Scholar

Lien, Chinfa. 1989. Antonymous quadrinominals in Chinese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 17(2). 263–306.Search in Google Scholar

Lobanova, Anna, Tom van der Kleij & Jennifer Spenader. 2010. Defining antonymy: A corpus-based study of opposites by lexico-syntactic patterns. International Journal of Lexicography 23(1). 19–53.10.1093/ijl/ecp039Search in Google Scholar

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lyons, John. 1995. Linguistic semantics: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511810213Search in Google Scholar

Mettinger, Arthur. 1994. Aspects of semantic opposition in English. Oxford: Clarendon.10.1093/oso/9780198242697.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Miller, George A., Richard Beckwith, Christiane Fellbaum, Derek Gross & Katherine J. Miller. 1990. Introduction to WordNet: An on-line lexical database. International Journal of Lexicography 3(4). 235–244.10.1093/ijl/3.4.235Search in Google Scholar

Muehleisen, Victoria & Maho Isono. 2009. Antonymous adjectives in Japanese discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 41(11). 2185–2203.10.1016/j.pragma.2008.09.037Search in Google Scholar

Murphy, M. Lynne. 2003. Semantic relations and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486494Search in Google Scholar

Murphy, M. Lynne, Carita Paradis, Caroline Willners & Steven Jones. 2009. Discourse functions of antonymy: A cross-linguistic investigation of Swedish and English. Journal of Pragmatics 41(11). 2159–2184.10.1016/j.pragma.2008.09.040Search in Google Scholar

Raybeck, Douglas & Douglas Herrmann. 1996. Antonymy and semantic relations: The case for a linguistic universal. Cross-Cultural Research 30(2). 154–183.10.1177/106939719603000202Search in Google Scholar

Richards, Jack C., John Platt & Heidi Webber. 1985. Longman dictionary of applied linguistics. Harlow: Longman.Search in Google Scholar

Riemer, Nick. 2010. Introducing semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511808883Search in Google Scholar

Storjohann, Petra. 2015. Deutsche antonyme aus korpuslinguistischer sicht: Muster und funktionen. Online publizierte arbeiten zur linguistik. Mannheim: Institut für Deutsche Sprache. doi:10.14618/opal_03-2015.Search in Google Scholar

Stubbs, Michael. 2001. Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Wang, Xingfu, Zhongfu Wu, Yan Li, Qian Huang & Jinglu Hui. 2010. Corpus-based analysis of the co-occurrence of Chinese antonym pairs. In Longbing Cao, Jiang Zhong & Yong Feng (eds.), Advanced data mining and applications, 500–507. Berlin: Springer.10.1007/978-3-642-17313-4_50Search in Google Scholar

Willners, Caroline & Carita Paradis. 2010. Swedish opposites: A multi-method approach to ‘goodness of antonymy’. In Petra Storjohann (ed.), Lexical-semantic relations: Theoretical and practical perspectives, 238–264. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/lis.28.04wilSearch in Google Scholar

Wu, Shuqiong. 2017. Iconicity and viewpoint: Antonym order in Chinese four-character patterns. Language Sciences 59. 117–134.10.1016/j.langsci.2016.09.005Search in Google Scholar

Xu, Anchong. 2000. Antonym application dictionary. Beijing: Language and Culture Press.Search in Google Scholar

Xu, Jiajin. 2015. Corpus-based Chinese studies: A historical review from the 1920s to the present. Chinese Language and Discourse 6(2). 218–244.10.1075/cld.6.2.06xuSearch in Google Scholar

Zhang, Qingyun & Zhiyi Zhang. 2009. Antonym dictionary. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2019-05-25
Published in Print: 2019-07-26

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 24.1.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/text-2019-2039/html
Scroll to top button