Binary Antonyms in Language

Binary Antonymy

• Binary antonyms are words that exclude and negate each other, such as "male" and "female".
• A person cannot possess both characteristics simultaneously, e.g., a person cannot be both "alive" and "dead" at the same time.
• Binary antonyms are ungradable, meaning they do not allow the use of intensifiers or degree words like "very" or "somewhat".
• Some semanticists refer to the relationship between binary antonyms as "real antonymy" because the words are extremely opposite.

Characteristics of Binary Antonyms

• The relationship between binary antonyms can be referred to as "complementary antonymy", "real antonymy", or "extreme antonymy".
• Binary antonyms explain the concept of dissimilarity of senses clearly.
• Examples of binary antonyms include "male" and "female", and "bachelor" and "married".

Key Features

• Binary antonyms are mutually exclusive, meaning that one implies the absence of the other.
• "Male" means "not female", and "female" means "not male", illustrating the binary relationship between them.
• Binary antonyms do not allow for nuanced expressions, such as "very married" or "very dead".

Homonymy and Synonymy

• Homonymy: a case of sense ambiguity caused by a word having two or more senses.
• Synonymy: a case where two different words have the same sense.
• Homonymy involves one word, but synonymy involves two words.
• Homonymy is a case of a word having two non-synonymous synonyms or senses.

Accounting for Polysemy and Homonymy

• Reasons why words have more than one sense:
  • Economy
  • Coincidence
  • Noun-verb function
  • Transitive-Intransitive

Sentence Ambiguity

• Types of sentence ambiguity:
  • Lexical ambiguity: due to ambiguous words
  • Grammatical ambiguity: due to sentence structure

Examples of Ambiguity

• Word ambiguity:
  • Bank (land alongside the river or financial establishment)
  • Fight (to fight or a fight)
  • File (to file or a file)
  • Fill (to fill a glass, fill a job, or the fill of a hole)
  • Will (he has enough will or he wrote his wills)
  • Fire (to set fire, to fire a gun, under fire, or to fire questions at him)
  • Firm (strong, strict, or company)
  • Pupil (pupil at school or pupil of the eye)
  • Honeymoon (to honeymoon or a honeymoon)
  • Side (to side with or the two sides of the river)
• Homonymy:
  • Pen (he wrote with a pen or the sheep are in the pen)
  • File (he kept the documents in the file or he sharpened the knife with a file)
  • Term (the first school term was over or what is the meaning of this term)
  • Steer (this steer was born one month ago or the captain is to steer the ship)
  • Moment (this is a great moment in your life or the moment of force is a physics-term)
  • Craft (he treated them with craft and deceit or this craft can carry ten passengers only)
  • Kind (he is a kind person or this is a new kind)
  • Type (she will type the letter or the suffix is one type of affixes)
• Polysemy:
  • Chair (he sat on the chair or he will chair the meeting)
  • Father (he is Ali's father or he will father this child)
  • Fat (avoid fat food or the chicken is ready to eat)

Relation between Word Ambiguity and Sentence Ambiguity

• Word ambiguity may sometimes cause sentence ambiguity
• Word ambiguity may not cause sentence ambiguity
• Sentence ambiguity may exist without word ambiguity
• Ambiguous words do not always make ambiguous sentences

Grammatical Ambiguity

• Examples of grammatical ambiguity:
  • And structure: He saw three boys and girls
  • Prepositional phrase structure: He saw a man with a telescope
  • Verb voice: The bird is ready to eat
  • The (ing form): flying planes can be dangerous
  • Possessive form: John's paintings
  • Or structure: This can be A or B
  • Premodification structure: acquired language output

Test your understanding of binary antonyms in language with this true/false quiz. Learn how to identify and understand binary antonyms with these questions.