RELATIONAL OPPOSITES : CONVERSENESS
A quite different
kind of 'opposite' is the pairs of words which exhibit the reversal of a
relationship between items (or ARGUMENT), e.g.
buy/sell, husband/wife. If John sells to Fred, Fred buys from John; if Bill is
Mary’s husband, Mary is Bill’s wife. This includes verbs (buy/sell,
lend/borrow, rent/let, own/belong to, give/receive), nouns (husband/wife,
fiancé/fiancée, parent/child, debtor/creditor), terms of spatial position (above/below, in front
of/behind, north of/south of), active and passive in grammar (if Tom hits
Harry, Harry is hit by Tom).
Terms involved in relational
opposition may be transitive, but they cannot be symmetric.
Relational opposites involve two relations (if the picture is above the table
and the table above the carpet, the picture is above the carpet; also below).
Symmetric relations hold between the arguments in both directions, so that only
one term, not two, is required (married to, beside, meet).
Kinship terms are especially interesting in a discussion of relational opposites for
two reasons:
- Many of them indicate not only the relationship, but a different sex (father/mother, son/daughter, uncle/aunt). John is Sam's father does not entail that Sam is John's son. Sam could be his daughter. There are also pairs of words that would be symmetric were it not for their indication n of sex (brother/sister). John is Sam’s brother does not entail Sam is John’s brother (she might be his sister). Only a small number of terms in English do not indicate sex (cousin "symmetric", parent/child "relational opposites).
- Whether a term is symmetric or not is a matter of the language. (Be married to is symmetric in English because it does not indicate sex, but in many languages where the active form of the verb is used for husband and the passive for the wife "marries/is married"). Similarly, many languages have no symmetric term "cousin"; the sex has to be indicated in these languages, or the precise relationship of the parents.
Spatial and Temporal relations: are not related as relational opposites, but differ in spatial
direction and hold temporal relationships. "Ask and offer" may expect
"reply and accept", but the 'expectation' may not be realized. But reply
and accept 'presuppose' that there has been an act of asking or giving.
The 'true' gradable antonyms can
be handled in terms of relational opposites) wide can be seen as wider
than the norm; if a is wider than b, b is narrower than a).
The comparative forms (the explicitly gradable ones) "wider and
narrower" are relational opposites. They are, moreover, transitive (if a is wider than b and b
is wider than c, a is wider than c), but not
symmetric or reflexive. However, as wide as, as narrow as, etc.; are symmetric,
transitive and reflexive. (source: educationcing.blogspot.com)
Relational
Antonyms are kind of like complementary antonyms because they are “either/or” words.
The difference is that a relationship must be present between the two
words. One exists only because the other does.
(If
someone wins, someone must lose; if there is a fraction, there must be a
whole.)
above
below
all nothing
asleep
awake
beginning
end
behind
ahead
buy
sell
east
west
floor
ceiling
front
back
give
get
hello
goodbye
high
low
hunter
prey
husband
wife
lead
follow
|
leave
arrive
left
right
lend
borrow
lock
unlock
lost
found
north
south
offense
defense
open
close
output
input
parent
child
slave
master
top
bottom
trap
release
up
down
|
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