A dynamic construal approach to antonymy*

Based on textual and psycholinguistic data, this article presents a Cognitive Semantic treatment of antonymy. It argues that antonymy is a conceptual construal, involving a contentful meaning dimension and a bounded configuration. Form-meaning pairings are antonyms when they are used in binary contrast in discourse. In this respect, all antonym construals are on an equal footing, but nevertheless different lexico-semantic pairings have different levels of lexico-semantic affinity due to factors such as the salience of the contentful dimension, the configuration of the members that form part of the opposition, the symmetry of the members in relation to the boundary, contextual versatility and frequency.

Reinforcing adjectives: A cognitive semantic perspective on grammaticalization

With the birth of cognitive semantics, new ideas from the field of theoretical semantics have found their way to the study of meaning changes, and that should not come as a surprise: since one of the major things cognitive semantics is interested in is polysemy – and polysemy is

Touchdowns in winespeak: ontologies and construals in use and meaning-making

The aim is to analyze wine descriptions in a lexical semantic framework that is capable of accounting for generalizations and explanations of use and meaning-making in general as well as in text genres such as wine tasting notes. The model is Lexical meaning as ontologies and construals (Paradis 2005), LOC for short, within the broader framework of Cognitive Semantics. Two touchdowns are made. The first one is concerned with the meaning structures evoked by different words and expressions referring to the wine itself in tasting notes. The second one concentrates on wine descriptors in the four perceptual domains, VISION, SMELL, TASTE and MOUTHFEEL, and how wine terminologies are structured according to different scales and properties pertaining to each domain. It is shown that antonymic scales in wine terminologies are different from antonymic scales in ordinary language only by being deliberately constructed by experts and not naturally evolving from language use in the speech community

Compromiser - a notional paradigm

On the basis of an investigation of the lexical forms quite, rather, fairly, and pretty in contemporary spoken British English, I postulate that these lexical items form a notional paradigm of compromiser within the category of degree modifiers. Compromisers are cognitive synonyms that occupy the middle of an abstract intensity scale, approximating a mean degree of another word, eg quite / rather / fairly / pretty dirty. They are all polysemous and poly-functional words, whose meanings are determined by a crucial semantic trait ‘to a moderate degree’ on the paradigmatic axis, and by a semantic-syntactic, selection-licensing mechanism on the syntagmatic axis

Degree modifiers of adjectives in spoken British English

This thesis investigates a set of degree modifiers of adjectives common in spoken British English. The main focus of the study is on generalizable semantic and intonational features, but attention is also given to the use of the modifiers in authentic speech in terms of frequency, collocability and intonation. The study explores the semantic constraints that govern the relationship between degree modifiers and adjectives in terms of their conceptualization. It is shown that the gradable features of adjectives must harmonize with the grading function of degree modifiers with respect to totality and scalarity for a successful match. The selection of degree modifiers by adjectives is predictable at the level of the type of gradability that the adjective represents. The study also explores the constraints that govern the intonation of degree modifiers. The placement of the nuclear tone and the shape of the tone are two variables which are constrained by the presupposition that an utterance relies on, the harmony between intonational meaning, speaker attitudes and the function of the degree modifier as to reinforcement and attenuation. The interplay between intonational meaning, discoursal meaning, attitudinal meaning, and the lexical meaning of the degree modifiersis shown to be governed by a principle of harmony

Where Does Metonymy Stop? Senses, Facets, and Active Zones

The purpose of this article is to propose a constrained lexical semantic definition of referential metonymy within a model of meaning as ontology and construal. Due to their various types of lexical-referential pairings, 3 types of construals that are frequently referred to as metonymy in the cognitive literature are distinguished as metonymization, facetization, and zone activation. Metonymization involves the use of a lexical item to evoke the sense of something that is not conventionally linked to that particular lexical item. It is argued that metonymy is a contingent relation that stops at the sense level. Facetization and zone activation both involve the use of conventional pairings of lexical items and contextual readings. Facetization takes place within senses at the level of qualia structure and zone activation takes place within qualia structure. Zone activation is a ubiquitous phenomenon that concerns all readings, senses as well facets