Ten paradigms of ancillary antonymy: Evidence from Classical Arabic

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Department of Foreign Languages (English), College of Education, Mansoura University

Abstract

Ancillary antonymy (strictly opposition), a top-listed category in the state-of-the-art typology of antonymy in English, has been rigorously tested, retrieved and replicated over the past fifteen years across a variety of languages: Swedish, Japanese, Dutch, Serbian, Qur'anic Arabic, Chinese, Modern Standard Arabic, and Classical Arabic. However, three other counter studies have stripped this cross-linguistically preponderant category out of their taxonomies despite evidence that a great number of ancillary antonymy cases have been logged in their datasets. Using three Classical Arabic datasets, this study aims to provide strong evidence that champions this phenomenon and to propose ten paradigms of its usage therein. The study draws heavily upon the frame-based analytical methods developed in lexical semantics to serve its typological purpose. Results indicate that canonical, less canonical, and noncanonical pairs of opposition are interchangeably employed to signal, sharpen, and trigger each other on the syntagmatic axis. They also show that ancillary antonymy in Classical Arabic has nine more paradigmatic configurations, the most notable of which is the interchangeable opposition of duplicates, analogs, synonyms, and meronyms

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