Bibliography of Antonymy

English Sources

The list below contains sources on antonymy and on lexical relations in general which are written in English. There is also a list of non-English sources.

Please contact me at [email protected] if you have some references you'd like me to add to the list. (I have to apologize in advance, however, because it may take me a long time to get the additions up on the web page.)

Note: If you can't read some of the characters in the names, please change the character encoding setting on your browser for the language you want to view. (For example, on my Mac computer with a Firefox browser, I need to select "Western (MacRoman)" to view the Spanish characters.)


Beck C.A. 1980. Semantic context effects in visual word recognition: an alanysis of semantic strategies. Memory and Cognition 8: 493-512.

Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. Adjectives in English: Attribution and predication. Lingua 18: 1-34.

Brewer, William F., and J. Brandon Stone. 1975. Acquisition of spatial antonym pairs. Journal of Experimental Psychology 19, 299-307.

Casagrande, J.B. and K.L. Hale. 1967. Semantic relations in Papago folk definitions. In Studies in southwestern ethnolinguistics, eds. Dell Hymes and William E. Bittle, 165-193. Mouton: The Hague.

Charles, Walter G. and George A. Miller. 1989. Contexts of antonymous adjectives. Applied Psychology 10: 357-375.

Charles, Walter G., Marjorie A. Reed, and Douglas Derryberry. 1994. Conceptual and associative processing in antonymy and synonymy. Applied Psycholinguistics 15, 329: 54.

Church, Kenneth Ward and Patrick Hanks. 1990. Word association norms, mutual information, and lexicography. Computational Linguistics 16: 22-29.

Cruse, D. Alan. 1976. Three classes of antonym in English. Lingua 38, 281:92.

Cruse, D.A. 1980. Antonyms and gradable complementaries. In Perspektiven der lexikalishen Semantik. Dieter Kastovsky, ed. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag.

Cruse, D.A. 1986. Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Antonymy revisited: some thoughts on the relationship between words and concepts. In Adrienne Lehrer and Eva Feder Kittay, eds. .1992.Frames, fields, and contrasts: new essays in semantic and lexical organization. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 289-306.

Cruse, D.A. 1994. Prototype theory and lexical relations. Rivista di linguistics. 6:167-88.

Cruse, D.A. and Pagona Togia. 1995. Towards a cognitive model of antonymy. Lexicology 1: 113-141.

Deese, James. 1965. The structure of associations in language and thought. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press.

Edmundson, H. P., and M. N. Epstein. 1972. Research on synonymy and antonymy: a model and its representation. (Research report TR-185.) College Park: University of Maryland Computer Science Center.

Egan, R.F. 1968. Survey of the history of English synonymy. In Webster's new dictionary of synonyms, ed. P.B. Gove, 5a-31a. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Evans, Michael J. 1984. Complementarity, antonymy, and semantic development: a method and some data. In Carol Larson Thew and Carolyn Echols Johnson, eds. Proceedings of the Second International Congress for the Study of Child Language. Lanham, MD: University Presses of America, 142-62.

Evens, Martha W., Bonnie E. Littowitz, Judith A. Markowitz, Raoul N. Smith, and Oswald Werner. 1980. Lexical-semantic relations: a comparative survey. Edmonton, Canada: Linguistic Research Inc.

Fellbaum, Christiane. 1995. Co-occurrence and antonymy. International Journal of Lexicography 8: 281-303.

Fellbaum, Christiane, ed. 1998. WordNet: an electronic lexical database. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fellbaum, Christiane, Derek Gross, and Katherine Miller. 1993. Adjectives in WordNet. In Five papers on WordNet, ftp://ftp.cogsci.princeton.edu/pub/wordnet/5papers.ps.

Gazzaniga, Michael S., and George A. Miller. 1989. The recognition of antonymy by a language-enriched right hemisphere. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 1, 187-93.

Giora, Rachel, Vered Heruti, Nili Metuki, and Ofer Fein. 2009. �gWhen we say no we mean no�h: Interpreting negation in vision and language. Journal of Pragmatics. [printed version in press; available online 28 November 2008]

Gross, Derek, Ute Fischer and George A. Miller. 1988. Antonymy and the representation of adjectival meanings. Cognitive science laboratory report 13, Dept. of Psychology, Princeton University.

Hale, Kenneth.1971. A note on a Walbiri tradition of antonymy. In Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits, eds., Semantics: an interdisciplinary reader in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 472-84.

Heidenheimer, Patricia. 1978. Logical relations in the semantic processing of children between six and ten: emergence of antonym and synonym categorization. Child Development 49, 1243-6.

Herrmann, Douglas J., and Roger Chaffin. 1986. Comprehension of semantic relations as a function of the definitions of relations. In F. Klix and H. Hagendorf, eds., Human memory and cognitive capabilities. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 311-9.

Herrmann, D.J., R.J.S. Chaffin, G. Conti, D. Peters and P.H. Robbins. 1979. Comprehension of antonymy and the generality of categorization models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory. 5: 585-97.

Herrmann, D.J., R.J.S. Chaffin, M.P. Daniel and R.S. Wool. 1986, The role of elements of relation definition in antonymy and synonym comprehension. Zeitschrift fur Psychologie. 194: 133-53.

Holleman, Bregje C. and Henk L.W. Pander Maat. 2009. The pragmatics of profiling: Framing effects in text interpretation and text production. Journal of Pragmatics. [printed version in press; available online 28 November 2008]

Horn, Lawrence R. 1989. A natural history of negation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Jones, Steven. 2002. Antonymy: A corpus-based perspective. London: Routledge.

Jones, Steven, and M. Lynne Murphy. 2005. Using corpora to investigate antonym acquisition. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 10:3, 401-422. [An earlier version of this paper has been electronically published in the University of Sussex Working Papers in Linguistics and English Language. ]

Jones, Steven, M Lynne Murphy, Carita Paradis, & Caroline Willners. 2007. Googling for 'opposites': a web-based study of antonym canonicity. Corpora 2:2.129-55.

Justeson, John S. and Slava M. Katz. 1991. Co-occurrences of antonymous adjectives and their contexts. Computational Linguistics 17: 1-19.

Justeson, John S. and Slava M. Katz. 1992. Redefining antonymy: The textual structure of a semantic relation. Literary and Linguistic Computing 7:176-184.

Kiparsky, Paul. 1983. Word formation and the lexicon. In Proceedings of the 1982 Mid-America Linguistics Conference, ed. F.A. Ingeman. University of Kansas.

Kreezer, George, and Karl M. Dallenbach . 1929. Learning the relation of opposition. American Journal of Philosophy 41, 432-41.

Kwon, H.-S. 1998. A corpus-based study of English negative prefixation. In 1998 TALC Proceedings, London: Longman.

Lehrer, Adrienne. 1985. Markedness and antonymy. Linguistics 21: 397-429.

Lehrer, Adrienne. 2002. Paradigmatic relations of exclusion and opposition I: gradable antonymy and complementarity. In Cruse, D.A., F. Hundsnurcher, M. Job and P.R. Lutzeier, eds. Handbook of Lexicology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 498-508.

Lehrer, Adrienne and K. Lehrer. 1982. Antonymy. Linguistics and Philosophy 5:483-501.

Ljung, Magnus. 1974. Some remarks on antonymy. Language 50, 74-88.

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Markman, Ellen M. 1994. Constraints on word meaning in early language acquisition. Lingua: International Review of General Linguistics 92: 199-227.

Marsh-Stefanowska, Patricia J. 1982. A contrastive study of some morphologically related opposites in English and Macedonian. Master's thesis, University of Manchester.

Mettinger, Arthur. 1994. Aspects of semantic opposition in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Miller, George, ed. 1990. WordNet: An on-line lexical database. International Journal of Lexicography 3: 235-312.

Miller, George A. and Christiane Fellbaum. 1991. Semantic networks of English. Cognition 41: 197-229.

Muehleisen, Victoria. 1997. Antonymy and Semantic Range. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Northwestern University. [Available on-line.]

Muehleisen, Victoria and Maho Isono. 2009. Antonymous adjectives in Japanese discourse. Journal of Pragmatics. [printed version in press; available online 28 November 2008]

Murphy, Gregory L., and Jane M. Andrew. 1993. The conceptual basis of antonymy and synonymy in adjectives. Journal of Memory and Language 32, 301-19.

Murphy, M. Lynne. 1994. In Opposition to an Organized Lexicon: Pragmatic Principles and Lexical Semantic Relations. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois.

Murphy, M. Lynne. 2000. Knowledge of words versus knowledge about words: the conceptual basis of lexical relations. In Bert Peeters (ed.), The lexicon/encyclopedia interface. (Current research in the semantics-pragmatics interface 5.) Amsterdam: Elsevier, 317-48.

Murphy, M. Lynne. 2003. Linguistic and conceptual information in Meaning-Text Theory: the case against some paradigmatic relations. Proceedings of MTT-2003, Paris 16-18 June 2003. University of Paris, 11-19. [An earlier version of this paper has been electronically published in the University of Sussex Working Papers in Linguistics and English Language.]

Murphy, M. Lynne. 2003. Semantic relations and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Murphy, M. Lynne. 2006.Antonymy and incompatibility. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd edn). Oxford: Elsevier.

Murphy, M Lynne. 2006. Antonyms as lexical constructions: or, why paradigmatic construction is not an oxymoron. In Constructions all over: case studies and theoretical implications. Special volume of Constructions SV1-8/2006. http://www.constructions-online.de/articles/specvol1/

Murphy, M Lynne & Steven Jones. 2008. Antonymy in children's and child-directed speech. First Language 28:4.403-30.

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. [printed version in press; available online 28 November 2008]

Ogden, C. K. 1967. Opposition: a linguistic and psychological analysis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Originally published in 1932 by the Orthological Institute.]

Palmer, F.R. 1976. Semantics: A new introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Paradis, C. 1997. Degree modifiers of adjectives in spoken British English. Lund Studies in English 92. Lund: Lund University Press.

Paradis, C. 2000. It's well weird. Degree modifiers of adjectives revisited: the nineties. Corpora galore: analyses and techniques in describing English, ed. by J. Kirk, 147-160. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Paradis, C. 2000. Reinforcing adjectives. A cognitive semantic perspective on grammaticalization. Generative theory and corpus studies: A dialogue from 10 ICEHL. Topics in English Linguistics, ed. by Ricardo Berm�dez-Otero, David Denison, Richard M. Hogg, C.B. Mc Cully, 233-258. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Paradis, C. 2001 Adjectives and boundedness. Cognitive Linguistics 12. 47-64.

Paradis, C. 2004. Where does metonymy stop? Senses, facets and active zones. Metaphor and symbol, 19.4.245-264.

Paradis, C. 2005.Ontologies and construals in lexical semantics. Axiomathes 15.

Paradis, C. (forthcoming) Configurations, construals and change: expressions of degree. In B. Mendez Naya, ed., English language and linguistics.

Paradis, C and C. Willners. 2006. Antonymy and negation: the boundedness hypothesis. Journal of Pragmatics, 38.7.1051-1080.

Paradis, C. and C. Willners. 2006. What a corpus-based dictionary tells us about antonyms. In E. Corino, C. Marello and C. Ornesti, eds., Proceedings XII Euralex International Congress, vol I. 213-220.

Paradis, C. and C. Willners.2006. Selecting antonyms for dictionary entries: methodological aspects. In E. Klingvall and S. Manninen, eds., The Department of English: working papers in English linguistics, vol. V. http://www.englund.lu.se/content/view/275/215/.

Paradis, C. and C. Willners. (in press) Antonyms in dictionary entries: methodological aspects. Studia linguistica.

Paradis, C., C. Willners, C., L. Murphy and S. Jones. (forthcoming) Good vs. bad antonyms: evidence from psycholinguistic experiments. Cognition.

Raybeck, Douglas, and Douglas Herrmann. 1990. A cross-cultural examination of semantic relations. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 21, 452-73.

Raybeck, Douglas, and Douglas Herrmann.1996. Antonymy and semantic relations: the case for a linguistic universal. Cross-Cultural Research 30, 154-83.

Room, Adrian. 1988. A dictionary of contrasting pairs. London: Routledge.

Sabourin, Laura L. 1998. The interaction of suffixation with synonymy and antonymy. MA thesis, University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Storjohann, Petra. 2009. Plesionymy: A case of synonymy or contrast? Journal of Pragmatics. [printed version in press; available online 28 November 2008]

Tagashira, Y. 1992. Survival of the positive: History of Japanese antonyms. In D. Brentari, G.N. Larson and L.A. MacLeod, eds. The Joy of Grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 329-36.

Taylor, John R. 1989. Linguistic categorization: Prototypes in linguistic theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Togia, Pagona.1996. Antonyms in English and Modern Greek: a cognitive approach. Doctoral thesis, University of Manchester.

Vogel, Anna. 2004. Swedish Dimensional Adjectives [Svenska dimensionsadjektiv]. Doctoral thesis at Stockholm Univeristy. Available on-line.

Wilbur, Richard. 1973. Opposites. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Willners, Caroline. 2001. Antonyms in Context. Lund: Lund University.

Wirth, Jessica R. 1983. Toward universal principles of word formation: a look at antonyms. In Shiroh Hattori and Kazuko Inoue, eds. Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Linguists (Tokyo 1982). Tokyo: CIPL. 967-71.



To the Bibliography of Antonymy - Non-English Sources
To the web page of The Comparative Lexical Relations Group
To the web page of Victoria Muehleisen.
Last updated on July 1, 2009.