LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 9 : 12 December 2009
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.

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Lexical Opposites in Tamil

A. Boologa Rambai, Ph.D.

Introduction

The study of Tamil Semantics seems to be a neglected field. This may be due to the fact that semantics is in a state of flux and that it has not attained the status of rigorous methodological discipline, like other major branches of linguistics. As Lyons states in his major work on semantics (1977), there is so much vagueness, ambiguity and confusion about various concepts in semantic studies and, hence, we had to examine them afresh and to redefine them.

The present paper takes Lyon's treatment of the sense relations of i) Opposition and Contrast and ii) Directional Orthogonal and Anti Podal Opposition as a model, I think that some illustrations given for English by Lyons are equally applicable to Tamil also.

Lexical Opposites

As in other Dravidian languages, in Tamil also, vocabulary contains a large number of opposites. The standard technical term for "Lexical Opposites", that is, oppositeness of meaning between Lexemes is antonymy. The term antonymy was coined in the nineteenth century to describe oppositeness of meaning which was itself conceived as the opposite of synonymy.

Antonymy, in its broader sense, has often been thought of as referring to the opposite extreme from identity of meaning. But this is obviously wrong as when two objects are compared and contrasted with respect to their possession or lack of some property, this is done generally on recognition of their similarity in other respects. The standard term antonymy has become as imprecise as the term oppositeness because all kinds of dichotomization are referred as antonymy.

Lyons (1983:68) suggests that "the fact that antonyms not only have polarity relative to one another, along the dimension that they constitute, but differ in their privilege of occurrence and in the relations that they contract with other lexical items may be thought of as contributing to the very definite sense which we have as native speakers that some lexical items have a "positive" and others a "negative" ring about them.

Binary opposition is one of the most important principles governing the structure of languages. Lyons draws up a workable and convenient classification and this will be the basis for the present paper. Oppositeness will be restricted to dichotomous or binary contrasts. Antonymy will be restricted still further in to gradable opposites. Ungradable opposites will be termed complementariness. To be distinguished from both antonymy and complementarity is converseness.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ergativity in Pahari Language | The Robustness of Free Reading in Second and Foreign Language Education | Conversational Cloze as a Measure of Ability in English in Indian Schools | Teaching the Intangibles - The Role of the English Teacher | Failures and Disillusionment in Naipaul's Miguel Street | Issues and Problems in Ph.D. in English - Degree Quality Assurance in Pakistan | Socio-Linguistic Constraints of Code Switching in Hindi-English-Kannada Multilinguals | Nature of Perception according to Gautama | The Quintessence of Sports Psychology and Language | Some Characteristics of Tamil Jokes | Lexical Opposites in Tamil | The Fire and the Rain - Deriving Meaning for Modern Life from Myths | Realilty and Challenges for Tamil in a Multilingual Environment - Tamil in Malaysia: An Essay in Tamil | Teaching and Learning a Classical-Modern Language - Some Thoughts Relating to Tamil | HOME PAGE of December 2009 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR

A. Boologarambai, Ph.D.
Department of Tamil Language and Translation Studies
Dravidian University
Kuppam - 517 425
Andhra Pradesh, India
arpudharambai@gmail.com

 
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