Motivation of Markedness in Antonyms

【Abstract】This paper mainly explores the motivation of markedness is explored in three different types of antonyms: graduable antonyms, complementary antonyms and converse antonyms. It holds that markedness is mainly caused by cognitive factors, culture factors and politeness principle.

【Key words】 motivation markedness antonyms

1. Introduction

Markedness is very common phenomenon in antonyms and widely used to analyze the binary asymmetric relations in antonyms. The study of markedness in antonyms has received considerable attention from the scholars, but most of them only focus on the markedness in gradable antonyms, while the markedness in complementary antonyms and converse antonyms is neglected.

Antonymy is the sense relation between words which are opposite in meaning, Antonyms can be classified into three subtypes: gradable antonyms, complementary antonyms, and converse antonyms.

2. Markedness in different types of Antonyms

Markedness is very common in gradable antonymic pairs. Generally speaking, in antonyms the term of higher degree is ummarked, and the term of less degree is marked. For example, in word pairs long/short, big/small, the terms of long, big, and are unmarked, while short, small, and shallow are marked ones.

In the pair of gradable antonyms, the term of higher degree is considered as the cover term, which doesnt presuppose the feature of sth/sb. For example, when we want to ask about the age, or length, or weight of something, it is normal to use the following sentence pattern: how old/long/heavy… In contrast, if we ask how young/short/light…, we do have presupposition about the feature of sth/sb.

Markedness in complementary antonyms is mainly reflected in pairs of antonyms which indicate animate entities. In such antonyms, one term is usually more general, more inclusive in meaning, which can not only refers to the opposite meaning of the other item, but also can include the meaning of the other item. For example, man/woman, lion/lioness, in which man and lion have the narrow sense referring to the male, and also possess the broad meaning referring to both female and male. In such pairs of antonyms, usually the first item is more general, more inclusive and therefore considered as unmarked, and the latter is considered as marked.

The type of Converse antonyms is a special type of antonymy in that the members of a pair do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship between two entities. According to Leech, the markedness in converse antonyms equals to dominance. Such as, parent in parent/child; above in above/below; front in front/behind have the dominant position in the word pairs. So when we talk about the relationship between A and B, we will put the one has dominate position in front of the other one, such as parent/child, above/below, front/behind and so on.

3. The Motivation of the Markedness in English Antonyms

3.1 Principle of Cognitive economy.Principle of cognitive economy means with minimal processing effort to obtain the highest degree of cognitive effects. Givon has stated that markedness is the cognitive strategies dealing with the principle of economy. When handling a potentially messy external reality, it has a strong innate bias, translating dimension of external reality into a strong asymmetry cognitive dimension, which has produced two seemingly contradictory tendencies: salience and frequency.

On the surface, the relationship between frequency and salience is contradictory. Actually, this paradox is fairly obvious. If the large number of outsiders experience have been filtered out, only a few of the salienced experience waiting in the cognitive processing. The salience events and status have become the more frequent and unmarked, while other event or state of expression has become the rare, marked, and abnormal. Therefore, cognition is not the mirror image reflection of external experiences in the Aristotelian sense, but adapted to give priority to shape the experience of the constructive selection.

This cognitive strategy greatly improves the efficiency of cognitive processing, meanwhile, it saved the space for storing information and relieving the memory burden, which is in line with the economic energy of human bodys configuration rules.

3.2 Self-centered cognitive principle.Human beings usually look at the world from their own perspective, which reflected in language, indicating that the form starting from the angle of human beings is unmarked and otherwise, it's marked.

People often, from their own need, evaluate things and phenomena of the external world. The things, reflected in the language, which can better meet the needs of people, and are more important for humans life are unmarked, and otherwise, are marked. In the gender antonyms, such as dog/bitch, man/woman, cock/hen, bull/cow dog, the masculine terms are unmarked, feminine terms are marked. Thats because in wild animals, males tend to have the dominate position, so the unmarkedness falls on the male animals.

Constrained by principles of self-centered, the language is unmarked when it is from the perspective of the speaker. Otherwise, it is marked. For example, in converse antonyms, like buy/sell, host/guest, come/ go, buy, host and come are closer to the speaker and considered as the unmarked terms.

3.3 Perceptual salience.The markedness in antonyms of directions and tastes is due to perceptual salience. When a person is standing, the space before him and above-ground space is the most desirable for the eyes, ears and the sense of touch, therefore, upward and forward movement in consciousness is easier to be dealt with. In antonyms of tastes, for instance in “bitter-sweet experience” , the word “bitter” is put in front of “sweet”; we often say “cold and hot water” instead of “hot and cold water”, which is not a coincidence but a common phenomenon. Thats because humans cognitive structure comes from humans experience and language reflects people's perception of the external world.

The food with bitter taste is much more irritable than those with sweet taste, and the bitter taste makes deeper impression on peoples taste. Thus, this perception reflected in language is that “bitter” is put in front of “sweet”. In addition, “cold” is more sensitive than “hot” to peoples body, because people are the organisms with life and peoples body has temperature. In interaction with the outside world, the number of the objects whose temperature is lower than human body is much more than those whose temperature is higher than human bodys temperature. So cold or cool things have more frequent stimulation to human sensory, and make a deeper impression on peoples body. Therefore, when reflected in language, cold is before heat.

3.4 Social culture factor.Markedness shows much relativity, because people living in different regions have different culture backgrounds and customs. For example, the concept of “poor”, people in developed country may have different standard from people in undeveloped country.

Cultural perceptions of the nation have an impact on languages markedness, for instance, the gender antonyms represent peoples occupation or status (e.g. teacher and poet indicating males). Thats because society is controlled by these cultural realities, which makes "male" opposed to "female" unmarked.

Peoples value and habits to give positive viewpoint to things and phenomena make positive terms unmarked, while the negative terms are marked ones. The word pairs in converse antonyms, such as “ good/ bad, and new/ old” can best illustrate this point .

3.5 Politeness principle.Semantic polarity, especially the antonyms with evaluative polarity will be influenced by politeness principles in actual use. According to Brown&Levinsons theory, when communicating with others, people should choose the positive face and follow the politeness principles.

Take 5.12 Wenchuan earthquake as an example, in the days after the earthquake, there was a strong felt of the earthquake in XI ' an, people often took the rest state as topic. The dialogue between Miss Li and Miss Zhang is as follows:

Miss Li: "Miss Zhang did you have a good rest last night?”

Miss Zhang: "Nope, it shook twice during the last night, so I didnt sleep well”, Miss Li didn't know whether Miss Zhang had a good sleep or not but according to her speculation that there was earthquake last night, she thought Miss Zhang did not have a good rest. However, she didnt say: “ Did you have a bad rest last night？” On the contrary, she used the positive words like “okay” to express her view. This positive expression not only expresses the uncertainty of Miss Li, but also follows the needs of communication. No matter Miss Zhang had a good rest or not, Miss Zhang would not feel displeasure. So, in communication, people often choose positive words because it can help people to continue their topics successfully.

4. Conclusion

The principle of cognitive economy is the ultimate motivation for the markedness of antonyms, and this universal human cognitive strategy leads to the unequal relationship between the two confronted ones. But, in fact, there are various factors which will influence the markedness in English antonyms, such as, the nature of human center, self-centered nature of cognition, perceptual salience, social culture, social psychological factors, and politeness principles.

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