A corpus-based study on the functions of antonym co-occurrences in spoken Chinese

Abstract Previous corpus-based research has demonstrated that antonyms co-occur frequently and serve essential functions in discourse. However, these studies are mostly based on written corpus data. Therefore, the present study investigates how antonyms are used in spoken Chinese. Antonyms co-occurring within five turns were manually identified in the National Chengchi University (NCCU) Corpus of Spoken Taiwan Mandarin (27 transcripts, approximately 11 hours) and categorized by their functions. It is found that antonyms that are dialogic in nature prevail in spoken Chinese, and the results reconfirm that antonyms are often used to signal a nearby contrast or to express inclusiveness/exhaustiveness. Compared with written Chinese, spoken Chinese shows a stronger preference for three functional categories, i.e. Interrogative Antonymy, Corrective Antonymy, and Negated Antonymy, which clearly reflect the spontaneous, interactive nature of conversation. The comparison between spoken and written Chinese also shows that antonyms in spoken Chinese co-occur in particular lexico-syntactic frames less often, and that the morphosyllabic structure of antonyms, a crucial factor that influences the functional distribution of antonyms in written Chinese, occupies a minor role in spoken Chinese. This study reveals how the use of antonyms varies across spoken and written Chinese, complementing previous corpus-based studies of antonymy that have drawn conclusions mostly from formal written texts.