A dynamic construal approach to antonymy*

Based on textual and psycholinguistic data, this article presents a Cognitive Semantic treatment of antonymy. It argues that antonymy is a conceptual construal, involving a contentful meaning dimension and a bounded configuration. Form-meaning pairings are antonyms when they are used in binary contrast in discourse. In this respect, all antonym construals are on an equal footing, but nevertheless different lexico-semantic pairings have different levels of lexico-semantic affinity due to factors such as the salience of the contentful dimension, the configuration of the members that form part of the opposition, the symmetry of the members in relation to the boundary, contextual versatility and frequency.