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Binary opposition is the system of language and/or thought by which two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. [1] It is the contrast between two mutually exclusive terms, such as on and off, up and down, left and right. [2] Binary opposition is an important concept of structuralism, which sees such ...
In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is even entails that it is not odd. It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members in a set of opposites. The relationship between opposites is known as opposition.
Structuralism posits the concept of binary opposition, in which frequently-used pairs of opposite-but-related words (concepts) are often arranged in a hierarchy; for example: Enlightenment/Romantic, male/female, speech/writing, rational/emotional, signified/signifier, symbolic/imaginary, and east/west.
Another concept was borrowed from the Prague school of linguistics, which employed so-called binary oppositions in their research. Roman Jakobson and others analysed sounds based on the presence or absence of certain features, such as "voiceless" vs. "voiced." Lévi-Strauss included this in his conceptualization of the mind's universal structures.
Words and signs are not identical with what they signify, and only acquire meaning through their differences from other words and signs; meaning arises from the differentiation of words from one another, and the consequential engendering of binary oppositions and hierarchies.
The principle of a simple binary opposition between the two members of a minimal pair may be extended to cover a minimal set in which a number of words differ from one another in terms of one phone in a particular position in the word. [10]
The first suggested measurement for functional load was the number of minimal pairs, but that does not take into account word frequency and is difficult to generalize beyond binary phonemic oppositions. Charles Hockett proposed an information theoretic definition in 1955, [2] which has since been generalized. [3]
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