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the same time and thus make the words formed by them self-antonyms ever since their birth,
or from the appraisive and functional changes during daily use over the centuries ever since
English as an autonomous language has been recognized, creating self-antonyms as time
passes. For the former possibility, we may be able to discriminate these different meanings
via collocations of the self-antonyms, say what prepositions frequently follow these
vocabularies and things like that; for the latter possibility, it might be a good method for us
to learn how the meanings of self-antonyms changed, especially when and where these
changes have taken place.
The chief objective of this paper is to test and verify the two hypotheses above and
categorize self-antonyms in English language according to the theory. Besides, by studying
English as a language from this perspective, the paper can further illustrate the track of
development of this language, and reveal the process of change in the thought as well as
social milieu in Britain or other English speaking countries. It will benefit not only our
daily English study, lexicology and linguistics, but also sociology and history.
1.3 Methods of Study
One of the most essential processes for the research is the accumulation of self-antonyms.
Besides the examples that have already been attained from other researches, knowledge of
self-antonyms can also be gained from reference books about etymology and history of
language. Of course analyzing all self-antonyms is impossible, but selecting some
archetypal ones as examples can be abundant to fulfill the objectives and verify the
hypotheses mentioned above.
To identify the origins of different self-antonyms, books and essays of other linguistics and
professors can be the main and key source. That’s why referring to more works on
lexicology can be essential as the number of writings directly related to self-antonyms is far
from abundant. However, ancient literary works like the Bible and Shakespeare’s dramas
also provide us with clues of changing in language use. As a result, to study the social
milieu where self-antonyms gained it’s opposite meaning, literature is also necessary.
2. Literature Review
In research fields, the concept and study of self-antonyms is a short but not a too short
progress. The terms, "autantonym" and "contronym" which convey the same meaning with
self-antonyms were originally introduced by Joseph T. Shipley in 1960 and Jack Herring in
1962 respectively. Some of these self-antonyms they discovered are actually homographs,
that is, distinct words with different etymology which happen to have the same form (Talmy, 1988:60-61). For instance, the word cleave, when referring to "separate", it is from Old
English clēofan, while the meaning "adhere" is from Old English clifian, which was
pronounced differently. “This is like false friends, but false friends do not necessarily
contradict” (Geeraert, 1993：245-247),Concluded by Geeraert.
Other self-antonyms are in a form of polysemy where single words acquired different and
ultimately opposite senses. For instance, quite, which means "clear" or "free" in Middle
English, can also mean "slightly" (quite nice) or "completely" (quite beautiful)(Ayto,
1991:75). Others examples include sanction — "permit" or "penalize"; bolt (originally from
crossbows) — "leave quickly" or "fixed"; fast — "moving rapidly" or "unmoving" (Jin
Xuepin, 2012：46). Many English examples come from nouns which have been verbed into