Converses

A general feature of the members of antonym pairs is that they have what grammarians term comparative forms, with the comparative suffix -er (thicker, poorer, humbler, for instance) or in the construction more + adjective (for example, more humble, more patient, more obstinate, with some words, like humble, forming the comparative by either method). The comparative forms of an antonym pair have an interesting sense relation between them, called converseness. The pair {richer, poorer} is used as an illustration in (2.10).

The entailment pattern illustrated in (2.10) defines converseness. Firstly, note that (2.10c) represents a two-way entailment, from (2.10a) to (2.10b) and also back from (2.10b) to (2.10a). This makes (2.10a) and (2.10b) paraphrases of each other. In this respect, it is a similar relationship to synonymy, but there is an important additional difference between (2.10a) and (2.10b). Not only has richer been replaced by poorer in going from (2.10a) to (2.10b), but the noun phrases California and some countries have been exchanged. Converses are thus a species of synonym that requires reordering of noun phrases. (The change from is to are is a detail of English grammar that is not semantically relevant here.)

Converseness is found not only between comparative adjectives but also in other word classes. Some examples are noted in (2.11)