OPPOSITION: A Linguistic and Psychological Analysis
By C. K. Ogden
Indiana University Press / Bloomington & London

This important treatise on the concept of oppostion reviews its history from the Greek philosophers to the twentieth century and presents the author's original theory explaining the basic methods by which a field of referents may be dichotomized. The book includes a system of elementary notation for expressing opposition in linguistic analysis and some suggested applications of the theory to the dissemination of Basic English. A definitive work, long inaccessible, and of vital importance to philosophers, linguists, and lexicographers.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
	Introduction by I.A. Richards	7
I .	Introductory	17
II .	Historical	21
	aristotle's obession	21
	the metaphysical approach	24
	the evolutionary approach	33
III .	Analytical	53
	the scale and the cut	58
	the directional basis	60
	attraction and repulsion	63
	analysis of examples	65
	schematic summary	90
	the verbal factor	92
IV .	Diagrammatic	94
	the importance of the body	94
V .	Notation	99
	Appendix	105
	Index	111

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Introduction

    C. K. Ogden (1889-1957), could he have made one of his high and wide surveys today, would have been indeed gratified to note how fully his prescience as to the role of opposition has been justified. In more ways than can be easily listed, it is becoming a key conception in methodology. From submicroscopic physics on up through crystallography; through the biological means of continuance, the genetic codes for the species and for the cell ; through the constancies in cultures and into the very keep of psychology itself, from which samenesses and differences, as we recognize them, hold and rule, oppositions of one or another of the types he was concerned to distinguish and de-confound are becoming our more and more indispensable instruments and controls of comprehension.
    His essay, as the closing section of Chapter II (“A Fresh Start,” p. 52) hints, was for him the fulfillment of a long-standing promise. When he and I were, in the exuberance of youthful ambition, throwing together The Meaning of Meaning, one of the most tempting topics of Chapter Six, “The Theory of Definition,” was Opposition. We postponed a proper treatment — as we postponed much else, including his Verbal Magic and The Panoptic Method —— until Ogden could disentangle enough time from other cares. Little did we know then about the Hydra-like growth of obligations ! Of these postponed tasks this extraordinary piece of original and seminal lexico- logical experimentation was the only one to be achieved. How he did it — amid his multifarious other activities — I cannot guess. But here it is.
   As was his custom Ogden prepared himself for the attempt in two ways. One, by a “library cormorant” spell of omnivorous reading in whatever might be relevant or suggestive ; secondly, by incessant conversation with all who could conceivably have anything to the point to opine. These conversations took place with an astonishingly numerous and variegated succession of people, tackled over coffee in one of Ogden’s ever-growing congeries of Clubs, or over cocoa and biscuits at 1:00 A.M. What Ogden reports — e.g., in his third paragraph of Chapter III, “Analytical” ——- is a discerning digest of an immensely rich experience of verbal behavior served by an INTRODUCTION enviably exact and retentive memory. He really did learn and remember what intelligent English-speakers had to say about how they understood and used their language. He thus placed himself in the best position to observe the distortions that specialists’ training (not least that of philosophers and linguists) can inflict.
   Characteristically, when Ogden comes to report his reading, his peculiar mockingbird wit often intervenes. I am not the only one to be uncertain whether it is from Tarde, say, or from Ogden that I dissent. A proof this — I have often thought, as sufIerer — of how closely Ogden could identify with the author he is reporting. Part of this is his concern for succinctness in essentials, which went along with his predilection for verbosity in the protective defense-entanglements.
    Both these characteristics —— an almost cryptic verbal economy in his statements of most importance ; and a sometimes infuriating prolixity -—— are to be expected. The second of these mannerisms can (experto crede) be much alleviated by perceiving that a singularly encyclopedic mind (see Clifton Fadiman, Reading I Have Liked ) is often diverting himself, and such of his readers as are in rapport, with parodies of academic pontification.
    Much of Ogden’s concern with Opposition sprang from his work on Basic English. If you persistently inquire into which words we can, in theory and in practice, do without, you soon find yourself asking (see p. 54) such questions as, “Why is ‘not white’ so unsatisfactory to deal with, while ‘not visible’ or ‘invisible’ readily recommends itself as the opposite of ‘visible’?” The design of Basic English, as of any systematically limited language, sends us back to the essential principles by which language works. And chief among these is Opposition. A theory of Opposition is thus required for controlled language use and language teaching. But Ogden went further than even this in seeing (Chapter I, “Introductory,” paragraph 3) that oppositional considerations are necessarily relevant to the identification of meanings for any word. He adds a limitation: “any word whose use may give rise to controversy.” He would have agreed, however, that any word, given the unfortunate occasion, can set men at intelligential loggerheads.
    The detail of how his reflections on opposition helped to shape Basic English will soon be available anew with the republication of the key texts : The System of Basic English and The Basic Words (Harcourt). The renewed interest in a limited (maximal service, minimum cost) English, as a world auxiliary, due to computer-controlled, satellite-conveyed communications and instruction-services, is discussed at length in my forth- coming So Much Nearer Home : Towards a World English, and Manifesto : World-wide Education, Through English, Through TV, Now, and with more detail in Learning Every Man’s English by Christine Gibson and myself (Harcourt). I may perhaps add that the Appendix is a jeu d’esprit that does not represent more than a fleeting early phase in Ogden’s thought about Basic English.
    Opposition enters into all such projects in a further fashion which can be conveniently brought out by asking : “What sentences and what situations can best serve the very beginning of learning English as a second language?” Analysis and experiment very strongly indicate that the key discriminations of space and time should be used. The oppositions between here and there, and between past, present, and future, in such sentences as

	I am here. *
* <-----	I was there.
	I will be there.	-—-—> *

can be given a triumphant obviousness and clarity — thanks to the biologic significance of the here<—->there opposition and of the was<-->is<-->will be oppositions -— which no other set can rival. They can be enacted and depicted more possessingly and more unmistakably than any others. Further : they can be employed with significant variation more compellingly than any others : He (she, it) is (was, will be) here (there) and so on. The learner can thus be led into intelligent meaning-charged USE of the language (as opposed to rote repetitions) sooner and more perspicuously and more rewardingly than by any other course. Through designed pressures of linguistic opposition he can be helped to see what he is doing, what he is saying, and how he is saying it. ’
    All living use of language (as opposed to psittacism : one of Ogden’s favorite words) depends upon the user’s discernment of how what is being said differs, significantly, from other things that might be said instead. Perception of oppositions is thus the active principle of language —— and of all sign-situations, as The Meaning of Meaning called them. To go more fully into all this — which developed just too late for Ogden’s comments —- the reader may turn to Fundamentals of Language by Roman Iakobson and Morris Halle (1956). Ogden, however, in quoting from Ludwig Fischer, “an opposition, the members of which are each the condition of the other” (e.g., here<—->there) and in the stress he so rightly laid on Diagrammatics, as on Notation, shows himself to have been well ahead of his times in these as in other matters. His Fecundity versus Civilisation, for instance, published under the pseudonym, Adelyne More, was an undergraduate production.
    Whoever will reflectively peruse these few pages will find not only his interest but his acumen in linguistic explorations enhanced. But more, this little book may, in its new format, prove to be one of the clarifiers enabling the growing world culture to free itself from some of its most stultifying confusions.

I. A. RICHARDS
April, 1967

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I . Introductory

    The practical significance of an analysis of the nature of oppostion may not be obvous. Both for the lexicographer, however, and for all work on the problem of a Universal Language, it is fundamental, and the differentiation of the various kinds of opposition is essential for any progress in the art of Word Economy. Logic,¹ which professes to deal both with definition and its application, has been content with a brief treatment of the formal aspects of opposition, since only negation could be utilized in dichotomy and in the formal treatment of the syllogism. It has therefore been assumed that the hierarchical method of definition was alone relevant where accuracy was required. Nor has the elaboration of a genetic sub-structure proved more fruitful.²
   It would appear, however, that the theory of opposition differs a new method of approach not only in the case of all those Words which can best be defined in terms of their opposites, or of the oppositional scale on which they appear, but also to any word whose use may give rise to controversey.
   Most controversial discussion in which practical problems of definition tend to arise turns on questions of degree and contrast, as much as on diiferentia and hierarchy. If agreement can be reached by quantitative adjustment rather than by systematic classification, and if it is possible to remain at the level on which any particular discussion may originate, without involving more general issues, much barren dialectic may be avoided.
   Serial order is easier to determine than hierarchical order. The mechanism of the Scale and the Cut is less intricate than that of Dichotomy and the Porphyrian tree, for the former are constantly employed in everyday affairs —— in music, for example, and sport. Everyone who can locate middle C, everyone who has been stumped at cricket, is already in possession of the essentials. They can define bass and treble ; they can explain the functions of the crease ; just as they know when a door is open or when the thermometer registers zero. Yet very few philosophers could dichotomize ‘Inventions’ and fewer still are happy about Objects and Events ; it is even disputed whether colours are similar because of the way in which they differ or because they are like one another in certain respects.³
   If, therefore, the directional bases, the scales and intermediates of each kind of opposite, whether as extreme or by cut, for sensation or in form, were fully established both in relation to scientific requirements and to linguistic usage, not only could most legal and controversial discussion be rapidly freed from its verbal encum- brances, but the superfluous or irregular symbolic items in any given series could be readily recognized and dealt with.
   When once an opposition is established and its principle understood, then either opposite, or any intermediate term, can at once be defined by opposition or by degree.
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1 . For a logical approach to Opposition, in relation to contrary and contradictory propositions, see Bradley, Logic (2nd Edition, 1922), Vol. I, pp. 145 ff. on the principle of Contradiction ; and Bosanquet, Logic (2nd Edition, 1911), Vol. I, pp. 294 ff., on contradictory and contrary opposition. The trouble about such tenuously controversial exegesis is that even its accredited exponents are haunted by a sense of their irrernediable inconclusiveness. “It is necessary before all things to bear in mind,” says Bradley (p. 145) , “that this axiom of Contradiction does not in any way explain, that it can not and must not attempt to account for the existence of opposites.” And again (p. 155), “if we consider the amount of actual knowledge vouch- safed to us by the Excluded Middle, I hardly think we shall he much pu?ed up.” It has been argued elsewhere (The Meaning of Meaning, Chapter V) that the entire logical and logistic modus operandi arises from a neglect of the elements of linguistic psychology, and further than that it is unnecessary to pursue the problem here.
2 . For a genetic approach to Opposition in relation to negation, privation, limitation and exclusion, see Baldwin, Thought and Things, Vol. I, Chapter IX, and Vol. II, pp. 216-17. The trouble about such schematic elucidations is the frequency with which the reader is overcome by the suspicion that the subject matter which they approach borders unduly on the ineffable.
3 . Johnson, Logic, Vol. l, p. 176.
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II . Historical

ARISTOTLE'S OBSESSION
    The subject of Opposition has a long and respectable history, for Aristotle himself was obsessed by the problem of opposition which appears in diffenent forms in all his works, though the special treatise which he devoted to it has not survived.
    In the Metaphysics he deals with the opposition of Unity and Multiplicity, Being and Not-being. All philosophers, he says, recognize that the principles are contraries; some refer to the Odd and the Even, others to Hot and Cold, others to the Finite and the Infinite, others again to Love and Discord : —— but all these can be reduced to Unity versus Multiplicity. Later he opposes the Anterior and the Posterior, Genus and Species, the Whole and the Part, and is troubled about the Small and the Great, the Straight and the Curved, etc. He regards everything as proceeding from contraries (“All the colours are derived from Black and White”), and it is the special property of substance to receive contraries. He thinks that production and destruction should be symmetrically opposed, even in the sense that they require equal amounts of time. In the Physics he again deals with the causal aspect of opposition and mentions Dense and Rare, Full and Empty, High and Low, Infront and Behind. His Ethical system, too, is based on a theory of contraries, virtues being always a mean between two extremes; which causes him to discuss contraries which have and have not a mean.
    Heraclitus had described his Flux and Becoming as a union of the opposites, Being and Not-being ; Xenophanes had represented the amalgamation of One and All in God as the immanent unity of opposites ; Parmenides had found in the reciprocal relation of a series of pairs of opposites the constitution of the world of Appearance, and Plato made the contradiction between this world and that of the Eternal, the Unchangeable and the Perfect a basis for his entire Theory of Ideas.
    Aristotle’s ‘metaphysical’ problems in this field were set for him chiefly by Plato and Parmenides, but the historical influence of Pythagoras was also considerable. According to the Pythagoreans, there are ten fundamental oppositions in the universe :--

Limited and Unlimited
Odd and Even
Unity and Multiplicity
Right and Left
Masculine and Feminine
Quiescence and Motion
Straight and Curved
Light and Darkness
Good and Bad
Square and Rectangle

Of these the One and the Many was treated as the most fundamental, the opposition of Infinity and Finitude being also included among the ultimate mysteries of Number.
    Aristotle’s chief contribution to the list was the idea of Potentiality and Actuality, which were closely related to Matter and Form. He considered that we only find these opposed terms in a state of union, in complete Substance —— all the characteristics on the one side of this Totality being grouped together as Prime Matter, all those on the other side as Prime Form.
    In view of the naive verbal basis of all Aristotle’s logical work, it is not surprising that Opposition, in which the language factor predominates, presented insuperable difficulties. His complete dependence on one language, before even grammatical distinctions had been systematized, was hardly less of a handicap than the primitive state of Greek science. His doubts, as well as his conclusions, remained as he formulated them till the last great representative of pre-scientific speculation once more made Opposition the keystone of a metaphysic ; and in the Hegelian system we have the supreme example of what the intellect can achieve unaided by linguistic psychology and undisturbed by orthological qualms.


THE METAPHYSICAL APPROACH
    But throughout the intervening period, Opposition continued to play a leading part in logical and theological speculation. Thus the Neo-Platonists laid particular stress on Unity and Multiplicity ; and in the hymns of Synesius we have a variety of symbolic forms of opposition, which in the Christian Era crystallized into God and Devil, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell. All through the Middle Ages, Universal and Particular continued to hold the field ; and Aquinas, by his doctrine of Material forms and Subsistent forms, elevated Opposition into a primary dogmatic principle.
    With Nicholas of Cusa, Opposition becomes at once a theological and an epistemological ultimate. In a sense it is one with God himself, for the prime form he calls God, and in this prime form the opposites unite into an immediate and absolute unity. The prime form which they constitute unfolds itself by virtue of the severance of the unity into opposites, the prime form and its explication, or Plenitude, being the two poles from which the survey is made.¹
   Similarly, Jakob Boehme held that Opposition was the fundamental creative force. The essence of all essences (God), though one, is severed at birth into two principles. All revelation is through conflict. “In yea and nay all things consist.”
   But perhaps the most curious fact in the whole historical career of oppositional theory is the neglect by his expositors of its place in the writings of Kant. Kant’s attitude to opposites is the key to the understanding of the Critique of Pure Reason, and his recognition of an unsolved problem is manifest in all his writings. Inner——Outer, Unity——Multicity, and Activity——Passivity are fundamental features of his system. Kant usually contrasts Spontaneity and Receptivity, while Understanding and Sense appear as two poles of a "real opposition," in which each of the two terms is the condition of the other, while at the same time they are merged in one unity.
    Ludwig Fischer, who has most clearly shown the significance of this distinction between ‘real’ and 'logical’ Opposition for Kantian interpretation², has also emphasized the fact that the final enllanation of the Inner——Outer opposition, which takes the form of Ego in itself——Thing in itself, is regarded as coalescing in a unity so complete that Kant speaks of an “identical combination.” The universal concepts which are referred to the Outer, counter-pole, the focus imaginarius, are called Ideas; “they are thus liminal ideas which can at best be realized asymptotically."³
    Light is thrown on this oppositional emphasis by a treatise dated 1763, nearly twenty years before the publication of the Critique. It is called “An Attempt to Introduce the Idea of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy,” the main subject of which is Opposition. The distinction between ‘real’ and ‘logical’ opposition is carefully formu- lated (in the latter the two members are mutually exclusive in every respect, so that they cannot be valid simultaneously), and examples of the former are considered in relation to magnets and electricity.
    Kant held that the law of polar opposition may be assumed to apply similarly to heat, and that something very profound might one day emerge from such possibilities. “It would seem that the positive and negative activities of different kinds of matter, more particularly of electricity, hide much important knowledge, and that a happier posterity, whose good fortune we can already foresee, may succeed in deriving general laws from thence.” From the summit of this opposi- tional Pisgah, he calls on others to help him in expanding these small beginnings.
    It is particularly interesting to find Kant looking to mathematics to provide him with a more exact notation for his opposed terms. He distinguishes them by the plus and minus signs, so . . .
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1 . Cf. L. Fischer, The Structure of Thought, p. 204.
2 . Op. cit., the Structure of Thought, p.252.
3 . Ibid., P. 275.
Page 27     Update in progress -- Sept 7, 2013
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THE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH
    The first sociological treatment of Opposition was a direct outcome of the modern Evolutionary controversy.
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The Sociological Approach
    The outlook of Tarde is primarily social, and his sociology is concerned with three primary processes, Repetition, Opposition, and Adaptation.
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Tarde's Classification
    In his more detailed treatment of opposition Tarde attempts a systematic classification.
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The Zero Criterion
    Scientists tend to agree with Renouviers' view that the only true opposites are those wich exhaust a field by negation.
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. . . suggestion that every zero or neutral term can be made the opposite of an extreme, with a positive intermediate. He does not, however, develop the suggestion very far, and a careful examination of his intermediates shows that there are good reasons against generalizing from the hopeful triads.


A Fresh Start
    It is significant that Tarde's excursion into this uncharted region attracted little attention either in England or on the continent, in spite of its author's world-wide reputation. It would, indeed, be instructive to follow the comment to which it gave rise, with a view to discovering any seeds fruitfully planted. This neglect is due in part to Tarde’s failure to render his conclusions applicable to anything beyond sociological speculation, and in part to his somewhat superficial treatment of the Cut and Scale ; but more particularly to the remoteness of the whole discussion from the linguistic problems which provide it with a practical orientation.
    The way is therefore open for a fresh start, and in the following pages an attempt has been made to cover the entire verbal field with which Definition and Substitution are alike concerned. 52

III . Analytical

    The linguistic aspect of the general problem of Opposition has been curiously neglected by those whom it should most concern. Panoptic definition forces us to view it in a new light and demands a solution before we can proceed. What sort of words can be said to have opposites in the ordinary sense of the term, and why ? Let us take a few common pairs at random, as they are found in works on lexicology, psychology, and logic :——

1 . Black and White.	14. Possible and Impossible.
2 . Hot and Cold.	15. Kind and Unkind.
3 . Open and Shut.	16. Good and Bad.
4 . Ruler and Ruled.	17. Work and Play.
5 . Hard and Soft.	18. Ill and Well.
6 . Right and Left.	19. Easy and Difficult.
7 . Man and Brute.	20. Before and After.
8 . Up and Down.	21. Male and Female.
9 . Acid and Alkali.	22. Love and Hate.
10. Pleasure and Pain.	23. British and Alien.
ll. Visible and Invisible.	24. Red and Green.
12. Town and Country.	25. Normal and Abnormal
13. Learned and Ignorant.	26. Fact and fiction


    If this list is presented to a dozen persons of intelligence and experience, but with no special training in psychology or traditional logic, it is probable that all these pairs will be passed as ‘opposites’ by one or another of the group, while 20 of the 25 are likely to secure a majority vote. Special training, however, will produce varying degrees of hesitation; rejection being based on a number of more or less arbitrary principles.
   Of the four pairs at once giving rise to discussion, three —— Man and Brute, Town and Country, Male and Female —— raise questions of a verbal nature (involving the theory of Definition), while Red and Green, which to some are the most fundamental opposites in the whole list, are by others the most summarily rejected.
    At all points the nature of Negation proves hardly less puzzling to the practical mind than the vagaries of linguistic usage. Why is ‘not-white’ so unsatisfactory to deal with, while ‘not-visible’ or ‘invisible’ readily recommends itself as the opposite of ‘visible’ ?
   The Writings of logicians are intriguing rather than helpful. Stress is laid upon the distinction between Positive and Negative terms as a particular case of Incompatibility. Contradictories are the only incompatibles which interest logic, and they are contradictory either because the matter itself tells us that they are so, or for the purely formal reason that not has been prefixed to a given term in order to secure mutual and exhaustive exclusiveness.²
    When two terms "express the greatest degree of difference possible," in the same universe, they are called Contraries. A Privative term is one which implies the absence of an attribute in a subject which. might be expected to possess it, or which is capable of possessing it.
    And in addition to Contradictories and Contraries, Logic mentions ‘Repugnant’ terms, no two of which can be predicated of the same thing at the same time. But since Contrariety and Repugnance are merely ‘material,’ Positive and Negative terms, distinguished by the word not, are the only incompatibles worthy of recognition ; and with these alone does it feel called upon to deal in the elaborate treatment of Propositions and Deduction to which these distinctions are designed to lead.
    The interests of the linguist, the lexicographer, and the student of Basic English are thus side-tracked, and we are left to cope with Opposites as best we may.
    Logic is not usually critical of its symbolic foundations, but the neglect of this particular problem in current textbooks is accompanied by insistence on the misleading character of many apparently negative terms. Shameless, it is pointed out, is almost synonymous with shameful ; Nonconformist is as positive in its meaning as Orthodox ; and only in a few cases, where no intermediate idea is possible, such as equal and unequal, do negative prefixes correspond with true material contradiction.
    We are left, then, with a general impression of vagueness, and a wholesome mistrust of linguistic guidance. Can anything more be said about the five-and-twenty candidates whose examination was invited above ?
    In the first place, on the purely verbal level it is curious that some words seem to have such obvious and universal opposites, while others seem to resist all attempts to contrast them in this way with incompatible partners. Again, a metal cannot be both gold and silver, though cross-breeds and alloys are admitted on an extensive scale; and with equal certainty the repugnance of red and blue is patent to every observer. But these are not opposites. What, then, of Black and White, Red and Green?
    The visual field provides many of the most characteristic oppositions, and among the chromatic and achromatic pairs three series must be very carefully distinguished. The Black-Grey-White series is a true 'scale,' rising continuously both in its psychological and its physical form from a minimum to a maximum. A surface which reflects no white light is in this sense the opposite of one which reflects 100 per cent. The Red-Grey-Green series, on the other hand, appears as two scales end to end; the one descending in redness, through all degrees of red-grey, to grey, and thereafter rising in greenness, through all degrees of grey-green to green. There is no single rising scale, as in the case of black to white. The series Red-Orange-Yellow-Green, our third type though similar to the Red-Grey-Green rather than the Black-Grey-White, is clearly analogous to the Blue-Green-Yellow range (except for the fact that its extremes are true opposites).
    Owing to the peculiar characteristics of the pigment compounds on which it depends (and the peculiar nature of the spectrum in which the same sequence appears), this third series has no precise parallel in the world of opposites, apart from the vagaries of other compound chemical substances.
    Red-Grey-Green, on the other hand, is closely analogous to such a chemical series as is formed by Acid and Alkali. We have a scale of acids as far as the entirely neutral dividing line (salt) and a similar scale of alkalis on the other side. But there is no temptation to think of the whole scale as the scale of salts in the same way that the grey scale might be regarded as terminating in the two opposites, Black and White.
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1 . See The Panoptic Method.
2 . Whether exhaustive of the universe as a whole or of some particular universe of discourse has been the subject of much controversy.


THE SCALE AND THE CUT
    The study of a large number of such pairs suggests as a preliminary hypothesis that we are confronted by a very fundamental distinction in any thoery of opposites -- that namely, between the Scale and the Cut. Opposites, it will be maintained in the sequel, may be either the two extremes of a scale or the two sides of a cut ; the cut marking the point of neutrality, the absence of either of two opposed characters in the field of opposition. By a cut, moreover, we can dichotomize either a ‘linear projection’ or a 'field of referents.'
    Spatial opposites generated by a cut are thus different in many respects from series opposites. If we decide that Inside and Outside are opposites generated by a cut, there is no question of a series, and the one side is finite while the other is infinite ; for though we can speak of 'further inside' or distinguish degrees of exteriority, thus making a quantitative gradation on either side of the dividing line, this is a secondary consideration, and it is significant that the opposition begins, as it were, immediately the line is crossed. Similarly, things may be 'neither before nor after,' but they are very definitely and completely 'before' if they are before at all — though in one form of the temporal metaphor we can equate 'further before' with the remoter past, while in another we speak of the near future as what is more immediately before us.
    It is therefore very important to be sure whence the metaphors of ordinary language are derived, whether we desire to attain to clear distinctions in argument, or adequately to cover the field with our linguistic material. Geometrical and spatial metaphors are particularly worthy of study, since the opposite sides of a rectangle give us what amounts to a peculiar kind of opposition, such as we find also in the opposite sides of a street (which may be said to face one another) and the opposite sides of a building (which, Janus-wise, face in opposite directions) ; while the 'opposite' banks of a river, though analogous to 'parallel' (in that they do not themselves usually ‘face’ one another) would equally involve us in an elaborate discussion of points and perpendiculars if it were not that for practical purposes We can regard our Cut itself as varying in breadth.
    In most of the spatial metaphors, however, a third and even more fundamental feature of opposition can be detected, namely, Direction.

THE DIRECTIONAL BASIS
    The opposite sides of a cut and the opposite ends of a scale will go a long way towards convering the cases of opposition with which lexicology is confronted, but neither feature, as such, will help us woth 'opposite directions.' Our description of two trains passing one another, or of 'up and down,' 'backwards and forwards,' 'into and out of,' introduces the new feature, reversibility. But can we group these directional opposites, and that kind of opposition which we speak of as 'the same shape reversed,' under a single head ? Mirror-images, enantiomorphs, and all forms of geometrical reversal may be regarded as directional opposites in rotation. There are, however, no degrees between these opposites, as there are between the extremes of a scale, nor does there seem to be any very obvious relation to the principle of the cut. But without entering into the technicalities of vector analysis, we may now be in possession of all the necessary first approximations.
    As a preliminary to any attempt to discover a common principle, it may be noted that all motion at the heuristic level is either translational (rectilinear) or rotational ?³
    We can regard a scale as a diagram of rectilinear motion in one direction or its opposite, increasing or decreasing throughout the whole gamut, according as we start from the . . .
. . .


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3. Motion in a circle, any curvilinear motion, can, of course, always be resolved into three rectilinear motions differing in direction (two, if the curvilinear motion is in a plane).
. . .


ATTRACTION AND REPULSION
    In attraction and repulsion we are again concerned essentially with directional opposition.
. . .


ANALYSIS OF EXAMPLES
    Returning now to our twety-five candidates, let us consider each in turn, in the light of our provisional hypothesis.
. . .


SCHEMATIC SUMMARY
    By thus testing the hypothesis of the Scale and the Cut on a selection of pairs commonly regarded as opposites we find that in every case the directional factor is relevant.
. . .


THE VERBAL FACTOR
    From the technological standpoint, as envisaged by Basic English, noun forms are fundamentally names of moveable objects, while the adjective is primarily the name of a sensational element in our experience.
. . .

93

IV . Diagrammatic

    In the light of this discursive approach we may now proceed to the technique of diagrammatiization. Opposition is based on spatial experience.
. . .


THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BODY
    The symbolic forms which have been developed in ordinary language for the expression of these distinctions have been crystallized not only in terms of two-dimensional projection, but also in a vry special relation to the human body.
. . .

98

V . Notation

    In order to simplify the descrition of the various kinds of opposition for purposes of Definition a simple form of Notation is desirable. The value of such a notation in practice will depend partly on its convenience both for typewritten and printed material.
. . .

104

APPENDIX

    Though the theory of Opposition here outlined has a direct bearing on the whole field of verbal controvery -- for the attainment of what may be called Polar Bearings -- its immediate ortholgoical application is mnemonic. 108
. . .



BASIC ENGLISH (MNEMONIC)

OPERATORS, ETC.	NECESSARY NAMES		COMMON THINGS		QUALIFIERS
Come *	Act	Look	Angle	Skin	Able
Get	Addition	Machine	Arch	Spade	Angry

. . .

110
INDEX
. . .