Few studies have been conducted on the patterns with co-occurring antonym pairs. The previous studies on Chinese four-character patterns have mainly focused on their formal properties, syntactic functions and semantic meaning (e.g. Four-character patterns are considered to be a unique feature of Chinese language (Guo, 1979) and an important part of the Chinese lexical system (LГј, 1979). The Classic of Poetry, for instance, contains 7284 lines, 6724 of which are written in four-character patterns (Xia, 1985).

Many well-known ancient Chinese works contain a large number of four-character patterns. Four-character patterns are very pervasive in Mandarin Chinese. The term вЂfour-character patternвЂ™ was first put forward by Lu Zhiwei, who defined it as вЂњwords or expressions which contain four syllables conjoined closelyвЂќ (Lu, 1956: 401). Based on these observations, this study aims to investigate the co-occurrence of antonym pairs in Chinese four-character patterns and the underlying principles governing antonym order. For instance, in 1(a), zhao вЂmorningвЂ™ and mu вЂeveningвЂ™ cannot be reversed. Their order cannot normally be reversed freely. Apart from the different syntactic positions, antonym pairs in these patterns tend to occur in a particular order. In (1c) and (1d), by contrast, the antonym pairs qing/ zhong вЂlight/heavyвЂ™ and hei/ bai вЂblack/whiteвЂ™ are juxtaposed. In (1a), the antonyms zhao вЂmorningвЂ™ and mu вЂeveningвЂ™ occupy the first and the third slots respectively, while in (1b), the antonym pairs nan вЂmanвЂ™ and nГј вЂwomanвЂ™ are in the second and fourth positions. The antonyms may occur in different slots within the patterns. In Chinese these constructions are known as sizige or вЂњfour-character patternsвЂќ - in their written form they appear as four signs. This study examines the co-occurrence of antonyms in Chinese constructions as in (1).ДЄll these constructions contain four terms, two of which are antonyms. They can also co-occur in certain lexico-grammatical patterns, such as xian lai hou dao (early come late arrive вЂfirst come, first servedвЂ™) and ku ye bu shi, xiao ye bu shi (cry also not right, smile also not right вЂbe at a lossвЂ™). Antonym pairs in Chinese can be juxtaposed to form antonymous compounds without any connecting word, such as daxiao (big-small вЂsizeвЂ™) and fumu (father-mother вЂparentsвЂ™). Antonym co-occurrence is also a pervasive phenomenon in Mandarin Chinese. Systematic studies have shown that English antonym pairs, which were traditionally regarded as paradigmatically related words, tend to co-occur at higher-than-chance rates in discourse (e.g. Antonym 1 co-occurrence in English has drawn considerable attention from researchers in recent years.

Conspire antonyms