Qualities and the Relationship of Antonomy in WordNet.

Antonymy has been described from logical, semantic and linguistic perspectives, but an adequate definition of it has yet to be agreed upon. We will argue that antonymy it is a pervasive cognitive structure which needs a perceptual grounding. In this short paper we will focus on some theoretical assumptions forming the basis of Miller and colleagues’ work on Word-Net, concerning the connections between the organization of adjectives and the structure of the qualities which these adjectives express. This assumption is consistent with the results of some recent studies conducted in the field of Experimental Phenomenology of Perception. The results of these studies support the hypothesis of the perceptual basis of contrariety and provide insights on the way the structure of perception shapes the organization of language.