acquisition of opposition

[Alison Crutchley]

Dear all

I'm posting the request below on behalf of my English Language
colleague, Lesley Jeffries (l.jeffries at hud.ac.uk). She hasn't been able
to find any work on the acquisition of opposites and I felt sure that if
anyone knew, it would be the info-childes list! Many thanks for any
ideas. Alison

"I am writing a book on unconventional opposites as created in
particular contexts - such as the news, poetry etc., and I keep coming
up against the question of to what extent the conventional opposites
(good-bad, tall-short etc) are in some sense deeply psychologically
embedded. I also have only anecdotal evidence to point to the assumption
that children have to be taught about opposites - rather than the whole
idea of opposites being something innate. Whilst I have done some
library searching, I have not been able to turn up anything explicitly
investigating either the process or chronology of opposition-acquisition
or the cognitive-related issues such as whether there is a stage at
which opposites may more easily be acquired. Is anybody able to point me
towards research of this kind? If not, perhaps there is a project out
there waiting to be done?
 
Thanks!
Lesley"