Antonym canonicity: Temporal and contextual manipulations

•Canonical antonyms give rise to significantly lower N400 amplitudes than non-canonical antonyms or unrelated word pairs.•Without context, the difference in N400 amplitude for non-canonical antonyms and unrelated word pairs is not significant.•With context, the difference in N400 amplitude between non-canonical antonyms and unrelated word pairs is significant.

Previous research on antonyms has shown that some pairings form more felicitous couplings than others. Following up on that research, we conducted two semantic categorization experiments using Event Related Potentials to establish whether there are neurophysiological differences related to levels of antonym canonicity. In Experiment 1, the members of canonical antonym pairs (e.g. black–white), non-canonical antonym pairs (e.g. white–dark) and unrelated word pairs (e.g. bumpy–small) were presented in isolation separated either by a short (200 ms) or a long (800 ms) time interval. The canonical antonyms gave rise to significantly lower N400 amplitudes than both non-canonical antonyms and unrelated pairs, but no significant difference in N400 amplitudes for non-canonical and unrelated pairs was found. In Experiment 2, the same pairs were presented in a congruent context. Significant differences in N400 amplitudes across all three conditions were found, also between non-canonical antonyms and unrelated word pairs.