ABSTRACT
Literary authorities usually describe the oxymoron as a compact paradox, a joining together of contradictory words which produce an epigrammatic effect. Ching argues that literary but non-linguistic treatments of oxymora are often inadequate in that they call attention only to the paradoxical, contradictory character of these expressions and fail to show how a 'sensible meaning' can be derived from them. The semantic markers may help us to explain readers' intuitions in their interpretations of oxymora. Through the use of Jerrold Katz's theory of semantic markers, as found in his book Semantic Theory, 1972, the author shows how readers on a questionnaire he administered interpret some kinds of oxymora. From readers' responses to various oxymora, he has discovered that it is the word with the fewer semantic markers that does the erasing and replacing. One linguistic process which occurs in the amalgamation of the adjective and the noun is a combining rule which the author has called erasure and replacement.
