8. Antonyms and their classification

The term antonym(and the related antonymy) has also been commonly used as a term that is synonymous with opposite; however, the term also has other more restricted meanings. One usage hasantonym referring to both gradable opposites, such as long: short, and (non-gradable) complementary opposites, such as male: female, while opposites of the types up: down and precede: follow are excluded from the definition. A third usage (particularly that of the influential Lyons 1968, 1977) defines the term antonym as referring to only gradable opposites (the long: short type) while the other types are referred to with different terms. Therefore, as Crystal (2003) warns, the termsantonymy and antonym should be regarded with care. In this article, the usage of Lyons (1963, 1977) and Cruse (1986, 2004) will be followed where antonym is restricted to gradable opposites and opposite is used as the general term referring to any of the subtypes discussed below. An auto-antonym is a word that can have opposite meanings in different contexts or under separate definitions:

enjoin (to prohibit , issue injunction ; to order ,command )

fast (moving quickly; fixed firmly in place)

stay (remain in a specific place, postpone;guide,direction, movement)

Antonyms- words of the same category of parts of speech which have contrasting meanings such as hot - cold, light - dark, happiness - sorrow.

Morphological classification:

-Root words form absolute antonyms.(write - wrong).

-The presence of negative affixes creates -derivational antonyms(happy - unhappy).

Semantical classification:

-Contradictory notions are mutually opposed and denying one another, i.e. alive means “not dead” and impatient means “not patient”.

-Contrary notions are also mutually opposed but they are gradable; e.g. old and young are the most distant elements of a series like: old - middle - aged - young.

-Incompatibles semantic relations of incompatibility exist among the antonyms with the common component of meaning and may be described as the relations of exclusion but not of contradiction: to say “morning” is to say “not afternoon, not evening, not night”.

9. Meaning, correlation of meaning and concept. Types of meaning

Meaning–the reverberation in the human consciousness of an object, a quality of extralinguistic reality (a phenomenon, a relationship, a quality, a process), which becomes a fact of language because of its constant indissoluble association with a definite linguistic expression.Meaning conveyed by a speaker is the speaker's communicative intent in using an expression, even if that use departs from the expression's meaning. Accordingly, any discussion of m. should distinguish speaker's m. from linguistic m. – See Sense.

There exist a number of definitions of meaning:

-a reciprocal relation between name and sense, which enables them to call up one another (St. Ullmann);

-function in a context. Meaning, then, we use the whole complex of functions which a linguistic form may have (J.R. Firth);

-a function of the descriptions at all levels (M.A.K.Halliday) and many others.