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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINE

Ivan franko national university lviv

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

ANTONYMS: THE PECULARITY OF THEIR STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS

COURSE PAPER

PRESENTED BY

NADIYA HASIUK

a fourth year student

of the English department

SUPERVISED BY

Tetiana Mykhasiv

an associate professor

of the English department

2016

Theme: Antonyms: the peculiarity of their structure and functions

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter I. Theoretical insights into the phenomenon of antonymy.

1. The notion of antonymy and oppositeness

2. Defining antonymy

3. Different approaches towards antonymy

4. Structural peculiarities of antonyms

Chapter II. Antonyms in context

2.1 Discourse functions of antonyms

2.1.1 Ancillary antonymy

2.1.2 Coordainated antonymy

2.1.3 Minor discourse functions of antonymy

2.2 Typology of antonyms

2.2.1 Gradable, complementary, directional antonyms

2.2.2 Polar, overlapping, equipollent antonyms

2.3 Occurrence of antonyms in different word classes

2.4 Contextual antonymy

Conclusions

Summary

References

Introduction

Antonymy is one of the basic phenomena and notions in linguistics, which together with synonymy, hyponymy and meronymy denotes the main lexico-semantic relations among lexical units in language. Antonymy has been explored for a lot of time, though even now there are still some certain issues to be discussed and considered. A lot of linguists have turned their attention to this linguistic phenomenon, trying to explore it in depth and explain the basic issues raised in this theme. Consequently, a lot of profound works were written, which were concerned with different matters, such as functions of antonyms, different typologies, basic categorical notions important for understanding antonymy etc.

One of the most prominent experts at antonymy was Steven Jones, who dedicated a great share of his investigations to the the subject of antonymy. Another acknowledged linguist whose works are concerned with antonymy to the great extend is M. L. Murphy. He attempted to explore and reveal the connection between antonyms and context they are used in. Besides, D.A. Cruse wrote some profound works on the subject. It is also worthy to mention such explorers of antonymy as Petra Storjohann and Edward Finegan, who devoted their works to analyzes and summarizing of the existing data and information provided by the previous experts and tried to evaluate and combine all these approaches together.

Apart from it, a lot of handbooks of different complexity degree have been written and are still being published and widely used nowadays. On the whole, as it was mentioned above, the issue of antonymy is not fully exhausted, and thus it still draws the attention of a number of linguists even now.

The topicality of this research lies in the fact that antonymy is a fundamental constituent of human perceptions and plays an important role in the process of conceptualization; besides, antonymy is one of the key lexico-semantic relations in language and understanding of its essence is essential for the understanding of the language relations on the whole.

The object of this coursepaper is the phenomenon of antonymy in language.

The subject of the coursepaper is key perspectives in understanding antonymy, structural and functional peculiarities and consistencies of antonyms, different types of them.

The aim of this research is to explore the consistencies and peculiarities of structural patterning of antonyms, to establish the main functions antonyms perform in different contexts.

To achieve the above set goal the following tasks are to be completed:

• to explore the notion of antonymy and oppositeness as such and to evaluate the importance of these notions;

• to define the phenomenon of antonymy;

• to consider the main different approaches towards antonymy and on the basis of them to single out the main aspects and factors contributing to antonymy;

• to explore different patterns of antonymy formation;

• to single out the functions performing by the antonyms in different contexts;

• to investigate the ways of using antonyms in different contexts;

• to explore the connection between antonymy and context and how the latter influences antonyms;

• to present major typologies of antonyms.

The practical value of this research is the usage of this information in studying process, which will provide better comprehension of antonymy and its key aspects.

Chapter I. Theoretical insights into the phenomenon of antonymy