1. Different approaches towards antonymy

According to Structuralist view, relations are stable properties between words, and within these properties we make certain choices. The view that lexical meaning is established according to stable relations among the words has become the basis in the new-global WordNet project, which represents lexical-semantic knowledge as «networks of links between word senses» [17, p.8]. However, throughout the latest time the newest insights were made into the language system, which proved it to be far from being just a stable system [17, p.8].

In Contextual account, both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations are important for understanding lexico-semantic relations, in particular for understanding the phenomenon of antonymy. Cruse said that «you shall know the meaning of a word by the company it keeps», which means that we cannot ignore the significance of syntagma in analyzes of realization of lexico-semantic relations [17, p.8]. According to Storjohann, when it comes to antonymy there is a clear tendency to «to flout the distinction» between paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. Antonym pairs are not only interchangeable for one another in a text, they are also perfect collocates [18, p.49]. As a result, there appears a unique opportunity to assess the paradigmatic status of a lexico-semantic relation by investigating its syntagmatic realization [18, p. 49].

Murphy develops a theory, according to which antonymy, as well as all other paradigmatic lexical relations, is settled in use. This view clearly contradicts the Structuralist tradition, which claims that lexico-semantic relations are central while organizing lexicon. Murphy takes for the example a pair of antonyms black and white, and states that the fact that they are antonymic can be predicted from a pragmatic principle of minimal difference – the Relation by Contrast (RC). Therefore, there is no need to represent the knowledge that these words are antonyms as we may conclude that from their use [17, p. 9].

The Relation By Contrast (RC) is explained and defined by Murphy in this way: «The contrast relation holds among the members of a set if the members of the set have all the same contextually relevant properties but one» (Murphy 2003: 22). The-Relation-by-Contrast approach, the same as pragmatic approach, focuses more on the ways by which antonymy is derived in contexts of use, holding the principle that antonymy is a phenomenon which is context-sensitive. A principal difference between this and classical semantic approach lies in the fact that RC does not refer to particularly semantic properties of the words, but it holds that lexical relations are rather «metalexical» [17, p. 9]. From this it is evident that we cannot rely on just semantic properties of the words. In judging the word pairs as related or non-related another factors come into play, among which are collocational preferences, morphological properties, connotation, social register, alliteration, rhyme, particular communicative demands of the context etc.

According to Steven Jones, in Cognitive Linguistics’ researches antonyms were paid not that much attention to, despite the fact that Cognitive Linguistics is concerned within semantic fields [17, p. 10]. The representatives of this approach Cruse and Togia attempted to develop a Cognitive model for pairs of antonyms, using the basic notions of Cognitive approach, the prime of which is the notion of domain.

1. Structural peculiarities and formation of antonyms

In the majority of cases antonymic pairings are purely lexical in nature, that is they express the sense of contrast and oppositeness by means of their semantic meanings. These are, for instance, big/little, before/after, to buy/to sell, parent/child etc. As a rule, these semantic pairings are morphologically unrelated, their meaning is preoccupied only by the meaning of their stems. Murphy refers to this kind of semantic antonyms as «opaque antonyms». These are typical of the most common semantically basic meanings such as high/low, good/bad, big/little [22, p.202]. Meanwhile there are antonym pairings «in cobuild», as Jones called them, that are formed by means of different affixes. These antonyms usually denote some abstract meanings: aggression/gentleness, optimism/pessimism, absence/presence[17, p.139].

However, there exist some relatively direct alternative ways of antonymy formation. Antonyms can be derived also directly by means of affixation, that is by some certain prefixes and suffixes. Such prefixes as dis-, un-, il-, ir-, a-, in- or im- derive antonym with negative meaning from the root of the word with a positive meaning: disbelief, unimposing, illegal, irresponsible, amoral, inappropriate, impolite etc. Besides, the suffixes –ful and –less can derive antonym pairs, for example: careful/careless, fearful/fearless, thoughtful/thoughtless. But it is worthy to note that this patterning is not always consistent. For example, in case with above listed prefixes this inconsistency may be viewed at the following examples: encourage-disencourage, but increase/decrease, include/exclude. The suffixes -ful and -less are not always reliable either as long as sometimes the meaning of the words formed by this pattern does not always acquire the meaning of oppositeness, thus it may be misleading. Besides, some words formed by means of either of these suffixes do not have their counterparts, as for example grateful does not have a counterpart in the form of non-existing word *grateless [23, p.200-201].

Negation through the prefix non- or a particle not is another alternative way of antonym formation. These are usually added as prefixes to non-scalar meanings to create «non-X» antonym of complementary type. But the usefulness of such negated lexical items as non-linguistic, not pictoral and not dental can be argued and questioned in some cases as long as negation allows for too wide range of application and may cause some complexity in its correct understanding. For example, non-linguistic and not linguistic may refer to something different than what we think of as «linguistic». Meanwhile the lexical pairings such as dead/alive or long/short clearly invoke divisible domains. In other words, not short is not similar in meaning to long and not long does not correspond in its meaning to short [17, p.139]. Generally that means that morphologically unrelated antonyms may give information different than that presented by their morphological counterparts. For instance, the word friendly has two antonyms – unfriendly and hostile. But these two antonyms are hardly identical in their meaning, while unfriendly a wider range of the ways of not being friendly denotes and hostile is more specific in its meaning [22, p.202].

The antonym pairings formed by means of affixation are usually referred to as morphological antonyms. This type of antonym formation is especially typical of morphologically-reach languages. There was an investigation held by Beltran, which proved that speakers usually tend to negate «non-bipolar» notions, such as green, for example, and to use lexical items for contrasting bipolar meanings such as big, old, wide etc. [17, p.139].

Generally it is agreed that languages in the majority of cases support «opaque antonyms». That is in first place for the reasons listed above and also because by Zipf’s Principle of Least Effort (1949) we are expected to denote the most frequently occurred notions and things with shorter and simpler words. And so it is much more common and convenient to use an antonym of married - single, than to use its morphological antonym – unmarried Some words do not have morphological variants, for example there are not such words as *unhigh or *unlow, which may be explained by the willingness to avoid synonymy. However, it is recognized that the majority of English words have both opaque and morphological antonymic variants, and that makes a matter more complex [22, p.202].

Finally, it is worthy to mention in this section such a phenomenon as enantiodromia, which is defined by Murphy as a process by which something turns into its opposite. In terms of semantic change, this means that a word acquires an opposite meaning. The possibility of such changes accounts for the similarity of opposite meanings. For example, if we take a word bad that is sometimes used in a slang to denote its opposite – «good», even by this change the word stays in the same semantic field and applies to a direction on the same semantic scale. The only change that occurrs is that it consequently refers to the other direction of this scale. Such changes are not rare, though are not abundant. One of the contributors of enantiodromia is irony, since such changes involve in the first place evaluative shifts, which alter something bad to something good, and vice versa [22, p.209].

Chapter II Antonyms in context