22. Antonyms

Antonyms are 2 or more words of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and to the samу semantic field, identical in style and nearly identical in distribution associated and often used together so that their denotative meanings render contradictory(противоречивый) or contrary notions. Contradictory notions are mutually opposed and they deny one another. (alive means not dead; prose is not poetry). Contrary notions are also mutually opposed but they are gradual (young – middle-aged – old; hot-warm-cool-cold). Classification of antonyms based on morphology presupposes the following types of antonyms: 1)Absolute antonyms (right - wrong); 2)Derivational antonyms – they are formed with the help of negative affixes (happy – unhappy). Traditionally antonyms are defined as words of opposite meaning. The professor who investigated antonyms is Komissarov. He keeps to the classification of antonyms into absolute(root) & derivational. But he introduces a contextual approach to the problem. According to him two words must be considered antonyms if they are regularly contrasted in actual speech. Another important criterion suggested by Komissarov is the possibility of substitution (замещение) and identical lexical valency (сочетаемость)(Ex: there is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it hardly becomes any of us to talk about the rest of us). Unlike sinonyms, antonyms do not differ either in style, emotional colouring or distribution. Professor Lylns suggests the following terminology. He destinguishes antonyms proper & complimentary. Antonyms proper are gradable. Grading is based on the operation of comparison. One can compare the intensity of feeling (Ex: love – attachement – liking – indifference – antipathy - hate). The semantic polarity in antonyms proper is relative. The opposition is gradual. Complementary antonyms express contradictory notions. Complementaries like other antonyms are regularly contrasted in speech (Ex: male – female; prose - poetry). He also singles out derivational antinyms. The affixes in them serve to deny the quality stated in the stem (known – unknown, logical – illogical, prewar – postwar). The difference between absolute and derivational antinyms is not only morphological, but semantic as well. Almost every word can have 1 or more sinonyms comparatively few have antonyms.

23. Polysemy and semantic structure of the English word

Monosemantic words are few in number n english. They are mostly terms (names of aminals, birds). The bulk of the english vicabulary is polisemantic. A word that has more than 1 meaning is called polisemantic. The number of meaning of a commanly used word ranges from 5 to 100. Polisemy is characterized of most words in many languages but it’s more characteristic of the engkish language as compared with russian. The causes od the development of polisemy in english are: 1)the great number of monosyllabic root-words; 2)an abundance (изобилие) of words of long duration which in the course of time were used to express more and more meanings thus becoming highly polisemantic; 3)the number of meanings of a word depends on the frequency of the word. The greater is the frequency of the word, the morepolisemantic it is. Polisemy exists only in language, but notin speech. The meaning in speech id contextual meaning. In a definite context any poisemantic word expresses only 1 meaning. The meaning of a polisemantic word form its semantic structure.

Different meanings of one and the same word are called lexico-semantic variants. Interelation and interdependance of all lexico-semantic variants of the word make up its semantic structure. So we may say that the structure of a polisemantic word presents a set of interelated meanings. No general scheme of kinds of lexical meanings has been excepted in science so far. Linguistic litterature offers the following terms: 1)direct (nominative) meaning (Ex: to touch a thing, absorb water); 2)figurative (Ex: to touch feelings, absorb knowledge); 3)abstract (Ex: beauty, authiruty); 4)con’crete (Ex: she is a beauty, the authorities say); 5) main or primary (Ex: root of a plant); 6)secondary (Ex: root of foot, root of the work).

The most important problems we are faced with in a polisemantic word is the problem of interelation (взаимосвязь) and interdependance of the various meanings in the semantic structure of one and the same word. The problem may be approached diachronically & synchronically. Diachronically it is understood as the growth & development, a change in the semantic structure of the word. And the meanings are classified as primary & secondary (derived). Thus the main sourse of polisemy is a change in the semantic structure of the word. Synchronically polisemy is understood as coexistance of various meanings of the same word at a certain historical period of the development of the english language.