2. Antonyms

Another important group of words based on compatibility of some semantic features and oppositeness of others are antonyms [Gk anti 'against', onoma 'a name'l.

Antonyms are typically found in the class of adjectives and occur in antonimous pairs (good «-» bad, light <-> dark). Though antonyms are not as pervasive in the English lexicon as synonyms, they are important for its structuring.

Since there are different types of opposition in a language (polar opposition cold<-+hot, reversible relationship. buy*-+sell, directional opposition, arrive^+depart, complementary relationship alive<-*dead, and some others), there are different groups of antonyms, too.

There are gradable antonyms like cold <-> hot, dry <-» wet that make comparison (colder, hotter; drier, wetter) and other adjectives may be placed on the scale between their poles (cold <-> warm <-> hot; dry <-> moist <-> wet). They occur in the system of adjectives and the adverbs derived from them. One of the members of the pair of gradable antonyms is marked and the other is unmarked. When the quality is not identified we use an unmarked member: How far is the city? How long is the road? If the city is identified as close and the road as short, then we use the marked member: How close is the city? and How short is the road?

There are complementary (sometimes they are called contradictory) antonyms like alive <-> dead, single <-> married, life <-» death, on «-> off, remember <-> forget, go <-* stay that are mutually exclusive although the complement each other. These antonyms are in an either/or kind of opposition.

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There are also two-way conversive antonyms that are mutually dependent and describe opposite attributes of the same situation (buy and sell, above and below, child and parent). Each of these antonyms may express the converse meaning of the other: John is Mark's son and Mark is John'sparent.

English can derive antonyms morphologically by means of prefixes and suffixes (honest «-> dishonest, encourage <-> discourage, include <-» exclude, useful <-> useless, hopeful <-> hopeless).

So, antonyms are words that are different in their sound-form, characterized by different types of semantic opposition of denotational meaning and often co-occur in the same context (the cars are not fast, they are slow).

As in the case of synonyms, antonyms are minimal naming units, so if the word is polysemantic each of its senses may have its own antonym. Thus the adjective deep in the meaning of 'extending far downward' has the antonym shallow; in the meaning of 'difficult to comprehend' it has the antonym plain, in the meaning of 'high in saturation and low in lightness (of colour)' it has the antonym light.

Usually synonyms have the same antonym (cf: deep and profound both have an antonym shallow). Yet, this is not always the case. Some synonyms do not share the same antonyms (see /Pustejovsky 1995/): rise and ascend, fall and descend are similar in meaning, but fall is not the antonym to ascend, just as rise is not the antonym to descend.

The above examples prove that antonymy, like synohymy, is a lexical rather than conceptual phenomenon. Some concepts may be opposite but their lexemes may not (fall is not the antonym to ascend, large is not the antonym of little though their concepts are opposed).