8. Synonymy and antonymy in English. Homonyms and their classifications.

We use the term antonyms to indicate words of the same category of parts of speech which have contrasting meanings, such as hot - cold, light - dark, happiness - sorrow, to accept - to reject, up - down.

If synonyms form whole, often numerous, groups, antonyms are usually believed to appear in pairs. Yet, this is not quite true in reality. For instance, the adjective cold may be said to have warm for its second antonym, and sorrow may be very well contrasted with gaiety.

On the other hand, a polysemantic word may have an antonym (or several antonyms) for each of its meanings. So, the adjective dull has the antonyms interesting, amusing, entertaining for its meaning of "deficient in interest", clever, bright, capable for its meaning of "deficient in intellect", and active for the meaning of "deficient in activity", etc.

Antonymy is not evenly distributed among the categories of parts of speech. Most antonyms are adjectives which is only natural because qualitative characteristics are easily compared and contrasted: high - low, wide - narrow, strong - weak, old - young, friendly - hostile.

Verbs take second place, so far as antonymy is concerned. Yet, verbal pairs of antonyms are fewer in number. Here are some of them: to lose - to find, to live - to die, to open - to close, to weep - to laugh.

Nouns are not rich in antonyms, but even so some examples can be given: friend - enemy, joy - grief, good - evil, heaven - earth, love - hatred.

Antonymic adverbs can be subdivided into two groups: a) adverbs derived from adjectives: warmly - coldly, merrily - sadly, loudly - softly; b) adverbs proper: now - then, here - there, ever - never, up - down, in - out.

Synonymy is one of modern linguistics' most controversial problems. The very existence of words traditionally called synonyms is disputed by some linguists; the nature and essence of the relationships of these words is hotly debated and treated in quite different ways by the representatives of different linguistic schools.

Even though one may accept that synonyms in the traditional meaning of the term are somewhat elusive and, to some extent, fictitious it is certain that there are words in any vocabulary which clearly develop regular and distinct relationships when used in speech.

Synonyms are one of the language's most important expressive means.

Synonymy is associated with some theoretical problems which at present are still an object of controversy. Probably, the most controversial among these is the problem of criteria of synonymy. To put it in simpler words, we are still not certain which words should correctly be considered as synonyms, nor are we agreed as to the characteristic features which qualify two or more words as synonyms.

Traditional linguistics solved this problem with the conceptual criterion and defined synonyms as words of the same category of parts of speech conveying the same concept but differing either in shades of meaning or in stylistic characteristics.

The only existing classification system for synonyms was established by Academician V. V. Vinogradov, the famous Russian scholar. In his classification system there are three types of synonyms: ideographic (which he defined as words conveying the same concept but differing in shades of meaning), stylistic (differing in stylistic characteristics) and absolute (coinciding in all their shades of meaning and in all their stylistic characteristics).

Homonyms are words which have the same form but are different in meaning. "The same form" implies identity in sound form or spelling, i.e. all the three aspects are taken into account: sound-form, graphic form and meaning.

The most widely accepted classification of homonyms is that recognising homonyms proper, homophones and homographs.

Homonyms proper (or perfect, absolute) are words identical in pronunciation аnd spelling but different in meaning, like back n. "part of the body" - back adv. "away from the front" - back v. "go back"; bear n. "animal" - bear v, "carry, tolerate".

Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning: air - heir, buy - by, him - hymn, steel - steal, storey - story.

Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling: bow [bou] - bow [bau], lead [li:d] - lead [led].

Homoforms - words identical in some of their grammatical forms. To bound (jump, spring) - bound

(past participle of the verb bind); found ( establish) -found (past participle of the verb find).

Paronyms are words that are alike in form, but different in meaning and usage. They are liable to be mixed and sometimes mistakenly interchanged.

The term paronym comes from the Greek para "beside" and onoma "name". Examples are: precede - proceed, preposition - proposition, popular - populous.

Homonyms in English are very numerous. Oxford English Dictionary registers 2540 homonyms, of which 89% are monosyllabic words and 9,1% are two-syllable words.

So, most homonyms are monosyllabic words. The trend towards monosyllabism, greatly increased by the loss of inflections and shortening, must have contributed much toward increasing the number of homonyms in English .

From the viewpoint of their origin homonyms are sometimes divided into historical and etymological.

Historical homonyms are those which result from the breaking up of polysemy; then one polysemantic word will split up into two or more separate words.

Etymologiсal homonyms are words of different origin which come to be alike in sound or in spelling (and may be both written and pronounced alike).

In other cases homonyms are a result of borrowing when several different words become identical in sound or spelling. E.g. the Latin vitim - "wrong", "an immoral habit" has given the English vice - вада "evil conduct".

9. English phraseology: definition, approaches and classifications. The vocabulary of a language is enriched not only by words but also by phraseological units. Phraseological units are word-groups that cannot be made in the process of speech, they exist in the language as ready-made units. They are compiled in special dictionaries. The same as words phraseological units express a single notion and are used in a sentence as one part of it. American and British lexicographers call such units «idioms». We can mention such dictionaries as: L.Smith «Words and Idioms», V.Collins «A Book of English Idioms» etc. In these dictionaries we can find words, peculiar in their semantics (idiomatic), side by side with word-groups and sentences. In these dictionaries they are arranged, as a rule, into different semantic groups.

Phraseological units can be classified according to the ways they are formed, according to the degree of the motivation of their meaning, according to their structure and according to their part-of-speech meaning.

Phraseological units can be classified according to the degree of motivation of their meaning. This classification was suggested by acad. V.V. Vinogradov for Russian phraseological units. He pointed out three types of phraseological units:

a) fusions where the degree of motivation is very low, we cannot guess the meaning of the whole from the meanings of its components, they are highly idiomatic and cannot be translated word for word into other languages, e.g. on Shank’s mare - (on foot), at sixes and sevens - (in a mess) etc;

b) unities where the meaning of the whole can be guessed from the meanings of its components, but it is transferred (metaphorical or metonymical), e.g. to play the first fiddle ( to be a leader in something), old salt (experienced sailor) etc;

c) collocations where words are combined in their original meaning but their combinations are different in different languages, e.g. cash and carry - (self-service shop), in a big way (in great degree) etc.