23. The problem of antonymy in modern linguistics.

Antonyms are 2 or more words of the same language belonging to the same part of speech and to the same semantic field identical in style and nearly identical in distribution associated and often used together so that their contradictory or contrary notions. Semantic criteria: 1) Contradictories are mutually opposed and defying one another. To use one of the terms is to contradict the other and to use ‘not’ before one of them is to make it equivalent to the other. Among contradictories there is a subgroup of words of the type: young – old; big – small etc. The difference between these and the antonymic pairs described above lies in the fact that is to say ‘not young’ is not to say ‘old’. In fact such terms don’t represent absolute values. 2) Contraries (proper) are mutually opposed but they are gradable. Cold – hot with intermediate cool – warm. Both pairs are quite synonymous to each other. 3) Incompatibles. In other words as the relation of exclusion – not contradiction. To say ‘morning’ is to say ‘not afternoon, not night’. John Lions suggest a different terminology. He distinguishes ‘antonyms proper’ = ‘contraries’; ‘complimentary antonyms’ = ‘contradictories’. Morphological approach: root/absolute antonyms: right – wrong; derivational antonyms characterized by the presence of negative prefixes: happy – unhappy. The regular type of derivative antonyms contains negative prefixes: dis; il; im; in; ir; non; un. Unlike synonyms antonyms don’t differ either in style, emotional colouring or distribution. They are interchangeable at least in some contexts. As antonyms don’t differ stylistically an antonymic substitution never results in the change of stylistic colouring. In dealing with antonymic opposition it may be helpful to treat antonyms in terms of marked and unmarked members. In the antonym pair ‘old – young’ the unmarked member is ‘old’, because it is possible to ask ‘How old is the girl’ without implying that she is no longer young. This unmarked member ‘old’ is used more often than ‘young’. Not only words but set-expressions as well can be grouped into antonymic pairs. e.g.: by accident – on purpose. Antonyms form mostly pairs – not groups like synonyms. Polysemantic words may have antonyms in some of their meanings and have none in the others. Also in different meanings a word may have different antonyms.

24. Modern theory of synonymy.

Belonging to a semiotic system linguistic science has paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, i.e. semantic relations in the language and in the text. A paradigm is a group of elements having a common component but different in a certain part. Paradigmatic relations include synonymy, antonymy, homonymy, hyponymy and inconsistency. Syntagmatic relations show how the system functions. Syntagmatic relations are relations between science as a result of their combination. They exist only within larger linguistic units: word-combinations; sentences; texts. Syntagmatic relations deal with semantic redundancy, semantic/grammatical agreement, valency etc. Synonyms are words different in their sound form but similar in their denotational meaning(s) and interchangeable at least at some context. Additional characteristics of style, emotional colouring and valency peculiar to one of the elements in the synonymic groups may be absent in one or all the others. e.g.: look, seem, appear = to be in ones view or judgment. But there is some difference. ‘Seem’ suggests a personal opinion based on evidence, but ‘look’ and ‘appear’ lack it. Similarity of denotational meaning of all members of the synonymic set is combined with a certain difference in the meaning of each member. Though in some cases there occurs semantic neutralization. It is absence of semantic opposition in some lexical contexts. Synonymic dominant is the most general term potentially containing the specific features rendered by all the other members of the synonymic group. One and the same word may belong in its various meanings to several synonymic groups. Synonyms may differ in emotional colouring which may be present in one element of the group and absent in all/some of the others. e.g.: lonely – emotional; alone – not. In a great number of cases the semantic difference between 2 or more synonyms is supported by the difference in valency. The difference in distribution may be syntactical, morphological and lexical. e.g.: to begin, to commence – they differ stylistically but they are also different distributionally. ‘Begin’ becomes a semi-auxiliary when used with an infinitive, ‘’commence’ does not. Contextual synonyms are similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions. ‘Bare’, ‘stand’ – semantically they are different but they become identical in a negative meaning. Total synonymy, i.e. synonymy where a synonymic group can replace each other in any given context without the slightest alteration in denotation or emotional meaning and connotation. Total synonymy occurs very rare. The major type is technical terms. e.g.: inflexion = functional affix. The peculiar feature of English synonyms is the contrast between simple native words stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and learned words of Greco-Latin origin. e.g.: ask – question – interrogate. Words with the same denotational component but of different origin undergo a process of specialization of meaning or become obsolete/archaic in the so-called a ‘competition of synonyms’. This process is called synonymic differentiation and is regarded by some linguists as an inherent law of language development.