16. English vocabulary as a system. Antonyms. Types of antonyms.

Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions. V.N. Comissarov in his dictionary of antonyms classified them into two groups : absolute or root antonyms /"late" - "early"/ and derivational antonyms / "to please - "to displease"/ . Absolute antonyms have different roots and derivational antonyms have the same roots but different affixes. In most cases negative prefixes form antonyms / un-, dis-, non-/. Sometimes they are formed by means of suffixes -ful and -less. The number of antonyms with the suffixes ful- and -less is not very large, and sometimes even if we have a word with one of these suffixes its antonym is formed not by substituting -ful by less-, e.g. "successful" -"unsuccessful", "selfless" - "selfish". The same is true about antonyms with negative prefixes, e.g. "to man" is not an antonym of the word "to unman", "to disappoint" is not an antonym of the word "to appoint". The difference between derivational and root antonyms is not only in their structure, but in semantics as well. Derivational antonyms express contradictory notions, one of them excludes the other, e.g. "active"- "inactive". Absolute antonyms express contrary notions. If some notions can be arranged in a group of more than two members, the most distant members of the group will be absolute antonyms, e.g. "ugly" , "plain", "good-looking", "pretty", "beautiful", the antonyms are "ugly" and "beautiful". There are different types of oppositeness: a) complementary, e.g. male -female, married -single, b) antonyms, e.g. good -bad, c) converseness, e.g. to buy - to sell. In his classification he describes complimentarity in the following way: the denial of the one implies the assertion of the other, and vice versa. "John is not married" implies that "John is single". An important linguistic difference from complementaries is that antonyms are always fully gradable, e.g. hot, warm, tepid, cold. Converseness is mirror-image relations or functions, e.g. husband/wife, pupil/teacher, preceed/follow, above/below, before/after etc. "John bought the car from Bill" implies that "Bill sold the car to John". Mirror-image sentences are in many ways similar to the relations between active and passive sentences. If a word is polysemantic it can have several antonyms, e.g. the word "bright" has the antonyms "dim", "dull", "sad".

Conversives denote 1 or the same thing referent as viewed from different points of view. (to cause- to suffer, to give- to receive)…

Antonyms are words belonging to 1 part of speech sharing certain common sem. properties and single out mostly on the basis of the sem. relations of contrast. Like synonyms, perfect or complete antonyms are rare. One cannot contrast antonyms if one does not see something common between them. (black- white).= colour common m-g.

There are 2 types of sem. opposition: polar opposition and relative opposition.

Polar opposition rests only on 1 sem. feature. (reach- poor, dead- alive, kind-cruel).

Relative opposition rests on a number of sem. features. (to leave=to go away- to arrive= to reach a place, esp, at the end of long trip).

It’s usual to find the relations of antonymy restricted to certain contexts. (thick-thin).

It’s more or less universally recognized that among the cases that are traditionally described as antonyms there are at least the following 4 groups:

Contradictories which represent the type of semantic relations that exist between pairs like dead-alive, single-married, perfect-imperfect…

To use one of the terms is to contradict the other and to use not before one of them is to make it semantically equivalent to the other (not dead- alive, not single- married)

It’s also usual for one member of each pair to always function as the unmarked or generic term for the common quality involved in both members: age, size…this generalized denotational meaning comes to the fore in certain contexts. (How old is baby?- we do not imply that the baby is old.)

Contraries differ from contradictories mainly because contradictories admit of no possibility between them. One is either single or married, either dead or alive… whereas contraries admit such possibilities. This may be observed in cold-hot, and cool-warm which seem to be intermediate members. Thus, we may regard as antonyms not only cold-hot but also cold-warm. Contraries may be opposed to each other by the absence or presence of one of the components of meaning like sex and age. (man- woman, man- boy).

Incompatibles. Semantic relations of incompatibility exist among the antonyms with the common component of meaning and may be described as the reverse of hyponymy… the relations of exclusion but not of contradiction. To say morning is to say not afternoon, not evening, not night. The negation of one number of this set does not imply semantic equivalence with the other but excludes the possibility of the other words of this set. A relation of incompatibility may be observed between colour terms since the choice of red… entails the exclusion of black, blue, yellow…Naturally not all colour terms are incompatible. (scarlet-red= hyponymy)

Interchangeability in certain contexts analysed in connection with synonyms is typical of antonyms as well. In a context where one membe of the antonymous pair can be used, it’s, as a rule, interchangeable with the other member.(a wet shirt- a dry shirt).This is not to imply that the same antonyms are interchangeable in all contexts. (dry air- damp air, dry lips- moist lips).

Conversives denote 1 or the same thing referent as viewed from different points of view. (to cause- to suffer, to give- to receive)…

Antonyms is a general term that serves to describe words different in sound –form and characterized by different types of sem. contrast of denotational meaning and interchangeability at least in some contexts.