Semantic Classification of Antonyms

 

Leonard Lipka is one of the linguists, who describes different types of oppositeness, and subdivides them into three types:

a) complementary, e.g. male -female, married -single,

b) antonyms, e.g. good -bad,

c) converseness, e.g. to buy - to sell.

He does that 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”. The type of oppositeness is based on yes/no decision. This concerns pairs of lexical units.

Antonyms are the second class of oppositeness. It is distinguished from complimentarity by being based on different logical relationships. For pairs of antonyms like “good” – “bad”, “big” – “small” only the second one of the above mentioned relations of implication holds. The assertion containing one member implies the negation of the other, but not vice versa. “John is good” implies that “John is not bad”, but “John is not good” does not imply that “John is bad”. The negation of one term does not necessarily implies the assertion of the other.

Converseness is mirror-image relations or functions, e.g. “husband” – “wife”, “pupil” – “teacher”, “precede” – “follow”, “above” – “below”, “before” – “after” etc. [8]

L. Lipka also describes the type which is called as:

· directional opposition, ex. “up” – “down”;

· consiquence opposition, ex. “learn” – “know”;

· antipodal opposition, ex. “North” – “South”, “East” – “West”, ( it is based on contrary motion, in opposite directions.)

· oppositions, which involve motion in different directions, ex. “come” – “go”, “arrive” –“depart”.[8]

L. Lipka also points out non-binary contrast or many-member lexical sets. Here he points out serially ordered sets, such as:

· scales, ex. “hot”- “warm”, “cool” - “cold” ;

· colour words, ex. “black”, “grey”, “white” ;

· ranks, ex. “marshal”, “general”, “colonel”, “major”, “captain” etc.;

· gradable examination marks, ex. “excellent”, “good”, “average”, “fair”, “poor”; units of time, ex. “spring”, “summer”, “autumn”, “winter” . [1]

Thus, let’s investigate the complementary, proper antonyms, and converseness differences in details.

J.Lyons among also describes complementaries. Like other antonyms they are regularly contrasted in speech (ex. “male”- “female”), and the elements of a complementary pair have similar distribution. According to him, the assertion of a sentence containing an antonymous or complementary term implies the denial of a corresponding sentence containing the other antonym or complementary:

“The poem is good → The poem is not bad (good : : bad — antonyms proper)” This is prose → This is not poetry (prose : : poetry — complementaries)

As to the difference in negation it is optional with antonyms proper: by saying that the poem is not good the speaker does not always mean that it is positively bad. Though more often we are inclined to take into consideration only the opposite ends of the scale and by saying that something is not bad we even, using litotes, say it is good. So complementaries are a subset of antonyms taken in a wider sense. [4]

The complementary opposite, sometimes is known as the contradictory. Like the gradable adjectives, the complementary adjectives share a semantic dimension, but it is a dimension which has no middle values. As Cruse describes it:

“The essence of a pair of complementaries is that between them they exhaustively divide some conceptual domain into two mutually exclusive compartments, so that what does not fall into one of the compartments must necessarily fall into the other". [2]

It is sometimes hard to decide whether a pair of opposites belongs in the set of gradable adjectives or in the set of complementaries. But, as Cruse says, in addition to adjectives, verbs such as “pass” – “fail” and “obey” – “disobey”, nouns such as “day” – “night”, prepositions such as “in” – “out”, and adverbs such as “backwards” – “forwards” are also sometimes considered examples of complementaries.

Although by definition, complementaries are pairs which allow no logical middle term, in actual use, complementaries are sometimes used like gradable adjectives; for example, we can say that something is almost true, or that someone is barely alive. [5]

However, as Lyons (1977) points out, in these cases it may be the "secondary implications" of the words that are being graded rather than the main sense. That is, someone who is barely alive is actually entirely alive, but “s/he” is not as lively or energetic as most people are. Directional opposites are another type of opposite, described in Lyons (1977) and in greater detail in Cruse (1986). These are generally adverbs or prepositions and include pairs such as “up - down”, “in - out”, and “clockwise” – “anticlockwise”. [6]

Reversive opposites, described in Lehrer and Lehrer (1982) and Egan (1968), are yet another type of opposite, Egan describes reversive opposites in this way:

“ These comprise adjectives or adverbs which signify a quality or verbs or nouns which signify an act or state that reverse or undo the quality, act, or state of the other. Although they are neither contradictory nor contrary terms, they present a clear opposition.” [7]

This class contains many verbs, for example, “tie” – “untie”, “marry” – “divorce”, “enter” – “leave”, “appear” – “disappear”. Cruse and Lyons consider the reversive verbs to be a subtype of directional opposites, because they all describe activities which result in an object undergoing a change from one state to another. Thus Cruse says the opposition seen in pairs of reversive verbs is similar to the kind of opposition in pairs of directional prepositions such as “to” – “from”. [7]

“Relational opposites” is called “relative terms” according to Egan [2] and “conversive terms” difined by Lyons [7], include pairs such as “above” – “below”, “predecessor” – “successor”, “parent” – “child” and “teacher” – “student”.

Egan describes these as pairs of words which indicate such a relationship that one of them cannot be used without suggesting the other. [1]

Cruse considers this class to also be a subclass of the directional opposites. He says that these pairs "express a relationship between two entities by specifying the direction of one relative to the other along some axis." In examples such as “above” – “below”, this axis is spatial, but other examples (e.g. “ancestor” – “descendant”) involve "an analogical or metaphorical extension of spatial dimensions". [8]

Lyons points out that many opposites of this type involve social roles (“teacher” – “student”, “doctor” – “patient”) or kinship relations (“father” – “mother”), and these types of reciprocal relations have been well documented in many languages in the anthropological literature. [4]

Conversives (or relational opposites) as F.R. Palmer calls them denote one and the same referent or situation as viewed from different points of view, with a reversal of the order of participants and their roles. The interchangeability and contextual behaviour are specific. The relation is closely connected with grammar, namely with grammatical contrast of active and passive. The substitution of a conversive does not change the meaning of a sentence if it is combined with appropriate regular morphological and syntactical changes and selection of appropriate prepositions, ex. “He gave her flowers. She received flowers from him. = She was given flowers by him”.[4]

An important point setting them apart is that conversive relations are possible within the semantic structure of one and the same word. M.V. Nikitin mentions such verbs as “wear”, ”sell”, “tire”, “smell”, etc. and such adjectives as “glad”, “sad”, “dubious”, “lucky” and others. It should be noted that “sell” in this case is not only the conversive of “buy”, it means “be sold”, “find buyers”. The same contrast of active and passive sense is observed in adjectives: “sad” “saddening” and “saddened”, “dubious” and “doubtful” mean “feeling doubt and inspiring doubt”.[6]

So, semantically antonyms can be classified as gradable antonyms (describing something, which can be measured and compared with something else), complementary antonyms (which are matter of being either one thing or another), and converse antonyms (these antonyms always depend on each other). Morphological classification of antonyms includes two types of antonyms:

· Absolute or Root Antonyms (with root polarity), and

· Derivational antonyms (which has morphems with polar meanings).

Taking into account the main aims of these investigation, all these points of scientific view should be worked out and analyzed in the next part of the Course Paper.

Lexico-Semantic meaning of words distinguishes three essential types of lexical meaning of words: nominative meaning determined by reality, phraseologically bound meaning of words depending on the peculiarities of their usage in a given language, and syntactically conditioned meanings of words are those which change with the change of the environment.

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

In most cases the grammatical features of a word reveals itself in a context.

There are three essential types of lexical meaning of words:

· Nominative meaning determined by reality.

· Phraseologically bound meaning of words depending on the peculiarities of their usage in a given language.

· Syntactically conditioned meanings of words are those which change with the change of the environment.

In the structure of lexical meaning of a word we distinguish two main components: denotative and connotative.

We can base on the definition antonyms as two or more words belonging to the same pat of speech, contradictory or contrary in meaning, and interchangeable at least at some contexts. However, polysemantic word may have an antonym or several antonyms for each of its meanings.

According to their morphological structure antonyms may be classified into:

· root antonyms (having different roots);

· derivational antonyms (having the same roots but different derivational affixes).

There is the describing of different types of oppositeness, and subdivides them into three types: complementary, antonyms, and converseness.

Complementaries (like other antonyms) are regularly contrasted in speech and the elements of a complementary pair have similar distribution. Conversives (or relational opposites) denote one and the same referent or situation as viewed from different points of view, with a reversal of the order of participants and their roles.

 

 

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