Chapter: lexicology and its object subject matter of Lexicology

VI. Antonyms
l. Definition of Antonyms. Classification of antonyms
Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions. Antonyms are words which belong to the same part of speech and have contrary meanings. For example, kind — cruel, good —bad, big — small, little — much.
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 -full and -less.
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, For example. «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, For example. «ugly» , «plain», «good-looking», «pretty», «beautiful», the antonyms are «ugly» and «beautiful».
Antonymy is 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.
An important linguistic difference from complementaries is that antonyms are always fully gradable, For example, hot, warm, cold.
Converseness is mirror-image relations or functions, For example. 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. Also in the comparative form: »Y is smaller than X, then X is larger than Y».
Not every word in a language can have antonyms. This type of opposition can be met in qualitative adjectives and their derivatives, For example, beautiful- ugly, to beautify - to uglify, beauty - ugliness. It can be also met in words denoting f eelings and states, For example, respect - scorn, to respect - to scorn, respectful - scornful, to live - to die, alive - dead, life - death. It can be also met among words denoting direction in space and time, For example here - there, up - down , never, before - after, day - night, early - late etc.
Antonyms are not always interchangeable in certain contexts. For example «rich voices» can not be changed into «poor voice». The opposite of a short person is a tall person. A short thing —long thing, an old book — a new book, an old man—a young man, a thin man—a fat man, a thin book — a thick book.
Antonyms may be found among adjectives as: good — bad, deep ___ shallow, nouns as: light —darkness; verbs as «to give» and «to take»; adverbs as quickly—slowly, early — late.
Many antonyms are explained by means of the negative particle «not». F or example, clean — not dirty, shallow—not deep. Antonyms form pairs, not groups like synonyms: bad—good, big—little, alike — different, old — new.
Polysemantic words may have antonyms in some of their meanings and none in the others. For example. When the word «cri-ticism means «blame» its antonym is «praise», when it means « рецензия » it has no antonym.
Antonyms 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: lo 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.
Antonymic adverbs can be subdivided into two groups: a) adverbs derive" from adjectives: warmly — coldly, merrily — sadly, loudly — softly; b) advert proper: now — then, here — there, ever — never, up — down, in — out.
Not so many years ago antonymy was not universally accepted 3 s linguistic problem, and the opposition within antonymic pairs was regarded purely logical and finding no reflection in the semantic structures of these words.
The contrast between heat and cold or big and small, said most scholars, is the con trast of things opposed by their very nature.