O‘zmu xabarlari Вестник нууз acta nuuz filologiya 1/4 2021 260

O‘ZBEKISTON MILLIY 
UNIVERSITETI
XABARLARI, 2021, [1/4]
ISSN 2181-7324 
 
FILOLOGIYA 
www.uzmuxabarlari.uz 
Social sciences
 

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O‘zMU xabarlari Вестник НУУз ACTA NUUz
FILOLOGIYA 
1/4 2021 
- 261 -
definition, their characteristics are supplemented with the help 
of various lexemes, the semantic deployment of oppositions 
occurs with the help of other, additional words (including 
antonyms). For example: “Now I close my eyes at night - and, 
on the contrary, reality does not disappear, but unfolds, opens 
up in all its simplicity (to the point of primitiveness) and at the 
same time incomprehensibility, in the hopelessness and 
confusion of some then interconnected and completely non-
interconnected labyrinths, nooks and crannies, events, exits (I 
don't speak about entrances - there are no problems with 
them), conversations - who said what, did not say, did not 
finish, friends and girlfriends, who, it turns out, are not 
friends-girlfriends at all, and their unacceptable logic (or 
succumbing, but monstrous logic), disgusting, secret actions, 
behind my back, behind my back, actions" (Notes of a 
humpbacked man). 
According to the internal structure, which presupposes 
the morphological characteristics of oppositions, the antithesis 
is single-root and multi-root, which are based on linguistic 
(simple, dictionary) antonyms. 
One-root antithesis includes oppositions built on 
grammatical (including derivational) features of antonyms.
In English: 
Not visible not invisible, 
Removed by dayless night, 
Did it ever fly its ground Out of fancy into light, 
Into space to replace Its unwritable decease? (L. 
Riding. Yes and No) 
Accordingly, a multi-root antithesis is formed using 
lexical antonyms.
For example: 
Lo! I am come to autumn, 
When all the leaves are gold; 
Grey hairs and green leaves cry out The year and I 
are old. 
(G. Chesterton. Gold Leaves) 
The semantic classification of antitheses presupposes 
their usual and occasional (semantic) characteristics. Usual 
antithesis is formed, as a rule, with the help of the contrast of 
dictionary (linguistic, simple, one-aspect) antonymic pairs. 
For example: 
Some say the world will end in fire. 
Some say in ice. 
From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who 
favor fire. 
But if it had to perish twice, 
I think I know enough of hate To say that for 
destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. (R. Frost. Fire 
and Ice) 
The next component of the semantic classification is 
the occasional (semantic, and, above all, contextual) antithesis. 
The semantic antithesis is based on the global understanding 
of antonyms and, in particular, contextual antonyms. The 
presence of such antonyms in the antithetical construction 
provides the implementation of contextual antonyms of words 
that are not opposite in their semantics, but variable for 
contrasting opposition in a particular context. 
Occasional antonyms are especially often used in 
poetic texts. 
We will illustrate the occasional antithesis in English 
poetry with Walter De La Mar's poem "The Listeners": 
No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and 
looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. 
But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the 
lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight 
To that voice from the world of men... 
(Walter De La Mare. The Listeners) 
In this example, there is a contextual opposition of the 
afterlife to the world of the living: phantom listeners "ghostly 
listeners" - the world of men "the world of (living) people". 
Thus, analyzing the structural and semantic varieties 
of the antithesis, one can come to the conclusion that the 
classification of the antithesis presented by us is quite 
acceptable for both Russian and English languages. 
The similarities and differences in single-root and 
multi-root antitheses have already been presented above. As 
for the complex and detailed antithesis, they are known to both 
Russian and English. The differences concern only the very 
verbal design, since the compared languages use different 
lexical units to express such an opposition, which reflects the 
originality of thinking and emotional-evaluative features of 
perception and representations of the same meaning in the 
analyzed text.