CLASSIFICATION OF ANTONYMS
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 581.
Let us consider the following extract from “ A Tale of Two Cities”by Ch.Dickens .It was the best of times, it was the worstof times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.
In this extract we find words, which are different in sound-form and have opposite meaning, besides that their semantic polarity is enhanced by context where both members of the pair are used. It is possible to use only one member of the pair in a context, but it should be interchangeable with the other member, that means that they must have regular and frequent co-occurrence in some contexts e.g. The man is young:: The man is old, The room is big:: The room is small. The words good::bad, thin::thick, light::darkness are called antonyms.
Antonyms are words of opposite meaning, i.e. words characterized by polarity of the denotational meaning, contrasted in actual speech or interchangeable in some contexts. Not every word in a language can have an antonym because not every notions has some other contrastive or correlative notion. If we take such nouns as hand, face, nose, chair, table, book they won't have any antonyms.
We will find antonyms among words denoting some quality, it may be a noun light::darkness, a verb to freeze::to thaw, an adjective full::empty, especially qualitative adjectives such as beautiful::ugly; big::small; bitter::sweet; bold::bashful; brave::cowardly; bright::dim; good::bad; timid::arrogant. old::young, or an adverb slowly::quickly.
We find antonymic pairs among nouns denoting human feelings, virtues, mood or disposition, such as love::hatred; respect::scorn; joy::sorrow;
In the example below you will find three pairs of antonyms, which belong to different part of speech:
My only love sprung from my only hate
Too early seen unknownand known toolate(Shakespeare)
Antonyms can also be found among nouns denoting some kind of human activity or life style such as work::rest; health::illness; life::death. or nouns denoting time day::night; summer::winter; beginning::end.
Nothing so difficult as a beginning
In poetry, unless perhaps the end. (Byron)
Unlike synonyms, antonyms do not differ either in style, emotive value or distribution. They can be classified as follows:
1. If the semantic polarity in antonyms is relative and the opposition is gradual,which may embrace several elements characterized by different degrees of the same property. then we can speak of proper/contrary antonyms They always imply comparison, big::small denote polar degrees of the same notion- size.
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told ( Shakespeare)
We know that such words as young: old, good::bad, do not refer to independent absolute qualities but to some implicit norm. Let us consider the following example -A small elephant is a big animal. The implicit size-norm for elephants is not the same as that for all anumals in general: the elephant which is small in comparison with other anumals may be big in comparison with animals as a class.
2. If the opposition is binary, which means it may have only two members, the denial of one member of the opposition implies the assertion of the other e.g. male::female, single::married, husband::wife, parent::chikd, doctor::patient,-then we have contradictory/complementary antonyms.
3. The third type of antonyms is called conversive antonyms.They denote one and the refrent as viewed from different points of view, that of the subject and that of the object –buy::sell, give::receive, lend::borrow,. The substitution of a conversive does not change the meaning of a sentence if we make necessary syntactical changes e.g. He gave her flowers – She received flowers from him.
Where most I lost, there most of all I won(Drayton)
4. The fourth group of antonyms where the affixes serve to deny the quality stated in the stem. e.g. known::unknown, appear:: disppear, pleasant:: unpleasant, happy::unhappy etc are known as reversive/derivational antonyms.In these examples the contrast is implied in the morphological structure of the word.
It must be noted that as words are polysemantic one and the same words may have different antonyms, as a dull book::an interesting book, a dull pupil:: a bright pupil, dull colours:: bright colours, dull knife::sharp knife. Sometimes the antonyms are affected by the valency (the power to combine with different words) atall building::a low building but a tall man:: a short man, an old house::a new house but an old man:: a young man.
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| | | Exercise 1. Translate the following sentences, pick out antonyms and define their type. |