Antonyms. Types of antonyms.

Antonyms are defined as words of the same category of parts of speech which have contrasting meaning,e.g. hot - cold, light - dark, up-down, happiness - sorrow. Antonyms fall intotwo main groups:

a. Root or absolute antonyms (those which are of different roots). These are wordsregularly Contrastedas homogeneous sentence members connected by copulative, disjunctive conjunctions,or identically used in parallel constructions, in certain typical configurations (typical context), e.g. He was alive - not dead (Shaw) You will see if you were right or wrong

b. Derivational antonyms (affixal). The affixes in them serve to deny the quality stated in the stem. The contrast is implied in the morphological structure of the word itself, e.g. appear - disappear, happiness - unhappiness, logical - illogical, pleasant - unpeasant.

There arc typical affixes and typical patterns that take part in forming theses derivational antonyms. The examples of given below prefixes prevail. They have negative meaning (dis-,i!-/im-/in-/ir-, un-).

As to thesuffixes it should be noted that modern English gives no examples of words forming their antonyms by adding a negative suffix, e.g. the suffix -less (hopeless: :hopefull, useless: :useful).

In most cases when the language posesses words with the suffix -less, the antonymic pairs found in actual speech are formed with the prefix un-. Thus, the antonimic opposition is not selfish:;selfless but selfish:.unselfish

The difference between absolute and derivational antonyms is not only morphological but semantic as well. Thus, according to the relationship between the notions expressed antonyms may be characterized as contradictory (derivational antonyms) or contrary (absolute antonyms). A pair of derivational antonyms form a binary opposition, where the absolute antonyms are polar members of a gradual opposition,

e.g. young - old; beautiful:: pretty:: good-looking:: plain - ugly

Many antonyms are explained by means of the negative particle,

e.g. clean - not dirty; shallow - not deep

Not only words, but set expressions as well, can be grouped into antonimic pairs,

e.g. by accident - on purpose, up to par - below par

It is important to remember that antonyms form mostly pairs, not groups like synonyms,

e.g. above - ЬоШ\\>, absent -present, alike - different

Polisemantic words may have antonyms in some of their meanings and none in others. When criticism means 'censure ' its antonym is praise; when it means 'writing critical essays dealing with the works of some author', it can have no antonym. 4. Homonyms: words of the same form.

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