Antonyms

Antonyms may be defined as two or more words of the same language belonging to the same part of speech and to the same semantic field, identical in style and nearly identical in distribution, associated and often used together so that their denotative meanings render contradictory or contrary notions.

Classification of antonyms (Ginzburg)

1. Contradictories which represent the type of semantic relations that exist between pairs

e.g. “distant” – close, “old” – young, “sad” – “jolly”.

2. Contraries differ from contradictories mainly because contradictories admit of no possibility between them. Contraries may be opposed to each other by the absence or presence of one of the components of meaning like sex or age.

e.g. “provincial” – cosmopolitan.

3. Incompatibilities.

Semantic relations of incompatibility exist among the antonyms with the common component of meaning and may be described as the reverse of hyponymy, i.e. as the relations of exclusion but not of contradiction. To say morning is to say not afternoon, not evening, not night. The negation of the member of this set however does not imply semantic equivalence with the other but excludes the possibility of the other words of this set.

e.g. “Western” – Southern, “vermillion” – green.

Homonyms

Homonymy is the phenomenon known as disintegration or split of polysemy. When two or more unrelated meanings are associated with the same form — the words are homonyms.

Homonymy of individual word-forms is called partial homonymy.

e.g. lie (to be or to stay at rest in a horizontal position) – lie (to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive), but in the Past Simple lay-lied

Three types of homonyms are distinguished:homonyms proper, homophones and homographs.

Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling.

e.g. cricket 1 – any saltatorial orthopterous insect of the genus Acheta or of the same tribe.

cricket 2 – An open-air game played with ball, bats, and wickets, by two sides of eleven

players each.

cricket 3 – A low wooden stool; a foot stool (this meaning is now local)

Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in

spelling.

e.g. “wind” [wind] (air in motion) – “wind” [waind] (to end).

Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning.

e.g.: l. “Air” - heir- [еə]

2. “nob”- knob-[nɒb]

3. “aisle”- isle - [ail]

4. “sight” – cite – site [sait]

Hypero-hyponimic relations

By hyponymy is meant a semantic relationship of inclusion. Thus, e.g., vehicle includes car, bus, taxi and so on; oak implies tree; horse entails animal; table entails furniture. Thus the hyponymic relationship may be viewed as the hierarchical relationship between the meaning of the general and the individual terms.

Parts of a building (church)