Лекции по лексикологии английского языка. Гусева Г.В. - 39 стр.

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III. Antonyms

Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style,

expressing contrary or contradictory notions.

V.N. Comissarov classified antonyms into two groups: absolute (root)

antonyms (late - early) and derivational antonyms (to please – to displease, honest

- dishonest). 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 antonymous

suffixes: -ful and –less (painful - painless).

The difference between derivational and root antonyms is also in their

semantics. Derivational antonyms express contradictory notions, one of them

excludes the other: 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: ugly, plain, good-looking,

pretty, beautiful, the antonyms are ugly and beautiful.

Leonard Lipka in the book Outline of English Lexicology describes three

types of oppositeness:

a) complementarity: male – female. The denial of the one implies the

assertion of the other, and vice versa;

b) antonyms: good – bad. It is based on different logical relationships;

c) converseness: to buy – to sell. It is mirror-image relations or functions:

husband-wife, above-below, pupil-teacher.

L. Lipka also gives the type which he calls directional oppositions: up-down,

consequence opposition: learn-know, antipodal opposition: North-South, East-

West.

L. Lipka also points out non-binary contrast or many-member lexical sets. In

such sets of words we can have outer and inner pairs of antonyms: excellent, good,

average, fair, poor.