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The subject-matter of the Course Paper is to investigate lexico-semantic features of antonyms and synonyms in modern English.
The topicality of the problem under investigation results from the necessity to update basic assumption provided by different linguists in order to be able to establish the classification of antonyms and synonyms depending on their morphological and semantic classifications in Modern English. The novelty of the problem arises from the necessity of a profound scientific investigation of antonyms and synonyms. The main aim of the Course Paper is to summarize and systemize different approaches to the study of antonyms and synonyms in Modern English.
Introduction
Chapter I. Lexico-Semantic Features of Antonyms in Modern English
1.1. The Concept of Polarity of Meaning
1.2 . Morphological Classification of Antonyms
1.2.1 Derivational Antonyms
1.3 Semantic Classification of Antonyms
1.3.1 Antonyms Proper
1.3.2 Complementaries
1.3.3 Converives
Chapter 2. Textual Presentation of Antonyms in Modern English
2.1 Textual Presentation of Antonyms in Modern English
2.1.1 Root Antonyms in language
2.1.2 Derivational antonyms in language
2.2 Differences of meaning of antonyms
2.3 Using antonyms pair in proverbs and sayings
Chapter 3. Synonym in English language
3.1 Kinds of synonyms and their specific features
3.2 Distributional features of the English synonyms
3.3 Changeability and substitution of meanings
3.4 Semantic and functional relationship in synonyms
3.5 Interchangeable character of words and their synonymy
3.6 Combinability of synonyms
3.7 Peculiar features of semantics and combinability of the English verbs on the examples of the synonyms “to amuse”, “to entertain”, “to grip”, “to interest”, “to thrill”
3.8 Conceptual synonymy
3.9 Synonymy and collocative meaning
3.10 Semantic peculiarities of synonyms
Сonclusion
Ex: His profound insight into human nature has stood the test of centuries
His deep insight into human nature has stood the test of centuries.
His deep insight into human nature has stood the test of centuries. *
His profound insight into human nature has stood the test of centuries
Synonymy is understood within mutual entailment (A-B) but `deep' and `profound' doesn't correspond to this. Native speakers feel that `profound' is stylistically more elevated or more formal that deep? So with all this evidence it is impossible to say that they are synonymous. This is why Person gives the following figure as the analysis for them.
Concrete `situated, coming abstract; abstract from, or extending intellectual; emotive far below the strongly; surface emotive.
Stylistic Attributes (SA): informal SA; formal.
In Person's model we have three categories: CC, TA, SA. The thing is that not all words include SA box, so it's left open. Person also reviewed other examples analyzed by Warren.
Ex: child / brat child CC brat TA
Child' and `brat' are an example of connotative variant in Warren. They are given as variants but if we apply the test of hyponymy we see that it works. `Brat' is a kind of `child' but not vice versa. `Brat' includes `child' plus the feature `bad-mannered. Person finds the collocation in which `brat' appears; it tends to appear with adjectives that reinforces this feature of bad-mannered what proves that that atom of meaning (…)
The same happens with `woman' and `lady'.
Ex: She is a woman, but she is not a lady.
She is a lady, but she is not a woman
Person questions the fact that two words can be synonymous out of the blue. He defends contextual information as the key to determine if two words are synonymous or not.
Ex: readable: legible
At to what extent can we say that they are synonyms?
*readable:
(of handwriting or point) able to be read easily'
pleasurable or interesting to read'
*legible:
(of handwriting or print) `able to be read easily'
They are only synonymous when they mean `able to be read easily'
“The child, quite obviously, would not be expected to produce a composition, but would be expected to know the alphabet, where the full stops and commas are used, and be able to write in a readable / legible manner, something like, `The cat sat on the mat'.”
“It is not easy to see why her memory should have faded, especially as she wrote a most readable / *legible autobiography which went quickly through several editions.”
Legible; readable; able to with pleasure; be read' and /or; interest.
They share senses number 1 but to `readable' it's also added sense number 2. This claims that in some contexts they are fully interchangeable, but we have also to take into account their stylistic feature and the register.
In principle, scientific words have discrete meanings.
Ex: mercury: quicksilver
They appear as full synonyms because they say that their relationship is that of mutual inclusion (A-B)
Conceptually, the concept `mercury' can be expressed with both words. However, style draws the line between both words. Native speakers and corpora of data give us what we have in the following figure:
Mercury: formal, quicksilver; scientific whitish; fluid informal; metal.
Mercury formal, scientific (Romance origin): Quicksilver informal (Saxon origin)
However something peculiar has happened with this words. The popular word `quicksilver' is starting to disappear and what usually happens is that the formal words are the one that disappears. But in this case, it is the contrary.
Cigarette: fag
Cigarette fag
Tube with
General tobacco in slang'
It for smoking' `narrow, made of finely cut tobacco rolled in thin paper'
This figure contains not only CC but typical attributes too.
3.9 SYNONYMY AND COLLOCATIVE MEANING
They have been considered similar in meaning but never fully synonyms. They belong to the same categorical concept
Collocations by Leech: girl, boy, woman, flower, pretty garden, color, village, etc.
Boy, man, car, vessel, handsome overcoat, airliner, typewriter, etc.
Collocations found in the Lob and the British Corpora:
Pretty, Batman, Case, Co-ed, Dress, Headdresses, Girl, Piece of seamanship, Quilt, Range of pram sets, Shoe, Shop, Sophie
Street: Teacher (female ref.), Trick, Woman, Handsome, Cocktail cabinet, Connor Winslow, Face (male ref.), Man, Mayor, Offer, Pair of salad servers, Person (male ref.),(Red brocade) curtains, Son, Staircase, Sub-Alpine gloom, Trees, Vessel, Volume (book), Woman, `pretty' female nouns, `handsome' male nouns.
This is the first division we could make but there are more differences. It cannot be based on terms of male / female words.
The idea, then, is that if an adjective tends to collocate to certain nouns means that its partner is slightly different to it. So when they are applied to the same noun, the same rule is applied.
Ex: pretty: handsome
Mary is a pretty woman
Mary is a handsome woman
A handsome woman is more elegant that a pretty woman. She also has stronger facial features. A handsome woman isn't a pretty woman at the same time and vice versa. So they are exclusive terms.
Pretty Street' but `handsome avenue'
If they are exclusive terms, they are nor synonyms but co-hyponyms
If two items are closely synonymous, a coordination test will lead to a tautology.
Ex: Scientists have so far failed to find for this deadly and fatal disease.
However if we coordinate `pretty' and `handsome' what we have is a contradiction:
That woman is pretty and handsome
(Photocopy of definitions of `deep', `profound', `handsome', `lovely' and `beautiful')
Some of the dictionaries specialize it more deeply than others.
Profound' in the Longman is defined as deep but not vice versa. This also happens in `lovely' and `beautiful'.
Uninformative; it doesn't give really the sense of the words.
This isn't correct because `profound' emphasizes stronger that `deep' and this isn't true. There is a contradiction there.
Introduction of the notion of `delicacy' for defining a pretty woman.
This is the only dictionary which says that something pretty isn't something beautiful. They exclude each other. `Grand' is a feature of `handsome'.
handsome -`making a pleasant
lovely - impression on the pretty
senses' -beautiful
Here, `beautiful' and `pretty' appear as co-hyponyms so they have to exclude each other. The CC is actually the definition given for `beautiful', so it's the generic word for the four words. `Lovely' is slightly more intense than `beautiful'. (It's the same relationship `deep' and `profound' have)
This shows how language establishes degrees of intensity.
3.10 SEMANTIC PECULIARITIES OF SYNONYMS
Semantic fields are the answer to the problem / question of structuring the lexicon of a language. Those who defend the existence of semantic fields believe that the language is structured. They say that the words can be classified in sets, which are related to conceptual fields and these words divide the semantic space / domain in different ways. It's to be preferred that the label to use here is field rather than theory because theories are supposed to be complete and have explicit definitions of the matter in question, and this isn't what happens in the semantic field approach. We just have ideas of how things seem to be. Moreover, the semantic field approach isn't formalized and it was born on the basis of just a handful of ideas of how words work.
The basic notion behind any semantic field approach is the notion of association: words are associated in different words. We also have the idea of a mosaic. The words form it in such a way that for it to be complete you need all the words in their correct place. We also have to distinguish between lexical and semantic fields. Semantic fields have something to do with prototypically. One of the main difficulties in the semantic field approach is to establish the exact number of words that are part of a set. Here is where Prototype Theory enters because it defines the basic features of a category.
Model of focal points.
Martin and Key concluded that the basic words of a category are very easy to identify by a native speaker but they say that the interesting point is the area a native speaker doubts whether to call something A or B. There are concepts which cannot be expressed in words. From the psychological point of view there are concepts which cannot be verbalized but that really exist in the mind. The aim of this model is to identify the relationship between the lexical fields and the semantic fields. And there are fields where the relationship doesn't exist.
The idea behind semantic fields is the arrangement of words in sets depending on the organizing concepts. Many semantic linguists say that it's difficult to think of a word outside a semantic field because if you say that a word is outside a semantic field, you say it's outside the lexicon. The problem with this is what happens with words which don't evoke a concept. Many words in English are meaningful but don't have a concept
Ex: Even / only
These words clearly make a semantic contribution to the sentence. It's not the same to say: Only John drinks milk. Then: Even John drinks milk.
Сonclusion
So, the conclusion is that some words of a language don't lend themselves well to the analysis in terms of semantic fields. Other important idea is the difficulty of finding finite sets of words. In any case, there's an internal contradiction between the ideas of a set with the structuring of words of a language. A set is a close set. A word can belong to several fields depending on the organizing concept. Speakers of the language clearly identify the central example but not the peripheral ones. This doesn't mean that it would never happen that. The degree of flexibility in the discrepancy of the categorization of words is smaller.
Ex: Please give me some more tables (`Table' is here a mass noun meaning `space in a table').
E.G. Two races are grown in India. Here two races' refers to `two types of rice'
The idea behind this is that the dynamic character of a vocabulary cannot be reflected in the static character of the semantic fields, which are a static way of organizing the vocabulary of a language.
Having analyzed the problem of synonymy in Modern English we could do the following conclusions:
a) The problem of synonymy in Modern English is very actual nowadays.
b) There are several kinds of analysis of synonyms: semantical, stylistic and componentional.
c) A number of famous linguists dealt with the problem of synonymy in Modern English. In particular, Profs. Ullmann and Broal emphasized the social reasons for synonymy, L. Lipka pointed out non-binary contrast or many-member lexical sets and gave the type which he called directional opposition, V.N. Comissarov and Walter Skeat proved the link of synonymy with other kinds of lexical devices.
d) The problem of synonymy is still waits for its detail investigation.
Having said about the perspectives of the work we hope that this work will find its worthy way of applying at schools, lyceums and colleges of high education by both teachers and students of English. We also express our hopes to take this work its worthy place among the lexicological works dedicated to synonymy.
In most cases the grammatical features of a word reveals itself in a context.
There are three essential types of lexical meaning of words:
• Nominative meaning determined by reality.
• Phraseologically bound meaning of words depending on the peculiarities of their usage in a given language.
• Syntactically conditioned meanings of words are those which change with the change of the environment.
In the structure of lexical meaning of a word we distinguish two main components: denotative and connotative
We can base on the definition antonyms as two or more words belonging to the same pat of speech, contradictory or contrary in meaning, and interchangeable at least at some contexts. However, polysemantic word may have an antonym or several antonyms for each of its meanings.
As for the same antonymic pair, they reveal nearly identical spheres of collocation. Almost every word can have one or more synonyms. Comparatively few have antonyms. Antonymic pairs, also irrespective of part of speech, concern direction and position in space and time.
The main sense of proverbs and sayings is not the information given but artistic pattern, meaning content. We have found a confirmation that antonyms can be expressed: as words with different roots and as words, which are formed with negative prefixes.
The main criterion of antonyms is steady using their pairs in contexts. Antonym pairs thread Modern English. However, antonyms imply polarity of one of the semantic components of the words showing us the same main point. But understanding antonyms as polarity of the several semantic components of the words showing two polarity main points is possible.
Bibliography
1978 pp. 23-24, 117-119, 133-134
M., Moscow State Teacher Training University Publishers 2004 pp.17-31