Реферат на тему Structural and semantic peculiarities of English antonyms.

Содержание:

Introduction 3
1. The essence of antonyms as grammatical categories 4
2. Distinctive language signs of antonyms 6
3. Converse antonyms as a language universal 9
Conclusion 11
References 12

Введение:

In order to reveal the nature of antonyms, it is necessary to explore their essence. But even on this issue there is no consensus, especially this concerns such an aspect as clarifying what the basis of antonyms is real opposites that exist only in the “meaning of words” or something else. Antonyms are words that are opposite in meaning and are in the same lexical paradigm.
Antonyms refer to those areas of linguistics that attract the attention of researchers at each new stage in the development of this science and require revision and additional development each time. Antonymic should be considered in different aspects. The dictionary of antonyms occupies an important place among other dictionaries: it gives a description of the vocabulary from the point of view of the semantic opposition of its units. The need to find words with opposite meanings, to find a figurative opposition, to “grab” the polar manifestations of a particular quality, attribute, property often occurs in people of very different specialties, everyone who is interested in the language and even more so is associated with his profession, i.e. from philologists, teachers of the Russian language, translators, writers, journalists. The lexical units of the vocabulary of a language are closely related not only on the basis of their associative connection by similarity or contiguity as lexical-semantic variants of a polysemantic word, semantic meaningful similarity as synonyms, mutual “inverse” in designating the same action or relationship as converse, — species relations as hyponyms, but also on the basis of their opposites as antonyms.
The subject of the study is antonym as a grammar category. The object is antonyms in English language. The aim of the study is to consider structural and semantic peculiarities of English antonyms. In accordance with this aim the following tasks are set in the study:
‒ to consider the essence of antonyms as grammatical categories;
‒ to consider distinctive language signs of antonyms;
‒ to investigate converse antonyms as a language universal

Заключение:

Thus, antonymy is an important semantic relation of lexical units is their opposite. The opposite in general is understood as one of the types of relationships that are established as a result of comparing two objects on a selected or given basis of comparison. Antonymy is a type of semantic relations of lexical units that have opposite meanings. antonymy as a language phenomenon should be “cleaned” of private, local, highly specialized and random “strata”. It should be defined as the most significant and characteristic for all native speakers of the language maximum opposition of words, enshrined in the norms of literary usage. Such a description of the opposite units of the lexical-semantic system of the language is the main task of the dictionary of antonyms. The main thing in the definition of antonymy is the concept of opposites, the disclosure of its philosophical, logical and linguistic content.
Antonymy is a naming of the opposite within a single entity. The logical model of the opposite is realized in the language as antonymy only in those words that denote quality, the opposite direction of actions, states, signs, in a small number of words with the meaning of spatial and temporal coordinates. Antonyms call the opposite species concepts within a single generic. In the meaning of antonyms, this finds expression in the fact that the members of an antonymic pair belong to one part of speech and have significant commonality of meaning, a common set of semantic components. This community is the basis of opposition. From a semantic point of view, antonyms have the same type of meaning: a common integral attribute and a differential characteristic, according to which they are extremely opposed to each other.
As the synonyms, antonyms enter into contrasting distribution and equivalent opposition. Antonyms have both common and individual compatibility. The meanings of antonyms with commonality of an integral feature are mutually denying. In antonyms, the difference prevails over similarity.

Фрагмент текста работы:

. The essence of antonyms as grammatical categories
Antonyms are one of the most interesting phenomena of the language is antonyms. It helps to reflect the contrast of the phenomena of different layers of the tongue. Antonymy is a language universal, i.e. it exists in many languages, but its means of manifestation are often different.
The structure of antonyms can be considered from the point of view of its composition and production, and not production. Non-derivative antonyms include: 1) root words, 2) fundamentals of education, indecomposable in the modern state for meaningful morphemes, 3) borrowings. All other antonyms are derivatives, formed from the base in a certain word-building way. Production antonyms are divided into: 1) suffixes, 2) self-complex, 3) paired and 4) composite.
Synthetic antonyms include root and suffixing antonyms, and analytical antonyms include complex antonyms. Antonyms are heterogeneous in structure. Some linguists include only different sound words with opposite sound in antonyms. [Lyons: 2007, p. 41]
Other linguists include words with positive evaluative content in antonymic pairs, contrasting them with negative evaluative content, and negation is expressed by a negative prefix un-, non-, etc. [Novikov: 2004, p. 28]
The classification of antonyms is given in different languages in different ways. This follows, apparently, from the peculiarities of the structural type of the language being studied or from the chosen principles and criteria.
The antonyms of the English language on the structure are divided into simple, derivative and compound.
1) Simple antonyms are antonyms that do not contain prefixes or suffixes: to take — to give, white — black, day — night, here — there, cold — hot.
2) Derived antonyms include words that contain prefixes or suffixes, or both prefixes and suffixes: happy’ – unhappy, warmly — coldly, handsome — unattractive, equality — inequality, regular — irregular.
3) Compound antonyms are formed from two words: toswitchon — toswitchoff, lowland — highland, broad-minded — bullhead, northland — southland.
Complex antonyms are formed by combining into one lexical single of two or more bases, as well as by doubling the foundations. The structure of complex antonyms is determined by the lexical-grammatical peculiarities of the components of complex words and their relation to the expressing meaning. Obviously, the structure of complex antonyms is also determined by the lexical-grammatical properties of the components, the degree of participation of the components in the expression of meaning. Complex antonyms can be divided into the following groups: self-complex antonyms, paired antonyms, compound antonyms.
Actually complex antonyms are formed on the basis of an attribute, object, or predicative connection. Their structural components are closely related. Two words are closely related, undergoing phonetic changes or losing some morphological parameters. In self-complex antonyms, one of the components may not be used in its direct sense, some suffixes may be omitted, or they may lose the independent meaning of individual components.
Considering the function of antonyms, there are distinguished the following: opposition, mutual exclusion: neither this nor that. Alternation, consistency: put out, lit. Coverage of the entire class: from start to finish. The transformation of opposites into another: the first and the last.
Antonyms are widely used in works of fiction, as well as in folklore to express diverse shades of opposition, create the necessary semantic completeness and expressiveness. Antonyms are often used to express expressive means such as antithesis and oxymoron. Antithesis ‒ is the opposition of characters, circumstances, images, compositional elements. Antithesis creates the effect of a sharp contrast. Antonyms are also used for a comparison of opposing concepts, states and any elements of a literary work. Frequently it is used in the titles of works. («Red and Black», «War and Peace», «Crime and Punishment», «Fat and Thin», etc.).