Antonyms

Antonyms – a class of words grouped together on the basis of the semantic relations of opposition.

CLASSIFICATION OF ANTONYMS

Structurally, antonyms can be divided into antonyms of the same root, e.g. “pleasant” – unpleasant

1. Contradictories represent the type of semantic relations that exist between pairs like, e.g. “small” – big

2. Contraries (gradable antonyms) are antonyms that can be arranged into a series according to the increasing difference in one of their qualities: “silent” – calm

3. Incompatibles - antonyms which are characterized by the relations of exclusion: “Angel” – Demon

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Homonyms

Homonyms are words different in meaning but identical in sound or spelling, or both in sound and spelling. Homonyms can appear in the language not only as the result of the split of polysemy, but also as the result of levelling of grammar inflexions, when different parts of speech become identical in their outer aspect. Classifications of homonyms.

Walter Skeat classified homonyms according to their spelling and sound forms and he pointed out three groups: perfect homonyms that is words identical in sound and spelling; homographs, that is words with the same spelling but pronounced differently; homophones that is words pronounced identically but spelled differently.

A more detailed classification was given by I.V. Arnold. She classified only perfect homonyms and suggested four criteria of their classification: lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, basic forms and paradigms.

According to these criteria I.V. Arnold pointed out the following groups: a) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings, basic forms and paradigms and different in their lexical meanings; b) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings and basic forms, different in their lexical meanings and paradigms; c) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, paradigms, but coinciding in their basic forms; d) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, in their basic forms and paradigms, but coinciding in one of the forms of their paradigms.

For example, “eye” (ocular organ) – aye (naval affirmative)

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Hypero-hyponimic relations

Hyponymy – the relationship between a specific word and a general word when the former is included within the latter.

That relationship is illustrated by the common formula "An A is a kind of B." For example, "A dog is a kind of animal," or simply "A dog is an animal." The specific word, "dog," which is included within, or under, the general word, is known as a hyponym (Greek "under" + "name"). The general word, "animal," which heads a list of many specific words under it, is a hypernym (Greek "above" + "name"). In this case, those other specific words, or hyponyms, could include, besides "dog," a vast number of other animal names, such as "bird," "horse," and "monkey." Those specific words under the same hypernym are related to each other as cohyponyms.

Examples

People

child adult

boy girl

man woman

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Bibliography

1. Arnold I.V. The English Word М: Высшая школа, 1973

2. Apresjan. Regular polysemy.

3. Snow, Rion; Daniel Jurafsky; Andrew Y. Ng (2004). "Learning syntactic patterns for automatic hypernym discovery"

Dictionaries

1. Longman Dictionary

2. Oxford Dictionary

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Word formation analysis

Morphemic analysis (states the number and types of the morphemes)

Dovelike – 2 morphemes: a root + a suffix > a derived word

Structural correlation analysis (studies the structural correlation with other words, the structural patterns and rules on which the words are built)

Moan – moans are the members of a morphemic opposition. The suffix –S is used to build a plural form.

Back formation (the derivation of a new word by subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through misinterpretations of their structure).

Analysis into immediate constituents (it deals with motivation).

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