16.Antonyms

An antonym is a word which means the opposite of another word. Antonyms are also called opposites. One way of mastering a language involves learning its vocabulary. Like synonyms, antonyms may have several meanings, and antonyms of some word may or may not be synonyms among themselves. For example, the opposites of the word "friendly", the adjectives "unfriendly, hostile", are synonyms, while the opposites of the word "short", the adjectives "long, tall", are not synonyms.

Antonyms are easier to substitute than synonyms. In the case of adjectives, if you want to express the opposite, you can often use the structure NOT + adjective as a substitute for an antonym: young – not young; expensive – not expensive; important – not important; fragile – not fragile.

prefix	antonyms		part of speech
	good	bad	adjective
	small	big	adjective
	easy	hard difficult	adjective
	soft	hard	adjective
	male	female	adjective noun
	up	down	preposition adverb
	go	come	verb
made by adding prefix un-	able	unable	adjective
	selfish	unselfish	adjective
	do	undo	verb
made by adding prefix in-	decent	indecent	adjective
	tolerant	intolerant	adjective
	human	inhuman	adjective
made by adding prefix non-	conformist	nonconformist	adjective noun
	essential	nonessential	adjective noun
	sense	nonsense	noun

17. Homonyms, their classification.Homonyms

When several related meanings are associated with the same group of sounds within one part of speech, the word is called polysemantic, when two or more unrelated meanings are associated with the same form — the words are homonyms. Two or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning, distribution and (in many cases) origin are called homonyms.

Standard classification of homonyms: (given by I.V. Arnold)

Homonyms proper

Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling, like: back n ‘part of the body’ – back adv ‘away from the front’ – back v ‘go back’; ball n ‘a gathering of people for dancing’ – ball n ‘round object used in games’.

The important point is that homonyms are distinct words: not different meanings within one word.

Homophones

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

air – hair; arms – alms; buy – by; him – hymn; knight – night; not – knot; or – oar; piece – peace; rain – reign; scent – cent; steel – steal; storey – story; write – right and many others.

Homographs

Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling: tear [tie] – tear [tee]; wind [wind] – wind [waind] and many more.

B. Classification given by A.I. Smirnitsky

Accordingly, Professor A.I. Smirnitsky classifieds homonyms into two large classes:

a) full homonyms

b) partial homonyms

Full homonyms

Full lexical homonyms are words, which are the same categories of parts of speech and have the same paradigm.

• Match n – a game, a contest

• Match n – a short piece of wood used for producing fire

Partial homonyms

Partial homonyms are subdivided into three subgroups:

A. Simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words, which belong to the same category of parts of speech. Their paradigms have only one identical form, but it is never the same form, as will be soon from the examples:

(to) found v

found v (past indef., past part. of to find)

B. Complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words of different categories of parts of speech, which have identical form in their paradigms.

Rose n

Rose v (past indef. of to rise)

C. Partial lexical homonyms are words of the same category of parts of speech which are identical only in their corresponding forms.

to lie (lay, lain) v to lie (lied, lied) v