The basic notions of semantic relations. Synonyms and antonyms.

Paronyms. Different sectors of vocabulary which are closely connected and characterized by a common concept are called semantic fields. The words are associated because the things they name are closely connected in reality. Semantic fields may belong to different parts of speech and cannot replace one another, but all of them are joined together by some common semantic component. The ex of the semantic fields are: surface, expanse ( the semantic field of space), mother, father, ( the s field of terms of kinship).). Lexical groups of words belonging to the same part of speech and linked by a common concept are called a lexico-semantic group. The relationship existing between elements of a LSG and semantic fields is hyponymy. (ex,.the meaning of car, bus, taxi is included in the meaning of vehicle.) The hyponymic relationship may be viewed as the hierarchical relations between the meaning of the general and the individual terms. The general term is called a hyperonym (in our case – a word “ vehicle”). The individual terms are called hyponyms (car, bus, taxi) – they contain the meanings which distinguish them from each other. The criterion of semantic similarity and semantic contrasts subdivided lexical units into synonyms and antonyms. the essence of synonymy Synonyms are language universals existed in all Indo-European languages. Synonyms are words that have the same or very similar denotative meaning; they usually belong to the same part of speech, but differ in morphemic structure, phonetic shape, shades of meaning, connotations, style, or idiomatic use. All words can have a synonym. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions can have a synonym aslong as both words are the same part of speech. From the synchronic point of view we can subdivide. 1)Ideographic synonyms differ in the denotative component of meaning, denoting different shades of meaning or different degrees of a quality. For example, думати, гадати, роздумувати, міркувати; beautiful, fine, handsome, pretty. Thesegroups have a common semantic element and a synonymic dominant which is the general term. Such synonyms are also called semantic.2) Stylistic synonyms are close or identical in denotative meaning but differ in terms of their connotation (in emotive value or stylistic sphere of application). There is the correlation between words: neutral - elevated – colloquial: child - infant - kid,3) Semantic-stylistic synonyms combine the features of stylistic and semantic (ideographic) ones: house – slum,. 4)Absolute synonyms can totally replace each other. They are rare in English and can be found, for example, among technical, medicine terms etc.: scarlet fever – scarlatina, noun – substantive, 5) Contextual synonyms are similar in meaning only in some specific distributional conditions: He bought (got) the book at the bookshop.. 6) Territorial synonyms are those employed in different regions like British, Canada, Australia or the United States: British autumn – American fal. Dialectal differences are also observed 6) Phraseological synonyms are words different in their collocations (combinability, i.e. ability to be combined with different words), but identical in their meanings: to be late for a lecture but to miss the train. From the rhetoric viewpoint, euphemisms are synonyms used to replace vulgar, impolite or just too directly critical words: e.g., unwise instead of stupid In the opposite way, synonyms are used as disphemisms: e.g., muzzle/face division from the diachronic point of view, we speak about the origin of synonyms. 1)Synonyms that owe their origin to foreign borrowings: for example, the peculiar feature of synonymy in English is the contrast between simple native words stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and learned words of Greek or Latin origin: native English - from French - from Latin: to ask – to question – to interrogate; to gather – to assemble to – to collect. 2)Synonyms created through the adoption of words from dialects (local variants of the same language): girl - lass (Scottish); wireless -radio (American). 3)Synonyms created by means of word-forming processes productive in the language at a given time of its history: affixation: anxiety – anxiousness, loss of affixes: amongst – among, shortening: popular-: pop; compounding: treachery - sell out. Antonyms are words having the opposite meaning to another word of the same language, but they usually belong to the same part of speech and to the same semantic field, are identical in style and nearly identical in distribution. ex: good – bad, big – little, quickly – slowly, From the synchronic point of view antonyms are divided into the following groups: 1)Contradictories are antonyms which denote notions mutually opposed and denying one another: dead – alive, single – married,. 2)Contraries haveу some intermediate members: cold – hot (intermediate members cool, warm), 3)Incompatibles are connected with the relations of exclusion, not contradiction: day – night, freedom – slavery, 4) Conversives denote one and the same referent or situation as viewed from different points of view: left – right, give – receive, parent – child, From the morphological point of view antonyms are divided into the following groups: 1)Absolute antonyms are root words: big – small, black – white, clean – dirty 2)Derivational (affixal) antonyms are made with the help of affixation: regular - irregular, rational - irrational, reliable – unreliable. 3)Phraseological antonyms: becoming components of phraseological groups or compound words, they sometimes lose their absolutely antonymic nature: We can say The books are alike:: The books are different, but we cannot say an alike book though we do say a different book. There are some rhetoric figures in which antonymous words are used: oxymoron (a combination of words which are semantically incompatible: dangerous security,); antithesis (a confrontation of at least two separate semantically opposite phrases: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country) and paradox (a statement that apparently contradicts itself and yet might be true: “I must be cruel to be kind”). Paronym s are called the words that are alike in form but different in meaning. They are liable to be mixed and sometimes mistakenly interchanged: preposition – proposition; popular – populous,. According to the lexical meaning, paronyms are: 1) synonymous, as they are semantically close: hustle – hassle, 2)antonymous: emigration – immigration, progress – regress 3)semantically different: bed – bad, gay – guy, Pun is a humorous use of a word or phrase that has several meanings or that sounds like another word. Homonyms and paronyms are used to make pun. Santa’s helpers are known as subordinate Clauses. "Atheism is a non-prophet institution" - George Carlin