Synonyms. Sources of synonymy. Classification of synonyms. Antonyms. Classification of antonyms

A synonym – is a word of similar or identical meaning to one or more words in the same language. All languages contain synonyms but in English they exist in superabundance.

Classification:

Total synonyms

· an extremely rare occurrence

· Ulman: “a luxury that language can hardly afford.”

· M. Breal spoke about a law of distribution in the language (words should be synonyms, were synonyms in the past usually acquire different meanings and are no longer interchangeable).

Ex.: бегемот – гиппопотам

Ideographic synonyms.

· They bear the same idea but not identical in their referential content.

· Ex.: to ascent – to mount – to climb

· To happen – to occur – to befall – to chance

· Look – appearance – complexion – countenance

Dialectical synonyms.

· Ex.: lift – elevator

· Queue – line

· Autumn – fall

Contextual synonyms.

Context can emphasize some certain semantic trades & suppress other semantic trades; words with different meaning can become synonyms in a certain context.

Ex.: tasteless – dull

Active – curious

Curious – responsive

Synonyms can reflect social conventions.

Ex.: Clever (neutral)

Bright (Only speaking about younger people by older people)

Brainy (Is not used by the higher educated people)

Intelligent (Positive connotation)

Dever-clever (Stylistically remarked)

Stylistic synonyms.

Belong to different styles.

Child (neutral) - Infant (elevated) – Kid (colloquial)

To die (neutral) - To kick the bucket (colloquial).

Sources of synonymy.

Synonymy – the coincidence in the essential meanings of linguistic elements which (at the same time) usually preserve their differences in connotations and stylistic characteristics.

O. Jespersen and many others used to stress that the English language is especially rich in synonyms, because Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans fighting and settling upon the soil of the British Isles could not but influence each other’s speech. British scholars studied Greek and Latin and for centuries used Latin as a medium for communication on scholarly topics. Synonymy has its characteristic patterns in each language. Its peculiar feature in English is the contrast between simple native words stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and learned words of Greco-Latin origin. New words may be formed by affixation or loss of affixes, by conversion, compounding, shortening and so on, and being coined, form synonyms to those already in use.

Antonyms – a class of words grouped together on the basis of the semantic relations of opposition. Antonyms are words belonging to one part of speech sharing certain common semantic characteristics and in this respect they are similar to such semantic classes as synonyms, lexical sets, lexico-semantic groups. (lexical sets (предметные или тематические группы) - words denoting different things correlated on extralinguistic grounds: lion, tiger, leopard, puma, cat refer to the lexical set of “the animals of the cat family’; words describing different sides of one and the same general notion are united in a lexico-semantic group: group denoting “physical movement” – to go, to turn, to run). There exist different classifications of antonyms. Structurally, antonyms can be divided into antonyms of the same root (1), e.g. to do – to undo, cheerful – cheerless, and antonyms of different roots (2), e.g. day – night, rich – poor. Semantically, antonyms may be classified into contradictories, contraries and incompatibles.

1. Contradictories represent the type of semantic relations that exist between pairs like, for example, dead – alive, single – married. Contradictory antonyms are mutually opposed, they deny one another.

2. Contraries are antonyms that can be arranged into a series according to the increasing difference in one of their qualities. This may be observed in cold – hot and cool – warm which are intermediate members. Thus, we may regard as antonyms not only cold and hot but also cold and warm. Contrary antonyms may also be considered in terms of degrees of the quality involved. Thus, water may be cold or very cold, and water in one glass may be colder than in another glass.

3. Incompatibles are antonyms which are characterized by the relations of exclusion. For example, to say morning is to say not afternoon, not evening, not night. The use of one member of this set implies the exclusion of the other members of the set. A relation of incompatibility may be also observed between colour terms since the choice of red, for example, entails the exclusion of black, blue, yellow, etc.