2.4 Contextual antonymy

As it was stated above, when it comes to antonymy it is not enough to concentrate just on paradigmatic relations. For the full understanding of antonymy it should be explored through the prism of syntagmatic relations as well, which proves antonymy to be more flexible than it seems to be from the perspective of paradigm. The fact that antonymy depends to the great extend on the context it is used in, which has been proved by a number of experts, cannot be neglected either. Therefore, we may speak of such a type of antonyms as contextual antonyms.

Some words can have more than one antonym. Yes, depending on the context, the word happy may have antonyms sad, angry, miserable, disgruntled, and the word fresh may have antonyms such as moldy, stale, clichéd etc. This may happen in the first place due to the polysemy of these words. The same with the word clear, possible antonymic pairings of which vary depending on the context. When it is meant to denote that something is easy, then antonyms of clear may include ambiguous, confusing, vague. On the other hand, when clear refers to the weather, cloudy, overcast are considered to be antonymous to it. And if it is used in a meaning «easy to see though», then antonymic pairing may be formed by such words as hazy, fuzzy, opaque [23, p.208].

The phenomenon of contextual antonyms is closely related to the notion of near-oppositeness. The following sentence exemplifies contextual antonymy very well:

21. There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you in places where winning means survival and defeat means death.

Here winning and defeat stand in direct opposition, thus they can be called canonical antonyms, whereas in case of a pairing survival and death the oppositeness is rather context-driven. As we may see, here the context provides a sense of oppositeness and implied contrast. So contextual antonyms can be defined as the words that are opposite only under some certain conditions [23, p.209]. The other examples of contextual antonyms may be season/lifetime, grief/relief, words/deeds etc.

The phenomenon of contextual antonymy proves that sometimes antonymy is context-driven and that it is essential to view the antonyms from the point of view of syntagma.

Conclusions

To sum up, antonymy is a binary lexico-semantic relation held between the words that is based on oppositeness. Different linguists supported different approaches towards antonymy. Among these approaches there may be singled out Cognitve, Structuralist and Contextual viewpoints, which differ in their interpretation of the main aspects to be considered in atonymy. On the whole while exploring antonymy it is essential to view it from the vantage point of both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations.

When it comes to structural patterning of antonyms, we may distinguish among lexical and morphological antonyms. Lexical antonymic pairs, which are sometimes referred to as opaque antonyms, are morphologically unrelated. Meanwhile, morphological antonyms are formed through affixation by means of imposing some certain prefixes (dis-, un-, il-, ir-, a-, in- ,im- , non-) and suffixes ( -ful; -less). As a rule, there is a tendency that the language is more favorable towards lexical antonyms as long as lexical antonyms are more straightforward in their meaning. Enantiodromia is defined as a process by which a word acquires an opposite meaning.

In different contexts antonyms perform some particular functions. These functions may be broken into eight categories, among which ancillary and coordinated antonymy take the leading place, and the rest six categories – comparative, transitional, negated, interrogative, idiomatic and extreme antonymy – may be regarded as minor discourse functions. In the majority of cases antonyms may be referred to either of these groups. However, there are some cases, when antonyms defy this classification, which happens primarily due to the fact that these antonyms are used in innovative ways, for example, in literature.

On the whole several typologies of antonymy were offered. The major one, relying on the properties denoted by some particular antonyms and the ways in which they express the idea of oppositeness, distinguishes among gradable, complementary and directional (coverse/reverse) antonyms. Gradable antonymy does not represent or/either relation and deals with the antonyms which are gradable in the degree of some certain properties expressed. Within gradable antonymy there is markedness phenomenon, according to which some members of pairings are marked, that is they are used as a cliché in some expressions while other members are unmarked and under usual circumstances are not used in these expressions. Compleementary antonymy represents or/either relation and thus encompasses those antonyms which are non-gradable. Here the assertion of one antonym entails the negation of another one, and vice versa. Directional ( converse and reverse) antonyms follow the pattern, according to which if X is p to Y, then Y is q to X. Some linguists call this type relational antonymy. Meanwhile, some linguists within directional class differentiate between converse and reverse antonyms. There is also another widespread classification of antonyms, though not as popular as the previous one, according to which we may distinguish among polar, overlapping and equipollent types.

It is evident that the most sizeable group of antonyms is among adjectives, in particular gradable ones. However, antonymy is not restricted to adjectival class. Antonymy occurs also in other word classes as well: in nominal, verbal, adverbial classes and also among prepositions and adverbial particles.

Sometimes some certain words become antonyms only in a particular contexts. These context-driven antonyms are referred to as contextual antonyms. The phenomenon of contextual antonyms is closely related to the notion of near-oppositeness.

Summary

Об’єктом даного дослідження є антонімія як вид лексико-семантичних відношень. У цій роботі розглянуто різні тлумачення поняття антонімії, наведено основні аспекти та компоненти цього лінгвістичного явища, а також досліджено функції антонімів, визначено структурні особливості їхнього утворення та представлено основні класифікації антонімів за їхнім значенням. Окрім того, у роботі досліджено вмотивованість антонімів контекстом та наведено приклади їхнього використання.

Практична цінність дослідження полягає у можливості використання зібраної інформації в навчальному процесі.

Проведене дослідження дає змогу зробити наступні висновки:

• антонімія позначає полярний зв’язок між словами, які є протилежні за значенням;

• для повного розкриття сутності явища антонімії необхідно розглядати його в контексті не лише парадигматичних, а і також синтагматичних зв’язків;

• антоніми залежно від контексту виконують певні фунції, серед яких головними є службова функція та функція узгодження;

• за структурою антоніми можна поділити на лексичні та морфологічні, при цьому більше віддається перевага лексичним;

• у деяких випадках антонімія виникає лише за умови наявності певного контексту.

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