2 words are antonymous if:
1) they are regularly contrasted in actual speech, or the contrast in their meanings is proved by definite types of contextual co-occurrence.
2) There is the possibility of substitution
3) They have identical lexical valency.
Unlike synonyms, antonyms don’t differ either in style, emotional coloring or distribution. They are interchangeable at least in some contexts. As antonyms do not differ stylistically, an antonymic substitution never changes the stylistic coloring.
The possibility of substitution and identical valency show that semantic polarity is a very special kind of difference implying a great deal of sameness.
Morphological grouping
On the morphological level words are divided into four groups according to their morphological structure, namely the number and type of morphemes which compose them. They are:
1. Root or morpheme words. Their stem contains one free morpheme, e.g. dog, hand.
2. Derivatives contain no less than two morphemes of which at least one is bound: dogged, handy, handful, sometimes both are bound: terrier.
3. Compound words consist of not less than two free morphemes, the presence of bound morphemes is possible but not necessary: handful, blackbird.
4. Compound derivatives consist of not less than two free morphemes and one bound morpheme referring to the whole combination. The pattern is (stem + stem) + affix, e.g. long-legged, left-handed.
Another type of traditional lexicological grouping is known as word families. The number of groups is certainly much greater, being equal to the number of root morphemes if all words are grouped to the number of root morphemes, e.g. dog, doggish, dogless, doglike, to dog, dog-wolf, dog-cart, etc. Similar grouping according to a common suffix or prefix are also possible, e.g. gladsome, handsome, lonesome etc.
The next step is classifying words not in isolation but taking them within actual utterances. The division here is between notional words and form or functional words. It is only notional words that can stand alone and yet have meaning and form a complete utterance. (e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives).
Form or functional words, empty words or auxiliaries are lexical units which are called words, although they do not conform to the definition of the word, because they are used only in combination with notional words or in reference to them. This group comprises auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, etc.
Lexico-grammatical groups
By a lexico-grammatical group we understand a class of words which have a common lexico-grammatical meaning, a common paradigm, the same substituting elements and possibly a characteristic set of suffixes rendering the lexico-grammatical meaning. These groups are subsets of the part of speech, several lexico-grammatical groups constitute one part of speech. Thus, English nouns are subdivided approximately into the following lexico-grammatical groups: personal names, animal names, collective names, abstract nouns, material nouns, object nouns, proper names, etc.
Lexico-grammatical groups should not be confused with parts of speech. Audience and honesty, for instance, belong to the same part of speech but to different lexico-grammatical groups because their lexico-grammatical meaning is different.
Thematic and Ideographic Groups
The Theory of Semantic Field
A further subdivision within the lexico-grammatical groups is achieved in the well-known thematic subgroups, such as terms of kinship, names for parts of the human body, color terms, military terms and so on. The basis of grouping this time is not only linguistic but also extra-linguistic: the words are associated because the things they name occur together are closely connected in reality.
Different Types of Non-Semantic Grouping
The simplest, most obvious non-semantic grouping, extensively used in all branches of applied linguistics is the alphabetical organization of written words, as represented in most dictionaries.
The rhyming, i.e. inverse dictionary presents a similar non-semantic grouping of isolated written words, differing from the first in that the sound is also taken into consideration and the words are arranged according to the similarity of their ends.
A third type of non-semantic grouping of written words is based on their length, i.e. the number of letters they contain. This type may be useful for automatic reading of messages and correction of mistakes.
Finally, a very important type of non-semantic grouping for isolated lexical units is based on a statistical analysis of their frequency. It shows important correlation between quantitative and qualitative characteristics of lexical units, the most frequent words being polysemantic and stylistically neutral.
If viewed structurally, words are divisible into smaller units which are called morphemes. A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Morphemes are not divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit. A morpheme may be either bound or free. It means that some morphemes can form words without adding other morphemes; that is, they are homonymous to free words.
According to the role they play in constructing words, morphemes are subdivided into roots and affixes. The latter are further subdivided into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, and according to the function and meaning into derivational and functional affixes, the latter also called endings or outer formatives.
A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word. When both the underlying and the resulting forms belong to the same part of speech, the suffix serves to differentiate between lexico-grammatical classes. For instance, both –ify and –er are verb suffixes, but the first characterizes causative verbs such as horrify, purify, whereas the second is mostly typical of frequentative verbs: shimmer, flicker and the like.
A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning, cf. to hearten – to dishearten, to like – to dislike. It is only with verbs and statives that a prefix may serve to distinguish one part of speech from another, like in sleep n – asleep (stative), eart n – unearth v. Within a few exceptions prefixes modify the stem fro time (pre-, post- e.g. pre-war, post-impressionism), for place (in-, ad- e.g. inside, adjoin), for negation (un-, dis- e.g. uncertain, dislike). An infix is an affix placed within the word e.g. –s- : statesman, -o-: speedometer, -i-: handicraft. The type is not productive.
Classification of Prefixes
- Negative prefixes. The prefix de- occurs in many neologisms, such as decentralize, decontaminate, etc. The general idea of negation is expressed by dis-, e.g. appear-disappear, agree-disagree; non – is often used in abstract verbal nouns such as noninterference, nonsense, etc. The prefix im- occurs before bilabials (impossible), ir- before r (irregular), il- before l (illegal), in- before all other consonants and vowels (indirect, inability).
The most frequent is the prefix un-; it should be noted that it may convey two different meanings, namely:
a) Simple negation, when attached to adjective stems or to particles: happy-unhappy, even-uneven.
b) The meaning is different when un- is used with verbal stems. In that case it shows actions contrary to that of the simple word: do-undo, pack-unpack.
- Another frequent prefix with a great combining power is re- denoting repetition of the action expressed by the stem: arrange-rearrange, marriage-remarriage.
- Most prefixes affect only the lexical meaning of words, but they are some important cases where prefixes serve to form words belonging to different parts of speech as compared with the original words. These are in the first place the verb-forming prefixes be- and en-/ em-: (belittle, becloud; encamp, engulf, embed).
- The prefix a- is the characteristic feature of words belonging to statives: afraid, asleep, awake, etc.
- The prefixes pre-, post-, non-, anti- and some other Romanic and Greek prefixes serve to form adjectives e.g. anti-war, pre-war, non-party.
- The prefixes in-, a-, ab- modify the root for place e.g. inside, abduct. Several prefixes serve to modify the meaning of the stem for degree. They are out-, over- and under, e.g. outlive, overfeed, undernourish.
- Among borrowed morphemes H.Sweet listed the following prefixes: amphi-, ana-, apo-, cata-, exo-, en-, hypo-, meta-, sina- (Greek), and ab-, ad-, amb- (Latin) e.g. amphitheatre, anaphora, adverbial.
Depending on purpose of research, various classifications of suffixes have been used and suggested. Suffixes have been classified according to their origin, parts of speech they served to form, their frequency, productivity and other characteristics. Within the parts of speech suffixes have been classified semantically according to lexico-grammatical groups and types of stems they are added to.
Noun-forming suffixes: -age (vicarage), -dom (kingdom), -ee (employee), -eer (profiteer), -er (writer), -ess (actress), -hood (motherhood), -ing (building), -ism/ -icism (heroism, criticism), -ist (noverist), -ment (government)
Adjective-forming suffixes: -able/ -ible/ -uble (unbearable, audible, soluble), -al (formal), -ic (poetic), -ical (ethical), -ant/ -ent (repentant, dependent), -ary (revolutionary), -ed/ -d (wooded), -ful (delightful), -ian (African, Australian)
Adverb-forming suffixes: -ly (coldly), -ward/ -wards (upward, northwards), -wise (likewise).
Alongside with adding some lexico-grammatical meaning to the stem, certain suffixes charge it with emotional force. They may be derogatory: -ard (drunkard), -ling (underling), -ster (gangster), -ton (simpleton).
The process of coining a new word in a different part of speech and with a different distribution characteristic but without adding any derivative element, so that the basic form of the original and the basic form of the derived words are homonymous, is variously called conversion (the difference between silence n and silence v is morphological, syntactic and semantic: the original and the resulting word are grammatically different)
Conversion is not only a highly productive but also a particularly English way of word-building. It is a convenient and “easy” way of enriching the vocabulary with new words. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous amongst the words produced by conversion: e.g. to hand, to face, to eye, to nose, to monkey, to room. Nouns are frequently made from verbs: do, make, find, cut, walk, show, move, etc. Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool, to grey, to rough. Other parts of speech can also be produced by conversion as the following examples show: to down, to put, the ups and downs, the ins and outs.
Sound-imitation (cock-a-doodle-doo, quack,meow, moo).
Reduplication In reduplication new words are made by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic change (bye-by, ping-pong, chit-chat (this second type is called gradational reduplication).
BACK FORMATION The earliest examples of this type of word-building are the verb to beg that was made from the French borrowing beggar. In all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix –er (instead of a noun made from a verb by affixation (as in painter from to paint).
Composition is the way of word-building when a word is formed by joining
two or more stems to form one word.
Structural aspect of composition:
1.Neutral
- simple (blackbird, tallboy)
- derived (blue-eyed, coffee-lover)
- contracted (T-shirt, X-mass)
2.Morphological (handicraft, speedometer)
3.Syntactic (forget-me-not, marry-goes-roud)
Semantic aspect of composition of compound words deals with the question of correlations of the separate meanings of the constituent parts and the actual meaning of a compound word. Two types (Idiomatic, Non-idiomatic)
Non-idiomatic compounds have a perfectly clear motivation and their meanings can be described as the sum of their constituent meanings, e.g. seaman “a man connected with the sea”; other examples include: spaceship, classroom, bedroom, evening-gown, etc.