Synonymy and antonymy in English. Homonyms and their classifications.

Synonyms are words different in their outer aspects, but identical or similar in their inner aspects. In English there are a lot of synonyms, because there are many borrowings. There are some absolute synonyms in the language, which have exactly the same meaning and belong to the same style, e.g. to moan, to groan; homeland, motherland etc.

Sometimes one of the absolute synonyms is specialized in its usage and we get stylistic synonyms, e.g. «to begin»/ native/, «to commence» /borrowing/.

Among stylistic synonyms we can point out a special group of words which are called euphemisms. These are words used to substitute some unpleasant or offensive words, e.g «the late» instead of «dead», «to perspire» instead of «to sweat» etc.

There are also phraseological synonyms, these words are identical in their meanings and styles but different in their combining with other words in the sentence, e.g. «to be late for a lecture

Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions.

V.N. Comissarov in his dictionary of antonyms classified them into two groups: absolute or root antonyms Absolute antonyms have different roots and derivational antonyms have the same roots but different affixes. In most cases negative prefixes form antonyms / un-, dis-, non-/. Sometimes they are formed by means of suffixes -ful and -less.

Not every word in a language can have antonyms. This type of opposition can be met in qualitative adjectives and their derivatives, e.g. beautiful- ugly, to beautify — to uglify, beauty — ugliness. It can be also met in words denoting feelings and states, e.g. to live — to die, alive — dead, life — death.

If a word is polysemantic it can have several antonyms, e.g. the word «bright» has the antonyms «dim», «dull», «sad».

Homonyms are words different in meaning but identical in sound or spelling, or both in sound and spelling.

Homonyms can appear in the language not only as the result of the split of polysemy, but also as the result of levelling of grammar inflexions, when different parts of speech become identical in their outer aspect, e.g. «care» from «caru» and «care» from «carian».

Classifications of homonyms

Walter Skeat classified homonyms according to their spelling and sound forms and he pointed out three groups: perfect homonyms that is words identical in sound and spelling, such as: «school» — «косяк рыбы» and «школа»; homographs, that is words with the same spelling but pronounced differently, e.g. «bow» -/bau/ — «поклон» and /bou/ — «лук»; homophones that is words pronounced identically but spelled differently, e.g. «night» — «ночь» and «knight» — «рыцарь».

9/English phraseology: definition, approaches and classifications.

In linguistics, phraseology is the study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as phrasemes), in which the component parts of the expression take on a meaning more specific than or otherwise not predictable from the sum of their meanings when used independently.

1. Phraseology, classification of phraseological units. Vinogradov’s classification of phraseological units:

a) phraseological combinations (сочетания). b) unities (единства). c) fussions (сокращения).

a) phraseological combinations — are word — groups with a partially changed meaning. They may be said to be clearly motivated, that is the meaning of the units can be easily deduced from the meanings of its constituents.

Ex. to be good at smth., to have a bite….

b) unities — are word — groups with a completely changed meaning, that is, the meaning of the unit doesn’t correspond to the meanings of its constituent parts.

Ex. to loose one’s head (to be out of one’s mind), to loose one’s heart to smb.(to fall in love).

c) fussions — are word — groups with a completely changed meaning but, in contrast to the units, they are demotivated, that is, their meaning can’t be deduced from the meanings of its constituent parts.

Ex. to come a cropper(to come to disaster).

The Koonin’s classification is the latest outstanding achievement in the Russian theory of phraseology. The classification is based on the combined structural — semantic principle and it also considers the quotient of stability of phraseological units.

I. Nominative phraseological units — are represented by word — groups, including the ones with one meaningful word, and coordinative phrases of the type wear and tear, well and good.

II. Nominative — communicative phraseological units — include word — groups, of the type to break the ice — the ice is broken, that is, verbal word — groups which are transformed into a sentence when the verb is used in the Passive Voice.

III. Phraseological units — which are neither nominative nor communicative include interjectional word — groups.

IV. Communicative phraseological units — are represented by proverbs and sayings.

СТИЛІСТИКА