Литература по учебной дисциплине «Практика устной и письменной речи»

(1) Contradictories are antonyms which denote notions mutually opposed and denying one another, e.g., dead :: alive, single :: married, perfect :: imperfect.
(2) Contraries differ from contradictories in having some intermediate members, e.g., cold :: hot ( cool :: warm are intermediate members, so cold may serve as an antonym not only for hot but also for warm).
(3) Incompatibles are connected with the relations of exclusion, not contradiction, e.g., morning :: evening, day :: night, freedom :: slavery, work :: play.
(4) Conversives denote one and the same referent or situation as viewed from different points of view, e.g., buy :: sell, left :: right, give :: receive, parent :: child.
Another classification of antonyms is based on a morphological approach:
(1) Root words form absolute antonyms (right :: wrong, good :: bad).
(2) The presence of negative affixes creates derivational (affixal) antonyms (happy :: unhappy). Contrast is implied in the morphological structure of the words itself: appear – disappear, logical – illogical.
(3) Phraseological antonyms: becoming components of phraseological groups or compound words, such lexical items sometimes lose their absolutely antonymic nature. E.g., to give –to take: to give a book – to take a bookbutto give way will not have to take way as its antonym. Moreover, phraseological antonyms cannot be used in parallel antonymic expressions indiscriminately. 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.
Antonymous words are typically used in such rhetoric figures of contrast as oxymoron (a combination of words which are semantically incompatible: e.g., dangerous security), antithesis (a confrontation of at least two separate semantically opposite phrases: e.g., Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country (John F. Kennedy)), and paradox (a statement that apparently contradicts itself and yet might be true: e.g., “I must be cruel to be kind” (W. Shakespeare)).