Antonym

a.        Meaning

            Antonym based on Gordon (1998:1) is a word which has opposite meaning. Antonym can also be called as a counter term. Antonym is kind of complementary meaning. It often appears in adjectives, but it also appear in noun, verb, adverb, and preposition.

b.        There are three types of antonym.

1.    Gradable Antonym is kind of antonym that operate continuum such as adding (very) before the word. Example: (very) big, (very) small, (very) expensive, (very) cheap and so on. Gradable Antonym also occur in binomial phrase with and: (blow) hot and cold, (search) high and low. Gradable antonym do not represent an either-or relation but rather a more-less relation. The word can be viewed as terms at the end-points of a continuum or gradient.

The  more or less relation is evident in a number of ways: the terms allow comparison. Gradable antonym usually use adjective. Some of the example of gradable antonym are:

Love-hate, expensive-cheap, increase-decrease, fast-slow, long-short, sweet-sour, beautiful-ugly, hot-cold, rich-poor,  wide-narrow.

There are also 3 important points in gradable antonym. They are:

·        Polar antonym it is entailed of neg and markedness. Example: long-short

·        Comitted antonym: entailed of neg with no markedness. Example: ferocious-meek.

·        Asymmetrical: it is connected with evaluative meaning such as, good-bad, clever-stupid.

There is a level of the meaning between words in gradable antonym. These describes something that can be measured and compared with something else.

2.    Complimentary Antonym having a relationship with there is no middle ground. There are two possibilities for one to another. Complimentary have no middle ground and scale that involved between two words.

Complimentary antonym presence of one implies the absence of the other. Example:

Man and woman, push and pull, dead and alive, off and on, day and night, absent and present, exit and entrence, sink or float, true or false, pass and fail, before and after, send and receive.

3.    Thus, Relational Antonym is the last types of antonym. Relational antonym shows the relationship between two words. It some considered a subcategory of the complementary antonym. Relational antonym also called the existence of one impliesteh existence of its converse. The words that consisted in relational antonym can be an adjective, verb or noun. (Antonim yang hanya sebatas hubungan saja)

Some example of the relational antonym are:

Buyer-seller, husband-wife, doctor-patient, give-take, teach-learn, teacher-student, buy-sell.

It is important to look the relationship between the two meaning.  We can view the situation from opposite ends. Not all similiar pairs are relational antonym. For example, husband=wife and son=daughter. While these two pairs are similiar, they are different types of antonyms. For example, the husband to exist the wife must be there and hence they are relational antonyms. But for a daughter to exist a son need not exist and vice verse.

The son/daughter pair is categorized under complementary antonyms. Another example, there is no opposite of a ‘teacher’ really but when compared with a pupil both become opposites. Similiarly, we can look at other pairs such as doctor/patient, master/servant and come/go.