English Synonyms and Antonyms

 

In my previous post I talked about  the punctuation marks  particularly how they were created.  Actually in this post I would like to talk about English Synonyms and Antonyms.  As we all know each language needs words in order to express thoughts and ideas.  According to David Crystal`s  Encyclopedia  and postcard which I listened to,  the English Language is particularly reach in Synonyms. From the time of Julius Caesar  Romans, Normans  and Saxons   were fighting for the  soil of England and  those nationalities and armies influenced on the English Language a lot. English scholars have studied those influences thousands of years.
So Synonyms are those words which have the same meaning, as word Synonym means “same “in Greek. Talking about synonyms   I  should say that there can be a dialect differences between them in British English we say  petrol but in American English we say gas. Also there can  be  differences of emotional feeling for instance youth and youngsters have the same meaning but the usage of youth is less pleasant.
 

Antonyms are words which have opposite meanings. We can call antonyms , as opposite words.
The most essential thing is that there are three types of antonyms
1) Gradable pairs

2)  relational opposites

3)  complementary pairs.

It is obvious that all those three types are very important for language.

Gradable pairs are for instance when we say – big-small , happy – sad

This antonyms are capable in comparison.

Relational opposites are – teacher-pupil, parent –offspring

This type of antonyms are  mutually dependant on each other.

Complementary pairs are – alive –death, present –absent  and so on.

and finally those types of antonyms are completely different in their meaning.
They can not be mutually dependant or . they are not capable in comparison. I  hope my post will be helpful somehow to my peers. To my mind synonyms and antonyms are major part of each language.This video is very useful  especially for children.  I think we can teach them synonyms and antonyms using songs.