Antonymy is not evenly distributed among the categories of parts of speech. Most antonyms are adjectives which is only natural because qualitative characteristics are easily compared and contrasted: high – low, wide – narrow, old – young.
Verbs take second place: to lose – to find, to live – to die, to close – to open.
Nouns are not rich in antonyms: friend – enemy, joy – grief, good – evil.
Antonymic adverbs can be subdivided into two groups: a) adverbs derived from adjectives: warmly – coldly, merrily – sadly; b) adverbs proper: now – then, here – there, ever – never.
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Not so many years ago antonomy was not universally accepted as a linguistic problem, and the opposition within antonymic pairs was regarded as purely logical and finding no reflection in the semantic structures of these words. The contrast between heat and cold or big and small, said most scholars, is the contrast of things opposed by their nature.
Nowadays most scholars agree that in the semantic structures of all words, which regularly occur in antonymic pairs, a special antonymic cannotation can be singled out. We are so used to coming across hot and cold together, in the same contexts, that even when we find hot alone, we cannot help subconsciously registering it is not cold. The word possesses its full meaning for us not only due to its direct associations but also because we subconsciously oppose it to its antonym, with which it is regularly used, in this case to hot. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the semantic structure of hot can be said to include the antonymic connotation of “not cold”, and the semantic structure of enemy the connotation of “not a friend”.
Together with synonyms, antonyms represent the language’s important expressive means. Antonyms are often used as a stylistic device of contrast.
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