ANTONYMY

1. General characteristics of Antonymy

Antonymy is exemplified by such pairs as long-short, fast –slow, easy-difficult, good-bad, hot-cold.

Antonyms have the following characteristics:

(1) They are fully gradable (most are adjectives, a few are verbs).

(2) Members of a pair denote degrees of some variable property such as length, speed, weight, accuracy, etc.

SEMANTIC CHANGES

1. Semantic changes

SET EXPRESSIONS

1. Set expressions

Causes for Semantic Changes

The English Word by Arnold

Linguistic and extralinguistic causes

Meaning of words are relatively stable. If they changed too often, communication would be impossible. Semantic changes are slow and we speak of semantic change form a diachronic point of view. But semantic changes are initiated in context, on the synchronic level. On the synchronic level we speak of deviation of meaning only.