Reflection of antonymic relations in dictionary of synonyms

Universal logical relations of identity and opposition arereflected in such linguistic phenomena as synonymy and antonymy. The correlation of thesephenomena becomes mostly apparent in analysing the structures of their lexical microparadigms.This research is made on ideographic dictionaries of synonyms. In those dictionaries thesynonymic rows are distributed among denotative spheres.As the research shows the principle of opposition works at different levels ofconversation. It can become system-generative for the denotative sphere as a whole. It isreflected, for instance, in the group names of the sphere ''emotions'': ''luck - misfortune'',''happiness - sadness'', ''hope - despair'', etc. For other spheres the opposition is not asystem-generating principle. However, oppositional meanings play a very important rolehere. For example, in the sphere ''economy'' the meaning of the opposition is presented inevery group specified in oppositional synonymic rows: ''rich - poor'', ''profit - loss'',''profitable - unprofitable''.Inside the denotative-ideographic groups, opposition relations of synonymic rows arerealized in two different ways - as symmetric and asymmetric ones. In the symmetricconstruction every member of one row is antonymic to every member of another row andto the entire row itself. For example: profitable, favourable, lucrative, paying,advantageous (colloquial style) - unprofitable, unfavourable, non-lucrative, not paying,disadvantageous. In the asymmetric construction synonymic rows expressing the oppositemeaning partly intersect.Most synonymic rows with opposite meanings forming antonymic groups realise thecounter type of antonymy. As a rule, these are rows of graded synonyms. Complementarytype of antonymy is realised when the norm is displaced to the side of positive evaluation.It happens, for instance, in the denotative sphere ''religion'' where synonymic rowscharacterizing the person and their behaviour reflect the idea of a religious norm.The contrast of some synonymic rows reflecting universal cultural oppositions refersto antonymic rows. For example, the archetypical opposition ''mine - yours'' is reflected incontrasting rows ''co-religionist - adherent of a different faith''.Thus, the ideographic principle of lexis description gives an opportunity to analyse thecorrelation of different types of paradigmatic groups.

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