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Paradigmatics of German Adjectives in the database of the Large German-Czech Academic Dictionary

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2015

Abstract

The article focusing on the latest research in antonymy (Jones et al. 2012) proposes to see this lexical- semantic relation in its broader sense (oppositeness) because this view meets the needs of lexicographers who aim at a more realistic description of a variety of semantic contrasts on the parole level. The text points out issues concerning lexical selection methods on the paradigmatic level with the help of the cooccurrence analysis.

Examples of web search strings which help to elicit constructions containing antonym pairs are given. These ways show an urgent need to describe antonymy in constructions which emerge in authentic language usage, not on the systemic level (langue) only.

The author emphasizes that exemplifying antonymy should be rethought in the domain of word-formation: formal regularities prevail on the system level only; however, the usage shows antonymy pairs with a wide range of possible contrasts.