PRACTICAL COURSE OF ENGLISH

1. Contradictories represent the type of semantic relations that exist between pairs like, for example, dead – alive, single – married. Contradictory antonyms are mutually opposed, they deny one another. Contradictories form a privative binary opposition, they are members of two-term sets. To use one of the words is to contradict the other and to use “not” before one of them is to make it semantically equivalent to the other: not dead = alive; not single = married.