may be referred to as В«nоn-voiced". p align="justify"> The gradual opposition is formed by a contrastive group of members which are distinguished not by the presence or аbsenсе of a feature, but by the degree of it.
For instance, the front vowels [i:-ie-ae] form a quaternary gradual opposition, since they are differentiated by the degree of their openness (their length, as is known, is 'also relevant , as well as some other individualising properties, but these factors do not spoil the gradual opposition as such).
The equipollent opposition is formed by a contrastive pair or group in which the members are distinguished by different positive features.
For instance, the phonemes [m] and [b], both bilabial consonants, form an equipollent opposition, [m] being sonorous nazalised, [b] being plosive.
We have noted above that any opposition can be reformulated in privative terms. Indeed, any positive feature distinguishing an oppositionally characterised lingual element is absent in the oppositionally correlated element, so that considered from the point of view of this feature alone, the opposition, by definition, becomes privative. This reformulation is especially helpful on an advanced stage of oppositional study of a given microsystem, because it enables us to characterise the elements of the system by the corresponding strings ("bundles") of values ​​of their oppositional featuring ("bundles of differential features "), each feature being represented by the values ​​+ or -.
For instance, [p] is distinguished from [b] as voiceless (voice -), from [t] as bilabial (labialisation +), from [m] as non-nazalised (nazalisation -) , etc. The descriptive advantages of this kind of characterisation are self-evident. p align="justify"> Unlike phonemes which are monolateral lingual elements, words as units of morphology are bilateral; therefore morphological oppositions must reflect both the plane of expression (form) and the plane of content (meaning).
The most important type of opposition in morphology, the same as in phonology, is the binary privative opposition.
The privative morphological opposition is based on a morphological differential feature which is present in its strong parked) member and absent in its weak (unmarked) member. In another kind of wording, this differential feature may be said to mark one of the members of the opposition positively (the strong member), and the other one negatively (the weak member). The featuring in question serves as the immediate means of expressing a grammatical meaning. p align="justify"> For instance, the expression of the verbal present and past tenses is based on a privative opposition the differential feature of which is the dental suffix - (e) d. This suffix, rendering the meaning of the past tense, marks the past form of the verb positively (we worked), and the present form negatively (we work). p align="justify"> The meanings differentiated by the oppositions of signemic units (signemic oppositions) are referred to as "semantic features", or "semes".
For instance, the nounal form cats expresses the seme of plurality, as opposed to the form cat which expresses, by contrast, the seme of singularity. The two forms constitute a privative opposition in which the plural is the marked member. In order to stress the negative marking of the singular, it can be referred to as "non-plural". p align="justify"> It should be noted that the designation of the weak members of privative morphological oppositions by the "non-" terms is significant not only from the point of view of the plane of expression, but also from the point of view of the plane of content. It is connected with the fact that the meaning of the weak member of the privative opposition is more general and abstract as compared with the meaning of the strong member, which is, respectively, more particular and concrete. Due to this difference in meaning, the weak member is used in a wider range of contexts than the strong member. For instance, the present tense form of the verb, as different from the past tense, is used to render meanings much broader than those directly implied by the corresponding time-plane as such. Cf.: p align="justify"> The sun rises in the East. To err is human. They don't speak French in this part of the country. Etc. p align="justify"> Equipollent oppositions in the system of English morphology constitute a minor type and are mostly confined to formal relations only. An example of such an opposition can be seen in the correlation of the person forms of the verb be: am - are - is. p align="justify"> Gradual oppositions in morphology are not generally recognised; in principle, they can be identified as a minor type on the semantic level only. An example of the gr...
