rsive opposites, described in Lehrer and Lehrer (1982) and Egan (1968), are yet another type of opposite, Egan describes reversive opposites in this way:
These comprise adjectives or adverbs which signify a quality or verbs or nouns which signify an act or state that reverse or undo the quality, act, or state of the other. Although they are neither contradictory nor contrary terms, they present a clear opposition.
This class contains many verbs, for example, tie - untie, marry - divorce, enter - leave, appear - disappear. Cruse and Lyons consider the reversive verbs to be a subtype of directional opposites, because they all describe activities which result in an object undergoing a change from one state to another. Thus Cruse says the opposition seen in pairs of reversive verbs is similar to the kind of opposition in pairs of directional prepositions such as to - from.
1.3.3 Converives
Relational opposites is the term given by Cruse [26] also called relative terms according to Egan [27] and conversive terms difined by Lyons [27], include pairs such as above - below, predecessor - successor , parent - child and teacher - student.
Egan describes these as pairs of words which indicate such a relationship that one of them cannot be used without suggesting the other.
Cruse considers this class to also be a subclass of the directional opposites. He says that these pairs «express a relationship between two entities by specifying the direction of one relative to the other along some axis.» In examples such as above - below, this axis is spatial, but other examples (eg ancestor - descendant) involve «an analogical or metaphorical extension of spatial dimensions».
Lyons points out that many opposites of this type involve social roles (teacher - student, doctor - patient) or kinship relations (father - mother), and these types of reciprocal relations have been wll documented in many languages ??in the anthropological literature.
Conversives (or relational opposites) as FR Palmer calls them denote one and the same referent or situation as viewed from different points of view, with a reversal of the order of participants and their roles. The interchangeability and contextual behaviour are specific. The relation is closely connected with grammar, namely with grammatical contrast of active and passive. The substitution of a conversive does not change the meaning of a sentence if it is combined with appropriate regular morphological and syntactical changes and selection of appropriate prepositions, ex. He gave her flowers. She received flowers from him. =She was given flowers by him.
An important point setting them apart is that conversive relations are possible within the semantic structure of one and the same word. M.V. Nikitin mentions such verbs as wear, sell, tire, smell, etc. and such adjectives as glad, sad, dubious, lucky and others. It should be noted that sell in this case is not only the conversive of buy, it means be sold, find buyers. The same contrast of active and passive sense is observed in adjectives: sad saddening and saddened, dubious and doubtful mean feeling doubt and inspiring doubt.
So, semantically antonyms can be classified as gradable antonyms (...
