Movchan D. Semantic, Functional, and Pragmatic Aspects of the Noun-Antonyms in the German Language

The thesis focuses on the problem of antonymy and the antonyms of modern German considered on the basis of structural, semantic and functional-pragmatic approaches. It has been found out that antonymy is not only the way of the verbal reflection of the objective reality polarization according to the principle of antithesis, but also an effective means of realization of the pragmatic purposes of the utterance. Examination of antonymy as a linguistic category enabled revealing antonymic formations as systematically organized groups the members of which demonstrate not only semantic variations of controversy in the German language system but also pragmatic potential in conveying the intention of the author in the text, stressing communicative relevance of the described situations. On the basis of identified criteria of antonymy the semantic and structural classification of the nouns-antonyms has been made, and the peculiarities of antonymy connection with polysemy and synonymy have been revealed. Key words: antonyms, antithesis, lexical meaning, pragmatic functions, pragmatic variation, pragmatic potential.