A wheel is part of a car

The third very specific type of hierarchical relationship is serial but it can hardly be called inclusion. Serial sense relations have variations - graded and cyclical series. The commonest example of a graded series is military ranks (Private, Lance Corporal,

Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Warrant Officer 2^nd Class, Warrant Officer I^s1 Class, 2"^rf Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier, Major-General, Lieutenant-General, General, Field Marshal - are military ranks in the British Army). Another example is an open number system as in one, two, three .... The best example of cyclical serial relations between lexemes, which, in contrast to graded series, are not open-ended, are seasons of the year (winter, spring, summer, autumn) or days of the week which repeat as soon as they end.

2. Alongside hierarchical relations between words, relations of compatibility - partial semantic overlapping of units on the same level of abstraction - are also considered to be the chief type of paradigmatic relations.

There are three major types of semantic relations of compatibility between words, they are a) synonymy, b) antonymy, c) incompatibility. All of them are based on some common semantic features, some 'sameness' of word meanings, while their other features do not clash. No inclusion is observed; words are on the same hierarchical level.

a) Synonymy is the most obvious type of compatibility. Synonymy presupposes a certain identity. If X is Z then Z is X, that is, for example, if eyeglasses are spectacles then spectacles are eyeglasses. To symbolize words' mutual and symmetric implication of the words we may use the sign of similarity ~ and state that eyeglasses ~ spectacles. Yet many scholars point out that words rarely are 100 per cent similar and interchangeable. Words may share the basic componential features but be different along other lines.

b) Antonymy is a relation of semantic opposition that can be symbolized with the double-headed arrow <-». The term 'opposition' is rather vague. It includes reversible relationship of words (husband-^wife, buy*-+sell), directional opposition (come<-*go, arrive^depart), or complementary relationship (alive*~*dead, male^>female). The most typical autonomy is observed in cases of polar opposition (cold<->hot, big+->small).

c) Incompatibility (96) is the relation of mutual exclusiveness of a set of co- hyponyms - words under the same hyperonym, or co-meronyms - words under the same meronym. The words denoting the same whole but are neither synonyms nor antonyms. For example, the words cat^dogfilion^elephant within the major superordinate animal, or words denoting sister-parts of a whole like bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, sitting room, stairs, porch denoting different parts of a house are mutually exclusive, or incompatible.

So far we have discussed the basic primitive, or primary paradigmatic sense relations. More distant paradigmatic relations, derived by logical inference, occur between such words as horse and oat, tea and kettle.

2. Antonyms

Another important group of words based on compatibility of some semantic features and oppositeness of others are antonyms [Gk anti 'against', onoma 'a name'l.

Antonyms are typically found in the class of adjectives and occur in antonimous pairs (good «-» bad, light <-> dark). Though antonyms are not as pervasive in the English lexicon as synonyms, they are important for its structuring.

Since there are different types of opposition in a language (polar opposition cold<-+hot, reversible relationship. buy*-+sell, directional opposition, arrive^+depart, complementary relationship alive<-*dead, and some others), there are different groups of antonyms, too.

There are gradable antonyms like cold <-> hot, dry <-» wet that make comparison (colder, hotter; drier, wetter) and other adjectives may be placed on the scale between their poles (cold <-> warm <-> hot; dry <-> moist <-> wet). They occur in the system of adjectives and the adverbs derived from them. One of the members of the pair of gradable antonyms is marked and the other is unmarked. When the quality is not identified we use an unmarked member: How far is the city? How long is the road? If the city is identified as close and the road as short, then we use the marked member: How close is the city? and How short is the road?

There are complementary (sometimes they are called contradictory) antonyms like alive <-> dead, single <-> married, life <-» death, on «-> off, remember <-> forget, go <-* stay that are mutually exclusive although the complement each other. These antonyms are in an either/or kind of opposition.

There are also two-way conversive antonyms that are mutually dependent and describe opposite attributes of the same situation (buy and sell, above and below, child and parent). Each of these antonyms may express the converse meaning of the other: John is Mark's son and Mark is John 'sparent.

English can derive antonyms morphologically by means of prefixes and suffixes (honest «-> dishonest, encourage <-> discourage, include <-» exclude, useful <-> useless, hopeful <-> hopeless).

So, antonyms are words that are different in their sound-form, characterized by different types of semantic opposition of denotational meaning and often co-occur in the same context (the cars are not fast, they are slow).

As in the case of synonyms, antonyms are minimal naming units, so if the word is polysemantic each of its senses may have its own antonym. Thus the adjective deep in the meaning of 'extending far downward' has the antonym shallow; in the meaning of 'difficult to comprehend' it has the antonym plain, in the meaning of 'high in saturation and low in lightness (of colour)' it has the antonym light.