The Scope of Russian Antonymy and Lexicographic Practice

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the development of the antonymic database of the Ural School of Semantics. To compile a new dictionary of synonyms and antonyms, comparative research of lexicography resources was conducted. The researchers studied six traditional dictionaries as well as the Russian Wiktionary and the Great Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Synonyms, which is being compiled under the supervision of Professor L.G. Babenko. All the materials having been converted into a machine-readable form, the researchers compared the alphabetic glossaries with the basic parts of dictionaries. The article also includes an analysis of aspectual pairs of verbs, as well as the correlation of direct and reverse antonymic pairs. The author discusses data related to the number of antonymic pairs in each dictionary and the overlapping of glossaries in the lexicographic resources in question, providing comments to the statistical data of the resources, including the most comprehensive ones (the Russian Wiktionary and the Great Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Synonyms). The author also defines the nuclear and peripheral zones of Russian antonymy. The former comprises 57 antonymic pairs, present in all dictionaries (abstract — concrete, antipathy — sympathy, poor — rich, etc.), and the latter has about a thousand antonyms, which appear at least in four of the eight dictionaries. The peripheral zones are identified with reference to the Russian Wiktionary. Additionally, the article describes groups of antonyms, united by a reason, which prevented them from being included into classic dictionaries. The author draws conclusions concerning problems with describing Russian antonyms and opportunities of further work within the framework of the research programme of the Ural School of Semantics.