Theoretical Basis of Enantiosemy and its Occurrence in Speech

Abstract

The semantic structure of a language unit has always been one of the study objects of linguistics. One of the topical problems of semasiology, whose main task is to study the meaning of the word, is the phenomenon of enantiosemy. Enantiosemy is the opposition between the meanings of one word or phrase and one of the important problems of semasiology as well. Different opinions have been put forward about the linguistic nature of enantiosemy, its relation with lingual asymmetry, the factors of occurrence and its place in the linguistic level. For instance, it is said that the occurrence of enantiosemy is connected with mixed nature of ancient words, meaning development, word formation and grammatical factors. Or whilst its place in the lexical level is sometimes evaluated as a type of homonymy, antonymy and polysemy, it is sometimes introduced as a separate lexical phenomenon. In this work, first of all, the research works on enantiosemy are viewed and suggested how to study it as what phenomenon. Keywords: semasiology, lexical phenomenons, enantiosemy, enantiosemic word and phraseologisms, syncretism, semantic development, special type of polysemy, Uzbek language.