A Study Of The Symmetry Of The Antonyms "bitter" And "sweet"

The research object of this paper is the antonyms "bitter" and "sweet",which mainly examines the symmetry and asymmetry of the two in the diachronic semantic evolution,vocabulary and grammar.This paper is divided into three chapters:The first chapter analyzes the symmetry of "bitter" and "sweet" from the perspective of diachronic evolution.We find that "bitter" has more meanings than "sweet",and the scope of semantic extension is wider than that of "sweet".Most of the meanings of "bitter" are produced no later than the meanings of "sweet".The second chapter analyzes the symmetry of "bitter" and "sweet" from the lexical level.In terms of the number of meanings,"sweet" has more meanings than "bitter";In terms of word-building ability,the word-building ability of "bitter" is higher than that of "sweet";In terms of frequency of use,the frequency of use of "sweet" is lower than that of " "Bitter";In terms of word formation,"positive type" is the main word formation method of the two;"Joint type" and "Biased type" are the word formation methods shared by the two;In terms of "verb object type" "Bitter" has and "Sweet"does not have;as far as "subject-predicate" is concerned,"Sweet" has and "Bitter" does not have.In terms of word formation,it is divided into two levels: vocabulary and fixed phrase.As far as vocabulary is concerned,there are both the phenomenon of form symmetry and the use cases of form asymmetry.In terms of fixed phrases,the number of "bitter" idioms is more than the number of "sweet" idioms,and "bitter" has more emotional color types than "sweet".It can be seen that "bitter" and "sweet" have both symmetry and asymmetry at the lexical level.The third Chapter mainly examines the symmetry of "bitter" and "sweet" at the syntactic level from three aspects: modification and modification,serving as a syntactic component,and overlapping forms of "bitter" and "sweet".On the whole,the two aspects of "modification and modification" and "serving as a syntactic component" mainly reflect the symmetry of the two,But there are also asymmetries.In terms of modifying nouns,"sweet" can modify more nouns than "bitter";In terms of modifying verbs,"bitter" can modify more verbs than "sweet";In terms of being modified by adverbs,"bitter" can modify more adverbs than "sweet";When used as a predicate,"bitter" has two usages: "bitter + the + noun" and "bitter + noun","sweet" has no related usage;When used as an object "Bitter" has the usages of "bear hardships","suffer" and "complain",but "sweet" does not;When used as an adverbial,"bitter" can modify more verbs than "sweet".Some adverbial positions can only use "bitter" but not "sweet".In terms of overlapping forms,the grammatical function of "sweet" is more complicated than that of "bitterness".