【正确答案】Antonymy is the name for oppositeness relation. There are three main sub-types: gradable antonymy, complementary antonymy, and converse antonymy. Gradable antonymy is the commonest type of antonymy. When we say two words are antonyms, we usually mean pairs of words like: good—bad, long—short, big—small. As the examples show, they are mainly adjectives. And they have three characteristics.
First, as the name suggests, they are gradable. That is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. The denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other. For example, something that is not "good" is not necessarily "bad". It may simply be "so-so" or "average".
Second, antonyms of this kind are graded against different norms. There is not absolute criterion by which we may say something is good or bad, long or short, big or small. The criterion varies with the object described. For example, a big car is in fact much smaller than a small plane.
Third, one member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term. For example, we ask somebody "How old are you?" and the person asked may not be old in any sense. He may be as young as twenty or three. The word "old" is used here to cover both old and young. The sentence means the same as "What is your age?/

【答案解析】[解析] 本题主要考查反义关系的种类，答题时要先解释什么是反义词，然后再列出其分类，并进一步举例说明分等级的反义词的三个特征。参考胡壮麟《语言学教程》(第三版)110-111页。