【正确答案】The British linguist F.R. Palmer argues that "there is no absolute distinction between [gradable antonyms and complementary antonyms]."
Antonymy is the name for oppositeness relation. Gradable antonymy, and complementary antonymy are two main sub-types.
a)Gradable antonymyis 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. And they have three characteristics. First, 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. Something which 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 no 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. Third, one member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term. 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?"
b)In contrast to the first type, the members of a pair in this type are complementary to each other. That is, they divide up the whole of a semantic field completely. Not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, the denial of one also means the assertion of the other. Antonyms like alive— dead, male—female, present—absent, innocent—guilty, boy—girl are of this type. Not only He is alive means He is not dead, He is not alive also means He is dead. There is no intermediate ground between the two.
To some extent, this difference between the gradable and the complementary can be compared to the traditional logical distinction between the contrary and the contradictory. In logic, a proposition is the contrary of another if both cannot be true, though they may both be false; e.g. The coffee is hot and The coffee is cold. And a proposition is the contradictory of another if it is impossible for both to be true, or false; e.g.: This is a male cat and This is a female eat.
Secondly, the norm in this type is absolute. It does not vary with the thing a word is applied to. The same norm is used for all the things it is applicable to. For example, there will be no such a situation that a creature is male by the standard of human being, but female by the standard of animal. If anything, the difference between the death of a man and that of a tree is a matter of kind, not of degree.
Thirdly, there is no cover term for the two members of a pair. If you do not know the sex of a baby, you ask "Is it a boy or a girl?" not "How male is it?" The word male can only be used for boys, it cannot cover the meaning of girl. As a matter of fact, no adjective in this type can be modified by how. This is related to the fact that they are not modifiable by words like very.
Now the pair of antonyms true: false is exceptional to some extent. This pair is usually regarded as complementary. True equals not false, and not true equals false. But there is a cover term. We can say "How true is the story?" And there is a noun truth, related to this cover term. We can also use "very" to modify true. It even has comparative and superlative degrees. A description may be truer than another, or is the truest among a number of descriptions, though false cannot be used in this way. The British linguist F. R. Palmer argues in his Semantics (p.97) that "there is no absolute distinction between [gradable antonyms and complementary antonyms]. We can treat male/female, married/ single, alive/dead as gradable antonyms on occasions. Someone can be very male or more married and certainly more dead that alive." It is not advisable to tell beginners of linguistics that the distinction between gradable antonyms and complementary antonyms is relative. The expression "more dead than alive" is not a true comparative.

【答案解析】[解析] 本题考查等级反义关系和互补反义关系之间的关系。英国语言学家F. R. Palmer在他的Semantics(《语义学》p．97)一书中指出，“在[等级反义关系和互补反义关系]之间没有绝对的区分。有时我们可以把“male/female, married/single, alive/dead看作等级反义词，某人可能very male(很男性化)或者more married(更像已婚的)，而且当然可能more dead than alive．”对语言学初学者讲等级反义关系和互补反义关系之间的区分是相对的，这一做法不可取。表达式“more dead than alive”并不是真正的比较级。