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This dissertation is a study of the lexical-semantic relation of antonymy with its major focus on properties of gradable antonyms in English.Gradable antonyms are pairs of opposites with variable degrees in semantic strength.Syntactically,they can be modified by intensifiers like"very"and "too"and can be used in comparatives.They can be classified into different categories from different aspects.Semantically,one term of an antonymic pair is opposed to the other,with a fuzzy boundary.This quality,which is inherent to gradable antonyms,is referred to as committedness,and its reduction in semantic strength is termed as impartiality.Occurring in some gradable antonyms in the comparative,impartiality can be considered as an additional and conditional property.Semantically-defined impartiality is distinguished from pragmatically-defined unmarkedness in that the latter describes a neutralized state without any committedness.