eng Science and Education Publishing Journal of Linguistics and Literature 2023-08-20 6 1 10 14 10.12691/jll-6-1-2 JLL2023612 article Pham Van Lam 1 Nguyen B¨ªch Diep 2 Institute of Linguistic; Vietnam Thang Long University; Hanoi, Vietnam Antonymous phenomena in general and Vietnamese antonyms in specific have been studied for a long time. The results of these studies remain mainly on two points: firstly, clarifying the concept of antonyms; secondly, classifying antonyms. Setting of formal criteria that are used to identify antonymous pairs has not been studied yet. The paper aims at developing a set of formal criteria in order to easily identify and test Vietnamese antonymous pairs without encountering any counter-example that comes from the native speakers¡¯ intuition. The paper has formulated and described the list of logical, phonetic, semantic, pragmatic, and grammatical formal criteria. In which, the criteria of grammatical formal constructions, especially the possibility of co-occurrence of antonyms, have been deeply described through some typical, real texts. http://pubs.sciepub.com/jll/6/1/2/jll-6-1-2.pdf antonyms formal criteria co-occurrence grammatical constructions