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Homonymy in English

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94 1981
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Contents

Introduction

1. Determination of Homonymy

2. Classifications of Homonyms

A. The standard way of classification (given by I.V.
Arnold)

a) Homonyms proper

b) Homophones

c) Homographs

B. Classification given by A.I. Smirnitsky

a) Full homonyms

b) Partial homonyms

C. Other aspects of classification

3. Sources of Homonyms

4. Problems of Homonymy

a) Distinguishing homonymy from polysemy

b) Different meanings of the same homonym in terms of distribution

c) Difference between patterned and non-patterned homonymy

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

Language processing considerations have often been used to explain
aspects of language structure and evolution. According to Bates and
MacWhinney, this view “is a kind of linguistic Darwinism, an argument
that languages look the way they do for functional or adaptive reasons”.
However, as in adaptationist accounts of biological structures and
evolution, this approach can lead to the creation of “just so” stories.
In order to avoid these problems, case-by-case analyses must be replaced
by statistical investigations of linguistic corpora. In addition,
independent evidence for the relative “adaptiveness” of certain
linguistic structures must be obtained. We will use this approach to
study a linguistic phenomenon – homonymy. That seems to be maladaptive
both intuitively and empirically and has been frequently subjected to
informal adaptationist arguments. A statistical analysis of English
homonyms then uncovered a reliable bias against the usage of homonyms
from the same grammatical class. A subsequent experiment provided
independent evidence that such homonyms are in fact more confusing than
those from different grammatical classes.

In a simple code each sign has only one meaning, and each meaning
is associated with only one sign. This one-to-one relationship is not
realized in natural languages. When several related meanings are
associated with the same group of sounds within one part of speech, the
word is called polysemantic, when two or more unrelated meanings are
associated with the same form – the words are homonyms.

The intense development of homonymy in the English language is
obviously due not to one single factor but to several interrelated
causes, such as the monosyllabic character of English and its analytic
structure.

The abundance of homonyms is also closely connected with such a
characteristic feature of the English language as the phonetic identity
of word and stem or, in other words, the predominance of free forms
among the most frequent roots. It is quite obvious that if the frequency
of words stands in some inverse relationship to their length, the
monosyllabic words will be the most frequent. Moreover, as the most
frequent words are also highly polysemantic, it is only natural that
they develop meanings, which in the coarse of time may deviate very far
from the central one.

In general, homonymy is intentionally sought to provoke positive,
negative or awkward connotations. Concerning the selection of initials,
homonymy with shortened words serves the purpose of manipulation. The
demotivated process of a shortened word hereby leads to re-motivation.
The form is homonymously identical with an already lexicalized
linguistic unit, which makes it easier to pronounce or recall, thus
standing out from the majority of acronyms. This homonymous unit has a
secondary semantic relation to the linguistic unit.

Homonymy of names functions as personified metaphor with the result
that the homonymous name leads to abstraction. The resultant new word
coincides in its phonological realization with an existing word in
English. However, there is no logical connection between the meaning of
the acronym and the meaning of the already existing word, which explains
a great part of the humor it produces.

In the coarse of time the number of homonyms on the whole increases,
although occasionally the conflict of homonyms ends in word loss.

1.Determination of Homonymy

Two or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in
meaning, distribution and in many cases origin are called homonyms. The
term is derived from Greek “homonymous” (homos – “the same” and onoma –
“name”) and thus expresses very well the sameness of name combined with
the difference in meaning.1

There is an obvious difference between the meanings of the symbol
fast in such combinations as run fast ‘quickly’ and stand fast ‘firmly’.
The difference is even more pronounced if we observe cases where fast is
a noun or a verb as in the following proverbs:

“A clean fast is better than a dirty breakfast;

Who feasts till he is sick, must fast till he is well.”

Fast as an isolated word, therefore, may be regarded as a variable
that can assume several different values depending on the conditions of
usage, or, in other words distribution. All the possible values of each
linguistic sign are listed in the dictionaries. It is the duty of
lexicographers to define the boundaries of each word, i.e. to
differentiate homonyms and to unite variants deciding in each case
whether the different meanings belong to the same polysemantic word or
whether there are grounds to treat them as two or more separate words
identical in form. In speech, however, as a rule only one of all the
possible values is determined by the context, so that no ambiguity may
normally arise. There is no danger, for instance, that the listener
would wish to substitute the meaning ‘quick’ into the sentence: It is
absurd to have hard and fast rules about anything2, or think that fast
rules here are ‘rules of diet’. Combinations when two or more meanings
are possible are either deliberate puns, or result from carelessness.
Both meanings of liver, i.e. ‘a living person’ and ‘the organ that
secretes bile’ are, for instance, intentionally present in the following
play upon words:

1. “Is life worth living?” ”It depends upon the liver.”

2. “What do you do with the fruit?” “We eat what we can, and what we
can’t eat we can”

Very seldom can ambiguity of this kind interfere with understanding.
The following example is unambiguous, although the words back and part
have

1. Arnold “The English Word”

2. Oscar Wild “Two Society Comedies”

several homonyms, and maid and heart are polysemantic:

“Maid of Athens, ere we part,

Give, oh give me back my heart”1

Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly
frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. In the list of 2540
homonyms given in the “Oxford English Dictionary” 89% are monosyllabic
words and only 9.1% are words of two syllables. From the viewpoint of
their morphological structure, they are mostly one-morpheme words.

2. Classifications of Homonyms

A. The standard way of classification

(given by I.V. Arnold)

The most widely accepted classification is that recognizing homonyms
proper, homophones and homographs.

PRONUNCIATIONPRONUNCIATIONSPELLINGSAMEDIFFERENTSAMEA. Homonym properC.
Homograph (or heteronym)DIFFERENTB. Homophone (or heteronym)D. Allonym

Most words differ from each other in both spelling and pronunciation
– therefore they belong to the sell D in this table – I shall call them
allonyms. Not so many linguists distinguish this category. But it must
be admitted that Keith C. Ivey, in his discussion of homonyms,
recognizes this fact and writes:

These familiar with combinatorics may have noticed that there is a
fourth possible category based on spelling and pronunciation: words that
differ in spelling and pronunciation as well as meaning and origin
(alligator/true). These pairs are technically known as different words.

______________________________________________________________

1. G.G. Byron, Peter Washington “Poems of Lord Byron”

Unfortunately, this seemingly neat solution doesn’t work because all
heteronyms are different words as Ivey’s examples show. He illustrates
homophones with board/bored, clearly two different words though
pronounced alike, and his example of homographs (the verb desert/the
noun desert) again shows, by their pronunciation, that they are
different words. Even his example of a homonym — words having both the
same sound and spelling, as illustrated by “to quail and a quail” —
clearly shows they are different words. Lexicographers underline this
point by writing separate entries for different words, whether or not
they have the same spelling and pronunciation.

One could stipulate a phrase, like uniquely different words to
represent category D, but this expedient is cumbersome and not
transparent. A simpler solution, I believe, can be found by means of a
neologism. It is not difficult to think of a suitable term.

An allonym is a word that differs in spelling and pronunciation from
all other words, whereas both homonyms and heteronyms identify words
that are the same, in some ways, as other words.

No doubt in ordinary usage, we will have little need for this term,
although it would simplify lexical explanation if one could start by
making the claim that the most words in English are allonyms. The clear
exceptions are other groups.

Different words that are spelled and pronounced the same way are
classed in cell A and are correctly called homonyms proper – but some
writers, confusingly, call them heteronyms.

When different words are spelled the same way but pronounced
differently, they belong to category B. It is precise to call them
homographs and they are sometimes misleadingly called heteronyms. By
contrast, when different words are pronounced the same way but spelled
differently, we may properly call them homophones – rarely, they have
also been called heteronyms.

Homonyms proper

Homonyms proper are words, as I have already mentioned, identical in
pronunciation and spelling, like fast and liver above. Other examples
are: back n ‘part of the body’ – back adv ‘away from the front’ – back v
‘go back’; ball n ‘a gathering of people for dancing’ – ball n ‘round
object used in games’; bark n ‘the noise made by dog’ – bark v ‘to utter
sharp explosive cries’ – bark n ‘the skin of a tree’ – bark n

‘a sailing ship’; base n ‘bottom’ – base v ‘build or place upon’ – base
a ‘mean’; bay n ‘part of the sea or lake filling wide-mouth opening of
land’ – bay n ‘recess in a house or room’ – bay v ‘bark’ – bay n ‘the
European laurel’.

The important point is that homonyms are distinct words: not
different meanings within one word.

Homophones

Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and
meaning:

air – hair; arms – alms; buy – by; him – hymn; knight – night; not –
knot; or – oar; piece – peace; rain – reign; scent – cent; steel –
steal; storey – story; write – right and many others.

In the sentence The play-wright on my right thinks it right that
some conventional rite should symbolize the right of every man to write
as he pleases the sound complex [rait] is a noun, an adjective, an
adverb and a verb, has four different spellings and six different
meanings. The difference may be confined to the use of a capital letter
as in bill and Bill, in the following example:

“How much is my milk bill?”

“Excuse me, Madam, but my name is John.”

On the other hand, whole sentences may be homophonic: The sons raise
meat – The sun’s rays meet. To understand these one needs a wider
context. If you hear the second in the course of a lecture in optics,
you will understand it without thinking of the possibility of the first.

Homographs

Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but
accidentally identical in spelling: bow [bou] – bow [bau]; lead [li:d] –
lead [led]; row [rou] – row [rau]; sewer [‘soue] – sewer [sjue]; tear
[tie] – tear [te]; wind [wind] – wind [waind] and many more.

It has been often argued that homographs constitute a phenomenon
that should be kept apart from homonymy, as the object of linguistics is
sound language. This viewpoint can hardly be accepted. Because of the
effects of education and culture written English is a generalized
national form of expression. An average speaker does not separate the
written and oral form. On the contrary he is more likely to analyze the
words in terms of letters than in terms of phonemes with which he is
less familiar. That is why a linguist must take into consideration both
the spelling and the pronunciation of words when analyzing cases of
identity of form and diversity of content.

B. Classification given by A.I. Smirnitsky

The classification, which I have mentioned above, is certainly not
precise enough and does not reflect certain important features of these
words, and, most important of all, their status as parts of speech. The
examples given their show those homonyms may belong to both to the same
and to different categories of parts of speech. Obviously, the
classification of homonyms should reflect this distinctive feather.
Also, the paradigm of each word should be considered, because it has
been observed that the paradigms of some homonyms coincide completely,
and of others only partially.

Accordingly, Professor A.I. Smirnitsky classifieds homonyms into two
large classes:

a) full homonyms

b) partial homonyms

Full homonyms

Full lexical homonyms are words, which represent the same category
of parts of speech and have the same paradigm.

Match n – a game, a contest

Match n – a short piece of wood used for producing fire

Wren n – a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service

Wren n – a bird

Partial homonyms

Partial homonyms are subdivided into three subgroups:

A. Simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words, which belong to
the same category of parts of speech. Their paradigms have only one
identical form, but it is never the same form, as will be soon from the
examples:

(to) found v

found v (past indef., past part. of to find)

(to) lay v

lay v (past indef. of to lie)

(to) bound v

bound v (past indef., past part. of to bind)

B. Complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words of different
categories of parts of speech, which have identical form in their
paradigms.

Rose n

Rose v (past indef. of to rise)

Maid n

Made v (past indef., past part. of to make)

Left adj

Left v (past indef., past part. of to leave)

Bean n

Been v (past part. of to be)

One num

Won v (past indef., past part. of to win)

C. Partial lexical homonyms are words of the same category of parts of
speech which are identical only in their corresponding forms.

to lie (lay, lain) v

to lie (lied, lied) v

to hang (hung, hung) v

to hang (hanged, hanged) v

to can (canned, canned)

(I) can (could)

C. Other aspects of classification

Various types of classification for homonyms have been suggested.

A comprehensive system may be worked out if we are guided by the
theory of oppositions and in classifying the homonyms take into
consideration the difference or sameness in their lexical and
grammatical meaning, paradigm and basic form.

As both form and meaning can be further subdivided, the combination
of distinctive features by which two words are compared becomes more
complicated – there are four features: the form may be phonetical and
graphical, the meaning – lexical and grammatical, a word may also have a
paradigm of grammatical forms different from the basic form.

The distinctive features shown in the table below are lexical
meaning (different denoted by A, or nearly the same denoted by A1),
grammatical meaning (different denoted by B, or same by B1), paradigm
(different denoted by C, or same denoted by C1), and basic form
(different denoted by D, and same denoted by D1).

The term “nearly same lexical meaning” must not be taken too
literally. It means only that the corresponding members of the
opposition have some important invariant semantic components in common.
“Same grammatical meaning” implies that both members belong to the same
part of speech.

Same paradigm comprises also cases when there is only one word form,
i.e. when the words are unchangeable. Inconsistent combinations of
features are crossed out in the table. It is, for instance, impossible
for two words to be identical in all word forms and different in basic
forms, or for two homonyms to show no difference either in lexical or
grammatical meaning, because in this case they are not homonyms. That
leaves twelve possible cases.

Difference and Identity in WordsA Different lexical meaningA1 Nearly
same lexical meaning B Different grammatical meaningPartial
HomonymyPatterned HomonymyD1 Same basic formslight, -s n

light,-er,-est a

flat, -s n

flat,-er,-est afor prp

for cjbefore prp

before adv

before cjeye, -s n

eye, -s, -ed,

-ing vmight n

may-might vthought n

thought v

(Past Indef. Tense of think)

D Different basic formB1 Same grammatical meaningaxis, axes n

axe – axes n

but–butted v

butt-butted v

SynonymsD Different basic formlie-lay-lain v

lie-lied-lied vFull Homonymy

spring,-s n

spring,-s n

spring,-s n

Polysemy

Variants of the same polysemantic wordC Different paradigmC1 Same
paradigm or no changesC Different paradigm

It goes without saying that this is a model that gives a general
scheme. Actually a group of homonyms may contain members belonging to
different groups in this classification. Take, for example, fell1 n
‘animal’s hide or skin with the hair’; fell2 n ‘hill’ and also ‘a
stretch of North-English moorland’; fell3 a ‘fierce’ (poet.); fell4 v
‘to cut down trees’ and as a noun ‘amount of timber cut’; fell5 (the
Past Indefinite Tense of the verb fall). This group may be broken into
pairs, each of which will fit into one of the above describes divisions.
Thus, fell1 – fell2 may be characterized as AB1C1D1, fell1 – fell4
as ABCD1 and fell4 – fell5 as A1BCD.

3. Sources of Homonyms

There are a lot of different sources of homonyms in English
language, so let’s talk about some of them, which are the most important
ones, due to my point of view.

One source of homonyms is phonetic changes, which words undergo in
the coarse of their historical development. As a result of such changes,
two or more words, which were formally pronounced differently, may
develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms.

Night and knight, for instance, were not homonyms in Old English as
the initial k in the second word was pronounced, and not dropped as it
is in its modern sound form: O.E. kniht (cf. O.E. niht). A more
complicated change of form brought together another pair of homonyms: to
knead (O.E. cneadan) and to need (O.E. neodian).

In Old English the verb to write had the form writan, and the
adjective right had the forms reht, riht. The noun sea descends from the
Old English form sae, and the verb to see – from O.E. seon. The noun
work and the verb to work also had different forms in Old English:
wyrkean and weork respectively.

Borrowing is another source of homonyms. A borrowed word may, in the
final stage of its phonetic adaptation, duplicate in form either a
native word or another borrowing. So, in the group of homonyms rite, n –
to write, v – right, adj the second and the third words are of native
origin whereas rite is a Latin borrowing (

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