Sources of homonymy

There are a lot of different sources of homonyms in English.

1) phonetic changes, which words undergo in the course 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.

2) 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 (<Lat. ritus). Bank, n `a shore' is a native word, and bank, n `a financial institution' is an Italian borrowing.

3) Word building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, and the most important type in this respect is undoubtedly conversion. Such pairs of words as comb, n - to comb, v; pale, adj - to pale, v are numerous in the vocabulary. Homonyms of this type, which are the same in sound and spelling but refer to different categories of parts of speech, are called lexico-grammatical homonyms.

4) Shortening is a further type of word building, which increases the number of homonyms. Fan, n in the sense of `enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc.' is a shortening produced from fanatic. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing fan, n which denotes an implement for waving lightly to produce a cool current of air.

In all the mentioned cases the homonyms developed from two or more different words, and their similarity is purely accidental.

5) Two or more homonyms can originate from different meanings of the same word when, for some reason, the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts. This type of formation of homonyms is called disintegration or split of polysemy.

In Old English the words zesund ‘healthy’ and sund ‘swimming’ were separate words both in form and in meaning. In the course of time they have changed their meaning and phonetic form, and the latter accidentally coincided: OE sund>ModE sound ‘strait’; OE зesund>ModE sound ‘healthy’. The group was joined also accidentally by the noun sound ‘what is or may be heard’ with the corresponding verb that developed from French and ultimately from the Latin word sonus, and the verb sound ‘to measure the depth’ of dubious etymology. The coincidence is purely accidental.

Two different Latin verbs: cadere ‘to fall’ and capere ‘to hold’ are the respective sources of the homonyms case₁ ‘instance of thing’s occurring’ and case₂ ‘a box’. Indeed, case₁<OFr cas < Lat casus ‘fall’, and case₂< OldNorthern French casse<Lat capsa.

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