Sources of homonyms

Homonyms are words of different meaning but identical in sound or spelling, or both in sound and spelling.

Linguists believe that synonyms and antonyms can be regarded as the treasury of the language expressive resources. Homonyms are of no interest in this respect. Synonyms and antonyms are created by the language with a particular purpose, homonyms are mostly accidental, purposeless creations. In the process of communication they often lead to confusion and misunderstanding. Yet this very characteristic makes them one of the most important sources of popular humour: A tailor guarantees to give each of his customers a perfect fit (fit – a perfectly fitting clothes, a nervous spasm).

Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among the monosyllabic words. Homonyms are mostly one-morpheme words.

Traditionally homonyms are subdivided into homonyms proper, homophones, homographs. Homonyms proper are homonyms which are the same in sound and spelling: fit – a perfectly fitting clothes, a nervous spasm. Homophones are homonyms which are the same in sound, but differebt in spelling: sea – see, rite – write. Homographs are homonyms which are the same in spelling but different in sound: tear – слезы и рвать, lead – свинец и вести. Sometimes it is said that homographs should be kept apart from homonymy as the object of linguistics, it should be the subject of graphics.. But it is not correct. An average speaker does not separate the written and the oral forms of the language. On the contrary, he is more likely to analyse 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.

Homonyms can appear in the language due to the following factors:

- split polysemy. It is known that in a polysemantic word interrelations of the primary and secondary meanings may be of three types. The first type is when the primary meaning stands in the centre and the secondary meanings proceed out of it like rays. The second type is when secondary meanings of a word develop like a chain and it is difficult to trace secondary meanings to the primary one. The third type is a combination of the first and of the second types.

The second type of polysemy is called the split of polysemy. For example: in the word crust the primary meaning is hard outer part of bread. This meaning developed a secondary meaning hard part of anything. Then the same meaning developed the meaning harder layer over soft snow. Later the meaning sullen gloomy person developed. The last developped meaning is impudence. This last meaning has nothing to do with the primary meaning and previous secondary meanings. We may say that homonyms appeared in the language. However, split polysemy as a source of homonyms is not accepted by all linguists. It is really difficult sometimes to decide wheather a certain word has or has not been subjected to the split of the semantic structure and whether we deal with different meanings of the same word or with homonyms. Criteria are subjective and imprecise. This imprecision is recorded in different dictionaries which often contradict each other on this very issue. For example: the word board is represented as two homonyms in Muller’s dictionary, as three homonyms in Arakin’ dictionary and as one and the same word in Hornby’s dictionary.

- levelling of grammar inflexions. It occurs when different parts of speech become identical in their outer aspect. For example: the word care came from caru and the word care – from carian.

- conversion. For example: to slim from slim, to water from water.

- homonyms can be formed with the help of the same suffix from the same stem. For example: reader means a person who reads and it also means a book for reading.

- result of shortening of different words. For example: cab from cabriolet, cabbage, cabin.

- accidentally. For example: two native words can coincide in their outer aspect, as to bear from beran (to carry) and bear from bera (animal). A native word and a borrowing can also coincide in their outer aspect. For example: fair from Latin f eria and fair from native fager (blond). Two borrowings can coincide. For example: base from French base and base from Latin bas.

2. Classifications of homonyms. The subdivision of homonyms into homonyms proper, homophones and homographs is not precise and it does not reflect some important features of these words, for example, their grammatical categories, their paradigms and their meanings.

There are several classifications of homonyms.

Walter Skeat classified homonyms according to their spelling and sound forms. He pointed out three groups: 1) perfect homonyms, that is words identical in sound and spelling: school – косяк рыбы и школа; 2) homographs, that is words with the same spelling but pronounced differently: bow – поклон и лук; 3) homophones, that is words pronounced identically but spelled differently: nightl – ночь, knight –рыцарь.

Александр Иванович Смирницкий classified homonyms into two large classes:

1) full homonyms,

2) partial homonyms.

Full homonyms are words which belong to the same part of speech and have the same paradigm. For example: match – матч и спичка. Partial homonyms are subdivided into three subgroups:

a) simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms. These are words which belong to the same part of speech, their paradigms have one identical form, but it is never the same form. For example: to found – основывать and f ound прошедшее время от find;

b) complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms. These are words of different parts of speech which have one identical form in their paradigms. For example: rose – роза, rose – прошедшее время от to rise;

c) partial lexical homonyms. Partial lexical homonyms are words of the same part of speech which are identical only in their corresponding forms. For example: can (to can, canned, canned) – (I) can (could).

Ирина Владимировна Арнольд classified only homonyms which Skeat called perfect homonyms. She suggested four criteria of their classification: lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, basic forms and paradigms. According to these criteria I.V. Arnold pointed out the following groups:

a) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings, basic forms and paradigms and different in their lexical meanings: board in the meanings a council and a piece of wood sawn thin;

b) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings and basic forms, but different in their lexical meanings and paradigms: to lie – lied – lied and to lie – lay – lain;

c) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, paradigms, but coinciding in their basic forms: light (lights) and light (lighter, lightest);

d) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, in their basic forms and paradigms, but coinciding in one of the forms of their paradigms: a bit and bit (from to bite).

I.V. Arnold also speaks about patterned homonyms. Patterned homonyms, differing from other homonyms, have a common component in their lexical meanings. These are homonyms formed either by means of conversion, or by levelling of grammar inflexions. These homonyms are different in their grammatical meanings, in their paradigms, but identical in their basic forms: warm – to warm.

Summing up the discussion of the problem of homonymy we should say that this problem is relevant for lexicography but it is not so important for translation. The reason for this is that homonyms may be understood from the context.

Lecture # 9

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