Recommended Literature:

1. Арнольд И.В. Лексикология современного английского языка. .= The English Word [Текст]: Учебн. для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. 3-е изд., перераб. и доп. / И.В. Арнольд. – М.: Высшая школа,1986. – c. 216– 239;

2. Гинзбург, Р.З. Лексикология английского языка [Текст]: Учебн для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. / Р.З. Гинзбург, С.С. Хидекель, Г.Ю. Князева и др.– М.: Высшая школа,1979. – p. 47 – 63..

3. Антрушина Г.Б. Лексикология английского языка = English Lexicology [Текст]: Учеб. для студ. пед.ин-тов по спец. №.2103 «Иностр. яз.» /Г.Б. Антрушина, О.В. Афанасьева, Н.Н. Морозова – 3-е изд. стереотип. – М.: Дрофа, 2001 – с.142 – 172.

4. Арбекова Т.И. Лексикология английского языка (практический курс) [Текст]. Учебное пособие для студентов 2-3 курсов институтов и факультетов иностранных языков./ Т.И. Арбекова. – М.: Высшая школа, 1977. – с. 155 – 175.

5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка [Текст] / А.И. Смирницкий – М.: Изд-во МГУ им. М.В. Ломоносова, 1998 .– с174 – 197.

Lecture 7. English Homonyms

1. Homonyms

2. Classification of Homonyms.

3. The Origin of Homonyms.

4. Homonyms Treated Synchronically.

Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. The intense development of homonymy in the English language is due to several interrelated causes, such as the monosyllabic character of English, its analytic structure, the phonetic identity of word and stem, the predominance of free forms among the most frequent roots.

In classification of homonyms the theory of oppositions is taken into consideration, the difference or sameness in their lexical and grammatical meaning, paradigm, distribution, origin and basic form The most widely accepted classification is that recognising homonyms proper, homophones and homographs.

Homonyms may be classified into full and partial homonyms, homonymy of words and of individual word-forms. The bulk of full homonyms are to be found in the same part of speech, partial homonymy is observed in word-forms belonging to different parts of speech.

Homonyms may also be classified by the type of meaning into lexical, lexico-grammatical and grammatical homonyms. Modern English abounds in homonymic word-forms differing in grammatical meaning only.

Different causes of homonymy may be subdivided into two main groups: homonymy through convergent sound development, when two or three words of different origin accidentally coincide in sound or spelling and homonymy developed from polysemy through divergent sense development. Highly polysemantic words develop meanings which in the course of time may deviate very far from the central one and start a separate existence. The phenomenon is known as disintegration or split of polysemy. Both may be combined with loss of endings and other morphological processes.

The synchronic treatment of English homonyms brings a set of problems of paramount importance for different branches of applied linguistics: the criteria distinguishing homonymy from polysemy, the formulation of rules for recognising different meanings of the same homonym in terms of distribution and the description of difference between patterned and non-patterned homonymy.