Лексикология английского языка. Учебник

4. an object resembling a hand in shape or

function.

2. part of the basic meaning in either the centre

of the other or on their periphery:

e.g., rain – 1. Condensed moisture of atmosphere falling in a large number of drops

2. a large number of falling objects.

Buffoon – 1. A clown doing foolish things to amuse others

2.a person who is foolish and uneducated.

3. a certain common part of meaning contained

by all LSVs of the same polysemantic word:

e.g. to examine – 1. Get knowledge carefully looking at

2.Get knowledge carefully thinking of

3.Get knowledge carefully asking about

4.The common semantic part may be latent or

implied:

e.g. dull – not clear or bright (colour, sound, weather) slow in understanding (pupil, mind) monotonous, uninteresting (film, life)

not sharp (knife, pain).

The common meaning is “lacking smth”.

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3.

1. the way of naming – direct/ figurative

e.g. key – a metal instrument for moving the bolt

of a lock

smth that provides an answer

2.the dependence of 1 on the other – basic/ derived

3.etymologically – primary/ secondary, modern/ archaic

e.g., gentleman – a man who is honorable and well-bred (modern)

a man of good family attached to a court or the household of a great noble (archaic) a man entitled to bear arms, but

not a member of the nobility (historical) 4. abstract/ concrete

e.g., witness – evidence that can be said about smb

or smth

a person who has 1st hand knowledge of an event and is able to describe it

5.logical/ emotional

e.g., worm – a kind of small boneless limbless creeping creatures

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an abject and contemptible person

6.general/particular

e.g., referee – a person to whom disputes are referred to for decision

a person who controls matches

7.frequent/ rare

8.neutral/ stylistically marked

9.common/ dialectal

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Types of Modern English Homonymy

1.The definition of homonyms

2.The origin of homonyms

3.Classification of homonyms

1.

Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in one of these aspects, but different in their meaning. The term is derived from Greek homonymous (homos

“the same” and onoma “name”).

E. g. bank, n. - a shore; an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging, and safeguarding money

ball, n. - a sphere; any spherical body ball; a large dancing party.

If groups of synonyms and pairs of antonyms are created by the vocabulary system with a particular purpose, homonyms are accidental creations, and therefore purposeless. In the process of communication, they lead sometimes to confusion and misunderstanding and are one of the most important sources of popular humour.

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e.g., "A tailor guarantees to give each of his customers a perfect fit."

The joke is based on the homonyms: I. fit, n. - perfectly fitting clothes; II. fit, n. - a nervous spasm.

Homonyms exist in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among monosyllabic words

(89% acc.to the “Oxford English Dictionary”). From the point of view of their morphological structure they are mostly onemorpheme words.

2.

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 formerly pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms.

e.g., night and knight 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: О.Е. kniht (cf. О.Е. niht); to knead (О.Е. cnedan) and to need (О.Е. neodian), to write

(writan) – righ (reht, riht), work (wyrkean) – to work (weork).

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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.

e.g., Bank, n. ("shore") is a native word, and bank, n. ("a financial institution") is an Italian borrowing. Fair, adj. (as in a fair deal, it's not fair) is native, and fair, n. ("a gathering of buyers and sellers") is a French borrowing.

3) Word-building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, and the most important type in this respect is undoubtedly a) conversion. Such pairs of words as comb, n. - to comb, v., pale, adj. - to pale, v., to make, v. - make, n. 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.

b) Shortening is a further type of word-building which increases the number of homonyms. E.g., fan, n. in the sense of "an 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.

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c) Words made by sound-imitation can also form pairs of homonyms with other words:

e. g. mew, n. ("the sound a cat makes") - mew, n. ("a sea gull") - mew, n. ("a pen in which poultry is fattened") - mews

("small, terraced houses in Central London").

In all the mentioned cases the homonyms developed from two or more different words, and their similarity is purely accidental. (In this respect, conversion certainly presents an exception or in pairs of homonyms formed by conversion one word of the pair is produced from the other: a find < to find.

4) Split polysemy. 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.

The semantic structure of a polysemantic word presents a system within which all its constituent meanings are held together by logical associations. In most cases, the function of the arrangement and the unity is determined by one of the meanings If this meaning happens to disappear from the word's semantic structure, the semantic structure loses its unity and falls

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into two or more parts which then become accepted as independent lexical units.

e.g., Let us consider the history of three homonyms:

board, n. - a long and thin piece of timber

board, n. - daily meals, esp. as provided for pay, e. g. room and board

board, n. - an official group of persons who direct or supervise some activity, e. g. a board of directors

It is clear that the meanings of these three words are in no way associated with one another. Yet, most larger dictionaries still enter a meaning of board that once held together all these other meanings "table". It developed from the meaning "a piece of timber" by transference based on contiguity (association of an object and the material from which it is made). The meanings "meals" and "an official group of persons" developed from the meaning "table", also by transference based on contiguity: meals are easily associated with a table on which they are served; an official group of people in authority are also likely to discuss their business round a table.

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Nowadays, however, the item of furniture, on which meals are served and round which boards of directors meet, is no longer denoted by the word board but by the French Norman borrowing table, and board in this meaning can very well be marked as archaic as it is no longer used in common speech. That is why, with the intrusion of the borrowed table, the word board actually lost its corresponding meaning which served as a link to hold together the rest of the constituent parts of the word's semantic structure. Consequently, the semantic structure of board was split into three units.

It should be stressed, however, that split polysemy as a source of homonyms is not accepted by some scholars. It is really difficult sometimes to decide whether a certain word has or has not been subjected to the split of the semantic structure and whether we are dealing with different meanings of the same word or with homonyms, for the criteria are subjective and imprecise. The imprecision is recorded in the data of different dictionaries which often contradict each other on this very issue, so that board is represented as two homonyms in Professor V. K. Muller's dictionary, as three homonyms in Professor V. D. Arakin's and as one and the same word in Hornby's dictionary.

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Out of 2540 homonyms listed in the “Oxford English Dictionary” only 7% are due to disintegration of polysemy, all the others are etymologically different.

3.

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

Homonyms which are the same in sound and spelling are traditionally termed homonyms proper.

Homonyms they are the same in sound but different in spelling are called homophones.

e.g., "Waiter!" "Yes, sir." "What's this?"

"It's bean soup, sir."

"Never mind what it has been. I want to know what it is

now."

Bean, n. and been, Past Part, are phones.

The third type of homonyms is called homographs.

These are words which are the same in spelling but different in sound.

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