Idiomatic Neologisms

to open the kimono ‘to open a company's accounting books for inspection; to expose something previously hidden’; a sleep camel ‘a person who gets little sleep during the week, and then attempts to make up for it by sleeping in and napping on the weekend’; to put skin in the game ‘take an active interest in a company or undertaking by making a significant investment or financial commitment’;

27. Polysemy. Semantic structure of English words. Diachronic and synchronic approaches to polysemy. Types of polysemy.

Polysemy (Gr. πολυσημεία ‘multiple meaning’) is the ability of words to have more than one meaning.

Polysemy is typical of the English vocabulary due to:

-its monosyllabic character;

-the predominance of root words.

A monosemantic word is a word having only one meaning; these are mostly terms, e.g.: hydrogen, molecule.

A polysemantic word is a word having more than one meaning; highly polysemous words can include dozens of meanings, e.g. to go – appr. 40 meanings), to get, to put, to take – appr. 30 meanings).

A lexeme is the totality of all the forms and meanings of a word; a structural item of the vocabulary.

A lexico-semantic variant is one of the individual meanings of a polysemantic word.

The semantic structure of a word is an organised system comprising all meanings and shades of meanings that a particular sound complex can assume in different contexts together with emotional, stylistic and other connotations.

Polysemy in diachronic terms implies that a word may retain its previous meaning and at the same time acquire one or several new ones. The main question of diachronic approach is which meaning came first, e.g.

table, n. ‘a flat slab of stone or wood’ (primary meaning); ‘a piece of furniture’, ‘the food put on the table’, ‘people seated at a table’ (secondary meanings).

Synchronically polysemy is understood as co-existence of various meanings of the same word at a certain historical period and the arrangement of these meanings in the semantic structure of a word. Synchronic typology of meaning is concerned with the opposition of main and derived meanings.

Types of polysemy:

Radial polysemy is the type of polysemy in which the primary meaning of a word stands in the centre and the secondary meanings proceed out of it like rays; each secondary meaning can be traced to the primary meaning.

Chain polysemy is the type of polysemy in which the secondary meanings of a word develop like a chain. In such cases it may be difficult to trace some meanings to the primary one.

Radical-chain (mixed) polysemy is a combination of radial polysemy and chain polysemy. Here the configuration of a diagram depends on the word’s semantic structure, hence there is a great variety of diagrams illustrating this type of polysemy.

28. Homonyms. Classifications and sources of homonyms.

Homonymy (Gr. homos ‘same’ + onyma, dial. form of onoma ‘name’) is the sameness of form combined with the difference in meaning.

Homonyms are two or more words identical in sound-form or / and spelling but different in meaning and distribution, e.g. hole, n – whole, adj; need, n – knead, v; polish, n – Polish, adj, etc.

Oxford English Dictionary registers 2540 homonyms, of which 89% are monosyllabic words and 9,1% are disyllabic

Sources of Homonymy

Divergence of word meaning is the process observed in those cases when different meanings of the same word deviate so far from each other that they come to be regarded as two separate units.

/flauə/

flower from Lat. flos, florem, OFr.flour, flor > ME flour ‘flower’;

flour ‘powder made by crushing grain’. Used from 13c. in the sense of the ‘finest part’ of meal (cf. Fr. fleur de farine ‘flower of flour’). Spelled flower until flour became the accepted form c. 1830 to end confusion.

toast, n

-a slice of bread made brown and crisp by cooking in high temperature, from O.Fr. toster ‘to brown with heat’ (12c.);

-a call to drink to someone's health (1700), originally referring to the beautiful or popular woman whose health is proposed and drunk, from the use of spiced toast to flavor drink.

Convergent sound development is the process which leads to the phonetic coincidence of two (or more) words that were phonetically distinct at an earlier date, e.g.

-OE ic and eaʒe > ModE I and eye /ai /;

-the disappearance of the sound k before n, e.g. knight – night, knot –not;

-the convergence of the ME ā, ai, ei, e.g. fair – fare, pale – pail, wait – weight;

-race 1 and race 2 from Old Norse rās 'running' and MFr from It razza 'ethnic group';

- Fr. mèche ‘wick’ (фитиль), OE meche ‘partner’ > match 1 ‘сірник’, match 2 ‘a relationship, a partnership’, as in matchmaker.

Loss of inflections, e.g. OE lufu (n) and lufian (v) - ModE love; OE sunne and sunu – ModE sun and son.

Conversion which serves the creation of grammatical homonyms, e.g. iron, n. - iron, v.; work, n. - to work, v.

Shortening, e.g. fan, n. ‘an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc.’ (a clipping from fanatic) – fan, n. ‘an implement for waving li8ghtly to produce a cool current of air’.

Sound-imitation, e.g. bang, n. ‘a loud, sudden, explosive noise’ – bang, n. ‘a fringe of hair combed over the forehead’; mew, n. ‘the sound a cat makes’ – mew, n. ‘a seagull’.

From the viewpoint of their origin homonyms are classified into:

-historical homonyms which result from the breaking up of polysemy; then one polysemantic word will split up into two or more separate words (see the examples on the divergence of word meanings);

-etymological homonyms, i.e. words of different origin which come to be identical in sound or / and in spelling (see the examples on the convergent sound development).

From the point of view of the correlation between the sound form and the graphic forms, homonyms are classified into:

homonyms proper (perfect, absolute, full) are words identical both in pronunciation and in spelling but different in meaning, e.g. back n. ‘part of the body’ - back adv. ‘away from the front’ - back v. ‘go back’; bear n. ‘animal’ - bear v. ‘carry, tolerate’;

homographs are words identical in spelling but different in sound and meaning e.g. bow /bəu/ - bow /bau/; lead /li:d/ - lead /led/; homophones are words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning: son – sun; pair – pear; air - heir, buy - by, him - hymn, steel – steal; storey – story;

homoforms are words identical in some of their grammatical forms: bound, v. ‘to jump, to spring’ - bound (past participle of bind); found, v. ‘establish’ - found (past participle of find);

capitonyms are words that share the same spelling but have different meanings when capitalised, e.g. polish, v. ‘to make shiny’ - Polish, adj. ‘coming from Poland’; Boxing Day (26th of December) – boxing ‘ a kind of sport’.

The classification based on the distinction between homonymy of words and homonymy of individual word-forms (suggested by Prof. Smirnitskiy).

Full homonyms are two or more words which belong to the same part of speech and coincide in all their forms, i.e. their paradigms are identical, e.g.

blow, v. ‘to send out a strong current of air’ - blow, v. ‘to produce flowers’; mole, n. ‘a small, furry, almost blind animal that digs holes and passages underground to live in’ – mole, n. ‘a small, dark brown, slightly raised mark on a person’s skin’;

Partial homonyms are words found within different (rarely the same) parts of speech which coincide only in some of their forms, i.e. their paradigms are not identical. e.g.:

seal, n. (seals) ‘a semi-aquatic marine mammal’ – seal, v. (sealed, sealing) ‘to close tightly’; lie, v. (lies – lying – lay – lain) ‘to be in a horizontal or resting position’ – lie, v. (lies – lying – lied – lied) ‘to make an untrue statement’;

According to the type of meaning, homonyms are classified into:

lexical homonyms, if they belong to the same part of speech but differ in lexical meaning, e.g.:

bank, n. ‘land along the side of a river’ – bank, n. ‘an establishment for keeping money, valuables, etc.’;

lexical-grammatical homonyms, if they belong to different parts of speech and differ both in their lexical and grammatical meanings, e.g.:

bear, n. – bear, v.; right, adj. – write, v.;

grammatical homonyms, i.e. homonymous word-forms of one and the same word differing in grammatical meaning, e.g. the homonymy of the plural, Possessive Case singular and plural: bears - bear's - bears'.