27. Definition and sources of homonymy

Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in one of these aspects, but different in their meaning.

bank, n. — a shore, bank, n. — an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging, and safeguarding money

English vocabulary is rich in such pairs and even groups of words. If synonyms and antonyms can be regarded as the treasury of the language's expressive resources, homonyms are of no interest in this respect, and one cannot expect them to be of particular value for communication.

The main sources of homonymy:

1) due to the process of shortening: 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.

2) due to 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) spring, n. – the act of springing, a leap, spring, n. – a season of the year.

3) due to the phonetic changes: 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: О.Е. kniht (cf. О.Е. niht);

4) due to conversion: answer, v. – to reply or respond (to), answer, n. - a reply, either spoken or written, as to a question, request, letter, or article; (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)

5) due to the process of borrowing (A borrowed word may, in the final stage of its phonetic adaptation, du[ju:]plicate in form either a native word or another borrowing): rite is a Latin borrowing (< Lat. ritus);

Paronyms-words kindred both in sound and meaning and therefore liable to be mixed but in fact different in meaning and usage

preceded (to go or be before (someone or something) in time, place, rank, etc) –

proceed (to continue);

lexical variants

Economic (экономический) and economical (бережливый, расчётливый) are interchangeable under certain conditions, more often, however, economic is a technical term associated with economics (an economic agreement). The second word, i.e. economical, is an everyday word associated with economy; e. g. economical stove, economical method, be economical of one’s money

28.The classification of homonyms

-homonyms proper words identical in pronunciation and spelling but different in meaning and distribution, swalow

-homophones words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning, night - knight

-homographs words different in sound and meaning but identical in spelling, bow

Accordingly, Professor A. I. Smirnitsky classified homonyms into two large classes:

-full homonyms words representing the same part of speech and having the same paradigm

see – to perceive with the eyes;– to be aware of, to understand

-partial homonyms words identical in one form of their paradigms

1) found [‘faund] – (основывать, учреждать; создавать) to bring into being, set up, or establish (something, such as an institution, society, etc.);

found – the past tense and past participle of the verb to find;

Simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words which belong to the same category of parts of speech. Their paradigms have one identical form, but it is never the same form.

2)ewe [ju:] – a female sheep;

you – personal pronoun;

Complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words of different categories of parts of speech which have one identical form in their paradigms.

3) to lie (lay, lain) – to place oneself or be in a prostrate position, horizontal to the ground;

to lie (lied, lied) – to speak untruthfully;

Partial lexical homonyms are words of the same category of parts of speech which are identical only in their corresponding forms.