Гос филология / ddd / 5

5. The problem of homonymy and polysemy

Homonymy may be described as the sameness of form associated with the difference of meaning.

Homonyms are words identical in sound and/or in spelling but different in meaning.

Classification of homonyms:

1. Perfect homonyms, or homonyms proper – words identical both in sound form and spelling but different in meaning. Homophones – words identical in sound but different in meaning. Homographs – words identical in spelling but different in sound and meaning.

2. Full and partial homonyms

3. Lexical, lexico-grammatical and grammatical homonyms

4. Simple and complex homonyms.

Polysemy is the ability of a word to have more than one meaning.

The causes of the development of polysemy in English are:

1. The great amount of monosyllabic root words;

2. A lot of words of long duration (долго просуществовавшие), which in the course of time were used to express more and more new meanings thus becoming polysemantic.

Monosemantic words have only one meaning. Polysemantic words have several meanings.

Polysemy exists only in language, not in speech. The meaning in speech is contextual. In a definite context any polysemantic word expresses only one meaning.