NewArchive / 27 - Homonymy

27 - Homonymy. Sources of homonymy. Types of English homonyms.

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

Sources of H are:

• Phonetic changes - 2 or more Wds which were formerly pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and thus become Hs (# to knead – to need)

• Borrowing – a borrowed Wd may, in the course of its phonetic adaptation, duplicate in form either a native form or another borrowing (# to write – right)

• Wd-building – the most important type here is conversion (# pale – to pale)

• Shortening - # fan (fanatic) – fan (Lat. – ‘веер’)

• Sound-imitation - # mew (‘the sound a cat makes’) – mews (‘small terraced houses in Central London’)

• Split polysemy – two or more Hs can originate from diff. meanings of the same Wd when, for some reason, the sem. structure of the Wd breaks into several parts.

There are various classifications of homonyms.

Smirnitsky

1) full homonyms – Wds which represent the same category of parts of speech and have the same paradigm

# match – a game

match – a short piece of wood used for producing fire

2) partial homonyms (PH) are subdivided into 3 groups:

- simple lexico-rgammatical Hs – the same part of speech. one identical form in their paradigms, but never the same form:

# to lay, v.

lay, v. (Past Ind. of to lie)

• complex lexico-grammatical partial Hs – diff. parts of speech, one identical form in their paradigms:

# bean, n.

been, v. (P. Part. of to be)

• partial lexical Hs – the same part of speech, identical only in corresponding forms:

# to can (canned, canned) - (I) can (could)

Walter Skeat classified homonyms according to their spelling and sound forms and he pointed out three groups:

1. perfect homonyms that is words identical in sound and spelling

2. homographs, that is words with the same spelling but pronounced differently

3. homophones that is words pronounced identically but spelled differently