Homonymy in English

 

Difference and Identity in Words
A Different lexical meaning			A1 Nearly same lexical meaning
B Different grammatical meaning	Partial Homonymy		Patterned Homonymy		D1 Same basic forms
	light, -s n light,-er,-est a flat, -s n flat,-er,-est a	for prp for cj	before prp before adv before cj	eye, -s n eye, -s, -ed, -ing v
	might n may-might v			thought n thought v (Past Indef. Tense of think)	D Different basic form
B1 Same grammatical meaning	axis, axes n axe – axes n but–butted v butt-butted v			Synonyms	D Different basic form
	lie-lay-lain v lie-lied-lied v	Full Homonymy spring,-s n spring,-s n spring,-s n	Polysemy Variants of the same polysemantic word
	C Different paradigm	C1 Same paradigm or no changes		C Different paradigm

 

 

ABCD. Same as above, only not both members are in their basic form. The noun (here might ‘power’) is in its basic form, the singular, but the verb may will coincide with it only in the Past Tense. This lack of coincidence between basic forms is not frequent, so only few examples are possible. Compare also bit n ‘a small piece’ and bit (the Past Indefinite Tense and Participle II of bite).

ABCD. Contains pairs of words belonging to the same part of speech, different in their basic form but coinciding in some oblique form, e. g. in the plural, or in the case of verbs, in the Past Tense. Axe — axes, axis — axes. The type is rare.

ABCD. Different lexical meaning, same basic form, same grammatical meaning and different paradigm: lie — lay — lain and lie — lied — lied. Not many cases belong to this group.

ABCD. Represents pairs different in lexical and grammatical meaning but not in paradigm, as these are not changeable form words. Examples: for prp contrasted to for cj.

ABCD. The most typical case of full homonymy accepted by everybody and exemplified in every textbook. Different lexical meanings, but the homonyms belong to the same part of speech: spring₁ n ‘a leap’ :: spring₂ ‘a source’ :: spring₃ n ‘the season in which vegetation begins’.

ABCD. Patterned homonymy. Differs from the previous (i.e. ABCD) in the presence of some common component in the lexical meaning of the members, some lexical invariant: before prp, before adv, before cj, all express some priority in succession. This type of opposition is regular among form words. .

ABCD. Pairs showing maximum identity. But as their lexical meaning is only approximately the same, they may be identified as variants of one polysemantic word.

ABCD. Contains all the cases due to conversion: eye n : : eye v. The members differ in grammatical meaning and paradigm. This group is typical of patterned homonymy. Examples of such noun-to-verb or verb-to-noun homonymy can be augmented almost indefinitely. The mean-ing of the second element can always be guessed if the first is known.

ABCD. Pairs belonging to different parts of speech and coinciding in some of the forms. Their similarity is due to a common root, as in thought n : thought v (the Past Indefinite Tense of think).

ABCD. Similarity in both lexical and grammatical meaning combined with difference in form is characteristic of synonyms and hyponyms.

ABCD. The group is not numerous and comprises chiefly cases of double plural with a slight change in meaning such as brother — brothers : : brother — brethren.

It goes without saying that this is a model that gives a general scheme. Actually a group of homonyms may contain members belonging to different groups in this classification. Take, for example, fell₁ (n) ‘animal’s hide or skin with the hair’; fell₂ (n) ‘hill’ and also ‘a stretch of North-English moorland’; fell₃ (a) ‘fierce’ (poet.); fell₄ (v) ‘to cut down trees’ and as a noun ‘amount of timber cut’; fell₅ (the Past Indefinite Tense of the verb fall). This group may be broken into pairs, each of which will fit into one of the above described divisions. Thus, fell₁ : : fell₂ may be characterised as ABCD, fell₁ : : fell₄ as ABCD and fell₄ : : fell₅ as ABCD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3. Homonymy And Polysemy

 

3.1. Homonymy treated synchronically

The synchronic treatment of English homonyms brings to the forefront a set of problems of paramount importance for different branches of applied linguistics: lexicography, foreign language teaching and machine translation. These problems are: the criteria distinguishing homonymy from polysemy, the formulation of rules for recognizing different meanings of the same homonym in terms of distribution, and the description of difference between patterned and irregular homonymy. It is necessary to emphasize that all these problems are connected with difficulties created by homonymy in understanding the message by the reader or listener, not with formulating one's thoughts; they exist for the speaker only in so far as he must construct his speech in a way that would prevent all possible misunderstanding [4, p. 185].

All three problems are so closely interwoven that it is difficult to separate them. So we shall discuss them as they appear for various practical purposes. For a lexicographer it is a problem of establishing word boundaries. It is easy enough to see that match, as in safety matches, is a separate word from the verb match 'to suit'. But he must know whether he is justified in taking into one entry match, as in football match, and match in meet one's match 'one's equal'. Similarly, charge, in charge the gun, charge the man with theft, charge somebody a stiff price can be viewed in several ways.

On the synchronic level, when the difference in etymology is irrelevant, the problem of establishing the criterion for the distinction between different words identical in sound form, and different meanings of the same word becomes hard to solve. The semantic criterion which ultimately is reduced to distinguishing between words that "have nothing in common semantically" and those that "have something in common" and therefore must be taken as one lexical unit, is very vague and hopelessly subjective [7, p.40]. Nevertheless the problem cannot be dropped altogether as upon an efficient arrangement of dictionary entries depends the amount of time spent by the readers in looking up a word: a lexicographer will either save or waste his readers' time and effort.

Actual solutions differ. It is a widely spread practice in English lexicography to combine in one entry words of identical phonetic form showing similarity of lexical meaning or, in other words, revealing a lexical invariant, even if they belong to different parts of speech. In post-war lexicography in our country a different trend has settled. The Anglo-Russian dictionary edited by V. D. Arakin [24, p.387] makes nine separate entries with the word “right” against four items given in the dictionary edited by Hornby [22, p.682].

The truth is that there exists no universal criterion for the distinction between polysemy and homonymy.The etymological criterion, however, may very often lead to distortion of the present-day situation. The English vocabulary of to-day is not a replica of the Old English vocabulary with some additions from borrowing. It is in many respects a different system, and this system will not be revealed if the lexicographer is guided by etymological criteria only.

A more or less simple procedure based on purely synchronic data may be prompted by transformational analysis. It may be called explanatory transformation. It is based on the assumption that if different senses rendered by the same phonetic complex can be defined with the help of an identical kernel word-group, they may be considered sufficiently near to be regarded as variants of the same word; if not, they are homonyms [6, p.101].

Consider the following set of examples:

1. A child's voice is heard.

2. His voice ... was ... annoyingly well-bred.

3. The voice-voicelessness distinction ... sets up some English consonants in opposed pairs...

4. In the voice contrast of active and passive ... the active is the unmarked form.

The first variant (voice₁) may be defined as 'sounds uttered in speaking or singing as characteristic of a particular person', voice₂ as 'mode of uttering sounds in speaking or singing', voice₃ as 'the vibration of the vocal chords in sounds uttered'. So far all the definitions contain one and the same kernel element rendering the invariant common basis of their meaning. It is, however, impossible to use the same kernel element for the meaning present in the fourth example. The corresponding definition is: "Voice — that forms of the verb that expresses the relation of the subject to the action". This failure to satisfy the same explanation formula sets the fourth meaning apart. It may then be considered a homonym to the polysemantic word embracing the first three variants.

The procedure described may remain helpful when the items considered belong to different parts of speech; the verb voice may mean, for example, 'to utter a sound by the aid of the vocal chords'.This brings us to the problem of patterned homonymy, i. e. of the invariant lexical meaning present in homonyms that have developed from one common source and belong to various parts of speech [4, p.186].

The elder generation of English linguists thinks it is quite possible for one and the same word to function as different parts of speech. Such pairs as act (n) — act (v), back (n) — back (v), drive (n) — drive (v) are all treated as one word functioning as different parts of speech. This point of view was severely criticised. It was argued that one and the same word could not belong to different parts of speech simultaneously, because this would contradict the definition of the word as a system of forms.

This viewpoint is not faultless either; if one follows it consistently, one should regard as separate words all cases when words are countable nouns in one meaning and uncountable in another, when verbs can be used transitively and intransitively, etc. In this case hair₁ ‘all the hair that grows on a person’s head’ will be one word, an uncountable noun; whereas ‘a single thread of hair’ will be denoted by another word (hair₂) which, being countable, and thus different in paradigm, cannot be considered the same word. It would be tedious to enumerate all the absurdities that will result from choosing this path. A dictionary arranged on these lines would require very much space in printing and could occasion much wasted time in use. The conclusion therefore is that efficiency in lexicographic work is secured by a rigorous application of etymological criteria combined with formalised procedures of establishing a lexical invariant suggested by synchronic linguistic methods.

As to those concerned with teaching of English as a foreign language, they are also keenly interested in patterned homonymy. The most frequently used words constitute the greatest amount of difficulty, as may be summed up by the following jocular example: I think that this “that” is a conjunction but that that “that” that that man used was a pronoun.

A correct understanding of this peculiarity of contemporary English should be instilled in the pupils from the very beginning, and they should be taught to find their way in sentences where several words have their homonyms in other parts of speech, as in Jespersen’s example: Will change of air cure love? [23, p.404].To show the scope of the problem for the elementary stage a list of homonyms that should be classified as patterned is given below:

Above - prp, adv, a; act - n, v; after - prp, adv, cj; age - n, v; back - n, adv, v; bal - n, v; bank - n, v; before - prp, adv, cj; besides - prp, adv; bill - n, v; box - n, v. The other examples are: by, can, case, close, country, course, cross, direct, draw, drive, even, faint, flat, fly, for, game, general, hard, hide, hold, home, just, kind, last, leave, left, lie, light, like, little, lot, major, march, may, mean, might, mind, miss, part, plain, plane, plate, right, round, sharp, sound, spare, spell, spring, square, stage, stamp, try, type, volume, watch, well, will.

For the most part all these words are cases of patterned lexico-grammatical homonymy taken from the minimum vocabulary of the elementary stage: the above homonyms mostly differ within each group grammatically but possess some lexical invariant. That is to say, act v follows the standard four-part system of forms with a base form act, an s-form (act-s), a Past Indefinite Tense form (acted) and an ing-form (acting) and takes up all syntactic functions of verbs, whereas act (n) can have two forms, act (sing.) and acts (pl.). Semantically both contain the most generalised component rendering the notion of doing something.

Recent investigations have shown that it is quite possible to establish and to formalise the differences in environment, either syntactical or lexical, serving to signal which of the several inherent values is to be ascribed to the variable in a given context. An example of distributional analysis will help to make this point clear.

The distribution of a lexico-semantic variant of a word may be represented as a list of structural patterns in which it occurs and the data on its combining power. Some of the most typical structural patterns for a verb are: N+V+N, N+V+prp+N, N+V+A, N+V+adv, N+ V+to+V and some others. Patterns for nouns are far less studied, but for the present case one very typical example will suffice. This is the structure: article+A+N [4, p.187].

In the following extract from “A Taste of Honey”  by Shelagh Delaney the morpheme laugh occurs three times: I can’t stand people who faugh at other people. They'd get a bigger laugh, if they laughed at themselves.

We recognise laugh used first and last here as a verb, because the formula is N+laugh+prp+N and so the pattern is in both cases N+ V+prp+N. In the beginning of the second sentence laugh is a noun and the pattern is article+A+N.

This elementary example can give a very general idea of the procedure which can be used for solving more complicated problems.

 

3.2. Polysemy and Homonymy: Etymological and Semantic Criteria

One of the most debatable problems in lexicology is the demarcation line between homonymy and polysemy, i.e. between different meanings of one word and the meanings of two homonymous words [9, p.93].

Words borrowed from other languages may through phonetic convergence become homonymous. Old Norse has and French race are homonymous in Modern English (race₁ —'running' and race₂ 'a distinct ethnical stock'). There are four homonymic words in Modern English: sound —’healthy’ was already in Old English homonymous with sound—'a narrow passage of water', though etymologically they are unrelated. Then two more homonymous words appeared in the English language, one comes from Old French son (L. sonus) and denotes 'that which is or may be heard' and the other from the French sunder ‘the surgeon's probe’

The transition from polysemy to homonymy is a gradual process, so it is hardly possible to point out the precise stage at which divergent semantic development tears all ties of etymological kinship and results in the appearance of two separate words. In the case of flower - flour, it is mainly the result of the divergence of graphic forms that gives us grounds to assert that the two meanings which originally made up the semantic structure of one word are now apprehended as belonging to two different words.

Synchronically the differentiation between homonymy and polysemy is wholly based on the semantic criterion. It is usually held that if a connection between the various meanings is apprehended by the speaker, these are to be considered as making up the semantic structure of a polysemantic word, otherwise it is a case of homonymy, not polysemy.

Thus the semantic criterion implies that the difference between polysemy and homonymy is actually reduced to the differentiation between related and unrelated meanings. This traditional semantic criterion does not seem to be reliable, firstly, because various meanings of the same word and the meanings of two or more different words may be equally apprehended by the speaker as synchronically unrelated. For instance, the meaning 'a change in the form of a noun or pronoun' which is usually listed in dictionaries as one of the meanings of case—'something that has happened', 'a question decided in a court of law' seems to be just as unrelated to the meanings of this word as to the meaning of case₂ —'a box, a container', etc. [20, p.108].

Secondly, some of the meanings of homonyms arising from conversion (e.g. seal (n)—seal (v); paper (n)—paper (v) ) are related, so this criterion cannot be applied to a large group of homonymous word-forms in Modern English. This criterion proves insufficient in the synchronic analysis of a number of other borderline cases, e.g. brother—brothers— 'sons of the same parent' and brethren—'fellow members of a religious society'. The meanings may be apprehended as related and then we can speak of polysemy pointing out that the difference in the morphological structure of the plural form reflects the difference of meaning.

Otherwise we may regard this as a case of partial lexical homonymy. The same is true of such cases as hang—hung—hung—'to support or be supported from above' and hang—hanged—hanged—'to put a person to death by hanging' all of which are traditionally regarded as different meanings of one polysemantic word.

It is sometimes argued that the difference between related and unrelated meanings may be observed in the manner in which the meanings of polysemantic words are as a rule relatable. It is observed that different meanings of one word have certain stable relationships which are not to be found between the meanings of two homonymous words [21, p.196]. A clearly perceptible connection, e.g., can be seen in all metaphoric or metonymic meanings of one word (foot of the man— foot of the mountain, loud voice—loud colors, deep well and deep knowledge, etc.).

Such semantic relationships are commonly found in the meanings of one word and are considered to be indicative’  of polysemy. It is also suggested that the semantic connection may be described in terms of such features as, e.g., form and function ( horn of an animal and horn as an instrument), process and result (to run—'move with quick steps' and a run—act of running).Similar relationships, however, are observed between the meanings of two homonymic words, e.g. to run and a run in the stocking.

Moreover in the synchronic analysis of polysemantic words we often find meanings that cannot be related in any way, as, e.g., the meanings of the word case discussed above. Thus the semantic criterion proves not only untenable in theory but also rather vague and because of this impossible in practice as it cannot be used in discriminating between several meanings of one word and the meanings of two different words.

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. From the viewpoint of their morphological structure, they are mostly one-morpheme words.

The English language is rich in homonyms and this phenomenon is the field of great arguments between different lexicologists. The problem of homonyms is still actual nowadays.

Having investigated the phenomenon of homonymy in the English language we performed some important and necessary tasks:

• we became familiar with the definition of homonym.
• we found out the origin of English homonymy.
• various classifications of homonyms were given and fully observed.
• the problems of homonyms in Modern English language were found out and discussed.
• we drew the distinction between homonymy and polysemy.

Though a lot of investigations are held over the phenomenon of English homonymy and a big amount of research works are written, the topic is still open. Nobody can say that the problem of homonymy is finally solved. A number of famous linguists dealt with the problem of homonyms in Modern English and no common ground was found. So the problem of English homonymy is still waiting for its detail investigation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

1.Амосова Н.Н.Этимологические основы словарного состава современного английского языка. – М. : Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз.,1956. — 218 c.

 

2.Антрушина Г. Б., Афанасьева О. В., Морозова Н. Н.

Лексикология английского  языка: Учеб. пособие