7 Homonymy in English. Polysemy vs homonymy

Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in one of these aspects, but different in their meaning. When analyzing different cases of homonymy we find that some words are homonymous in all their forms, i.e. we observe full homonymy of the paradigms of 2 or more different words. It is easily observed that only some of the word-forms are homonymous, whereas others are not. In such cases we cannot speak about of homonymous words but only of homonymy of individual word-forms or of partial homonymy. The type of meaning: 1) lexical. 2) lexico-grammatical. Lexico –grammatical homonyms aren’t homogeneous. 3) grammatical. Homographs – words identical in spelling, but different both in their sound – form and meaning. Homophones – identical in sound – form but different in spelling & in the meaning. Perfect homonyms – identical in spelling & in sound-form but different in meaning. Sources of Homonyms One source of homonyms has already been mentioned: phonetic changes which words undergo in the course of their historical development. As a result of such changes, two or more words which were formerly pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms. Borrowing is another source of homonyms. A borrowed word may, in the final stage of its phonetic adaptation, duplicate in form either a native word or another borrowing. Word-building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, and the most important type in this respect is undoubtedly conversion.. 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. Shortening is a further type of word-building which increases the number of homonyms. Words made by sound-imitation can also form pairs of homonyms with other wordsThe above-described sources of homonyms have one important feature in common. In all the mentioned cases the homonyms developed from two or more different words, and their similarity is purely accidental. (In this respect, conversion certainly presents an exception for in pairs of homonyms formed by conversion one word of the pair is produced from the other: -converging sound development Now we come to a further source of homonyms which differs essentially from all the above cases. 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. This type of formation of homonyms is called diverging расходящийся meaning development This happened, for example, in the case of Modern English flower and flour which originally were one word meaning ‘the flower’ and ‘the finest part of wheat’.

Polysemy vs homonymy

The most debatable problem of homonymy is the demarcation line “between homonymy and polysemy, i.e. between different meanings of one word and the meanings of two or more phonemically different words.If homonymy is viewed diachronically then all cases of sound convergence of two or more words may be safely regarded as cases of homonymy can be traced back to two etymologically different words. The cases of semantic divergence, however, are more doubtful. 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 asunder all ties between the meanings and results in the appearance of two separate words. Synchronically the differentiation between homonymy and polysemy is as a rule 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.The criteria used in the synchronic analysis of homonymy are: the semantic criterion of related or unrelated meanings; the criterion of spelling; the criterion of distribution. There are cases of lexical homonymy when none of the criteria enumerated above is of any avail. In such cases the demarcation line between polysemy and homonymy is rather fluid. The problem of discriminating between polysemy and homonymy in theoretical linguistics is closely connected with the problem of the basic unit at the semantic level of analysis.