Homonymy

Of all the saws I ever saw saw, I never saw a saw that saw like that saw saw.

From out of the three types of interrelations between the separate units of the lexical systems which are synonymy, antonymy and homonymy, the latter may seem least interesting and deep from the viewpoint of the linguistics, because homonymy may only be taken as a mere coincidence of units in their outer form. However, a deeper view of homonymy reveals quite a number of problems, which are:

1. interrelations and difference between polysemy and homonymy, that is the search of the point where polysemy stops and homonymy starts;

2. the “distance” between the meanings of two homonyms, which may be interrelated, interdependent and historically linked together;

3. the ways homonyms come into being and the reasons they are preserved in the language;

4. the reasons why homonyms not only exist, but function in one national language;

5. the stylistic value of the usage of homonyms.

Each sound or letter group in a status of a word possesses only one meaning, and each one meaning is associated with only one sound or letter group. But these one to one relationship is never actualized in natural languages, where several related but different meanings are associated with the same group of sounds within one part of speech. If such meanings are interrelated, we call the word polysemantic; when the meanings are unrelated, then we have homonyms. When two or more different forms are associated with the same, nearly the same or analogous meanings, then such words are called synonyms.

Homonymy in English as compared to other languages is particularly well-developed and frequent, especially among monosyllabic words.

We eat what we can and we can (консервируем) what we can’t.

There have been several attempts to classify homonyms, from which the following classification is most commonly accepted:

1. homonyms proper – words identical in both pronunciation and spelling (e.g. fast (быстро), fast (поститься); ball (мяч), ball (бал)); can be further subdivided according to their feature of difference or likeness in their

   1. lexical meaning,

   2. grammar meaning.

   3. grammar paradigm,

   4. basic form;

2. homophones – words identical in pronunciation, but not spelling (air – heir, by – buy – bye, rain – reign, him – hymn);

3. homographs – words with the same spelling but different pronunciation (lead – lead, read – read, wind – wind, tear – tear, row – row, bow – bow).

spring – прыжок; пружина; источник (воды); весна

All these words are only different in their lexical meanings, but identical grammatically, as they all belong to the same class of nouns.

before – до; раньше

Here we have different grammar meanings against the background of very similar semantic characteristics.

brother – brothers, brethren

The same lexical and grammar meanings, but different grammar paradigms.

The cases of full incoincidence are also numerous. E.g. to can be a preposition or may be used as a particle before the Infinitive.

A special case of homonymy is the words with an accentual shift in their pronunciation. E.g. export and (to) export, record and (to) record, conflict and (to) conflict, etc. The difference in the sound images of such pairs is grammatically relevant, because this or that type of pronunciation refers the form to one or another part of speech.

To understand the phenomenon of the homonymy better, we should show the cases, where homonymy ceases to be. Thus we can’t consider homonyms the following words: petrol and patrol – these are not homonyms, because they do not reveal similarity in either sound, or letter form, or grammar, or lexical meanings. Another example is air, ear and year.