Homonymy.

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

There are three types of homonyms:

1) homonyms which are identical in sound but different in spelling – homophones. F.e.: bear – bare; night – knight.

2) identical spelling but different sound form – homographs.

3) identical in sound and in spelling – perfect homonyms. F.e.: spring (весна) – spring (пружина) – spring (родник).

There are other classifications. One of them was developed by Смирницкий. He added one more criteria to sound form and spelling – grammatical meaning. He subdivided perfect homonyms into two types:

1) perfect homonyms identical in spelling, sound and grammatical form. F.e.: spring (весна) – spring (пружина) – spring (родник).

2) homoforms – they coincide in spelling and sound but different in grammatical meaning. F.e.: empty – to empty; work – to work.

Sources of homonymy:

1) split of polysemy (распад полисемии). F.e.: pupil.

2) levelling of the grammar inflexions

3) word-forming processes

3.1 suffixation. F.e: reader.

3.2 shortening. F.e.: biology and biography – bio.

3.3 conversion. F.e.: empty – to empty; water – to water.

4) homonyms can appear in the language accidentally when two words coincide in their development. F.e.: race (гонка, from French) – race (раса, from Norwegian).

5) borrowings

Semantic contrastives.

There are three types of semantic contrastives:

1) antonymy (антонимия)

2) converseness (конверсивность)

3) complimentarity (комплементарность)

Antonyms are words which belong to the same part of speech and are identical in style but express contrary or contradictory notions.

Classification of antonyms by Никитин:

1) absolute and derivational

Absolute antonyms have different roots. Derivational antonyms have the same root but different affixes.

F.e.: absolute: good – bad; derivational: to understand – to misunderstand.

2) qualitative and quantitative

In case of quantitative antonymy two words are characterized by one feature but different quantity of it. F.e.: light – heavy (the feature is weight); tall – short (the feature is height).

In case of qualitative antonymy we have different features, different qualities. F.e.: good – bad; to love – to hate.

3) contrary and contradictory

Contrary antonyms always have a middle terms. F.e.: cold – hot (middle – warm, etc.).

Contradictory antonyms don’t have a middle term between them. F.e.: dead – alive; single – married.

4) intensional and extensional / incompatibles

Extensional / incompatibles antonyms. They don’t have lexical meaning proper and require further specification. They exist in the language only together with their antonyms. F.e. afternoon – not afternoon; red – not red; round – not round.

Classification by Кубрякова, Коцнельсон:

1) qualitative they call privative and quantitative they call equipollent

2) contrary they call binary and contradictory they call gradual

Conversives.

Converseness is a type of semantic opposition which is based on describing one and the same situation from different angles, from the point of view of different participants of the situation and their roles.

F.e.: to buy – to sell; to give – to take; left - right.

Sometimes conversives are called mirror-image relationship.

Classification of conversives:

1) lexical conversives – they are formed from different roots. F.e.: to buy – to sell.

2) morphological conversives – formed from the same root. F.e.: interesting – interested; worrying – worried.

3) grammatical conversives – based on the opposition between active and passive forms. F.e. to write – to be written.

4) conversives in which the oppositeness of meaning is realized within the semantics of one and the same word. F.e.: to burn – поджигать и гореть; to smell; to taste.

Complimentaries.

Complimentarity is the type of semantic opposition in which the denial of one means the assertion of the other and v.v. It is the type of oppositeness which is based on “yes/no”-decision.

F.e.: male – female; boy – girl; married – single.

Complimentaries are not gradeable.

Antonyms do not contradict each other, but Complimentaries always do.

F.e.: A small elephant is a large animal. – it is possible. / A male elephant is a female animal. – it is not possible.

Polysemy.

Polysemy is the plurality of meanings. Polysemy exists in the language but not in speech. The meaning of a word in speech is always predetermined by the context, all unnecessary meanings are cancelled and the meaning of the word is clear.

Three types of polysemy:

1) radiation (радиальная). In case of radiation the first meaning is in the center and all other meanings are formed from it.

F.e.: face. In the center – “the front part of human head”. Meanings formed from the center: “face of the clock”; “face of the card”; “face of the company”.

2) concatenation / chain polysemy (цепочечная). Secondary meanings develop like a chain. Sometimes it is very difficult to trace the last meaning to the first one.

F.e.: crust. Heart, outer part of bread → Heart, outer part of anything → Hard layer of a soft snow → A gloomy person → Impudence.

3) mixed type (смешанная). This type is the most common.

F.e.: to dress.

The first center – “to cover the body”. Meanings formed from this center: “We don’t dress for dinner nowadays”; “The princess is dressed by the best designers”; “to dress the ballet”; “to dress the wound”.

The second center - “to get smb ready for smth”. Meanings formed from this center: “to dress smb’s hair” (уложить); “to dress a chicken” (выпотрошить); “to dress a horse” (почистить); “to dress a salad” (добавить специй); “to dress soldiers” (проводить смотр войск); “to dress leather” (обрабатывать кожу); “to dress stone” (делать огранку).