Homonyms: words of the same form

Раздел 4 Омонимия

Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in one of these aspects, but different in their meaning.

E. g. bank, n. — a shore

bank, n. — an institution for receiving, lending, ex­changing, and safeguarding money

ball, n. — a sphere; any spherical body ball, n. — a large dancing party

English vocabulary is rich in such pairs and even groups of words. Their identical forms are mostly accidental: the majority of homo­nyms coincided due to phonetic changes which they suffered during their development.

If synonyms and antonyms can be regarded as the treasury of the language's expressive resources, homonyms are of no interest in this respect, and one cannot expect them to be of particular value for communication. Metaphorically speaking, groups of synonyms and pairs of antonyms are created by the vocabulary system with a par­ticular purpose whereas homonyms are accidental creations, and therefore purposeless.

In the process of communication they are more of an encum­brance, leading sometimes to confusion and misunderstanding. Yet it is this very characteristic which makes them one of the most impor­tant sources of popular humour.

The pun is a joke based upon the play upon words of similar form but different meaning (i. e. on homonyms) as in the following:

"A tailor guarantees to give each of his customers a perfect fit."

(The joke is based on the homonyms: I. fit, n. — perfectly fitting clothes; II. fit, n. — a nervous spasm.)

Homonyms which are the same in sound and spelling (as the ex­amples given in the beginning of this chapter) are traditionally termed homonyms proper.

The following joke is based on a pun which makes use of another type of homonyms:

"Waiter!" "Yes, sir." "What's this?" "It's bean soup, sir."

"Never mind what it has been. I want to know what it is now."

Bean, n. and been, Past Part, of to be are phones. As the example shows they are the same in sound but different in spelling. Here are some more examples of homophones: night, n. — knight, n.; piece, n. — peace, n.; scent, n. — cent, n. — sent, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to send); rite, n. — to write, v. — right, adj.; sea, n. — to see, v. — С [si:] (the name of a letter).

The third type of homonyms is called homographs. These are words which are the same in spelling but different in sound.

E.g. to bow [bau], v. to incline the head or body in salutation a flexible strip of bow

n. wood for propelling arrows

to lead [li:d],v, to conduct on the way, go before to show the way

- a heavy, rather soft metal

to pull apart or in pieces by force

lead [led], n, to

tear [teq], v.

tear [tie], n.a drop of the fluid secreted by the lacrinial glands of the eye.

 

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.

Night and knight, for instance, were not homonyms in Old English as the initial k in the second word was pronounced, and not dropped as it is in its modern sound form: О.Е. kniht (cf. О.Е. niht). A more complicated change of form brought together another pair of homo­nyms: to knead (О.Е. cnedan) and to need (О.Е. neodian).

In Old English the verb to write had the form writan, and the ad­jective right had the forms reht, riht. The noun sea descends from the Old English form ss, and the verb to see from О. Е. seon. The noun work and the verb to work also had different forms in Old English: wyrkean and weork respectively.

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. So, in the group of homo­nyms rite, n. — to write, v. — right, adj. the second and third words are of native origin whereas rite is a Latin borrowing (< Lat. ritus). In the pair piece, n. — peace, п., the first originates from O.F. pais, and the second from O.F. (< Gaulish) pettia. Bank, n. ("shore") is a native word, and bank, n. ("a financial institution") is an Italian borrowing. Fair, adj. (as in a fair deal, it's not fair) is native, and fair, n. ("a gath­ering of buyers and sellers") is a French borrowing. Match, n. ("a game; a contest of skill, strength") is native, and match, n. ("a slender short piece of wood used for producing fire") is a French borrowing.

Word-building also contributes significantly to the growth of ho­monymy, and the most important type in this respect is undoubtedly conversion. Such pairs of words as comb, n. — to comb, v., pale, adj.

to pale, v., to make, v. — make, n. are numerous in the vocabulary. 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. [12]

Shortening is a further type of word-building which increases the number of homonyms. E.g. fan, n. in the sense of "an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc." is a shorten­ing produced from fanatic. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing fan, n. which denotes an implement for waving lightly to produce a cool current of air. The noun rep, n. denoting a kind of fabric (cf. with the R. репс) has three homonyms made by shortening: rep, n. (< reper­tory), rep, n. (< representative), rep, n. (< reputation)’, all the three are informal words.

During World War II girls serving in the Women's Royal Naval Service (an auxiliary of the British Royal Navy) were jokingly nick­named Wrens (informal). This neologistic formation made by short­ening has the homonym wren, n. "a small bird with dark brown plumage barred with black" (R. крапивник).

Words made by sound-imitation can also form pairs of homonyms with other words: e. g. bang, n. ("a loud, sudden, explosive noise") — bang, n. ("a fringe of hair combed over the forehead"). Also: mew, n. ("the sound a cat makes") — mew, n. ("a sea gull") — mew, n. ("a pen in which poultry is fattened") — mews ("small terraced houses in Central London").

The 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: a find < to find.)

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 split polysemy.

From what has been said in the previous chapters about polyse­mantic words, it should have become clear that the semantic structure of a polysemantic word presents a system within which all its con­stituent meanings are held together by logical associations. In most cases, the function of the arrangement and the unity is determined by one of the meanings (e. g. the meaning "flame" in the noun fire). If this meaning happens to disappear from the word's semantic structure, associations between the rest of the meanings may be severed, the semantic structure loses its unity and falls into two or more parts which then become accepted as independent lexical units. Let us consider the history of three homonyms: board, n. — a long and thin piece of timber board, n. — daily meals, esp. as provided for pay, e. g. room and board board, n. — an official group of persons who direct or supervise some activity, e. g. a board of directors.

It is clear that the meanings of these three words are in no way as­sociated with one another. Yet, most larger dictionaries still enter a meaning of board that once held together all these other meanings "table". It developed from the meaning "a piece of timber" by trans­ference based on contiguity (association of an object and the material from which it is made). The meanings "meals" and "an official group of persons" developed from the meaning "table", also by transference based on contiguity: meals are easily associated with a table on which they are served; an official group of people in authority are also likely to discuss their business round a table.

Nowadays, however, the item of furniture, on which meals are served and round which boards of directors meet, is no longer de­noted by the word board but by the French Norman borrowing table, and board in this meaning, though still registered by some dictionar­ies, can very well be marked as archaic as it is no longer used in common speech. That is why, with the intrusion of the borrowed ta­ble, the word board actually lost its corresponding meaning. But it was just that meaning which served as a link to hold together the rest of the constituent parts of the word's semantic structure. With its di­minished role as an element of communication, its role in the seman­tic structure was also weakened. The speakers almost forgot that board had ever been associated with any item of furniture, nor could they associate the concepts of meals or of a responsible committee with a long thin piece of timber (which is the oldest meaning of board). Consequently, the semantic structure of board was split into three units.

It should be stressed, however, that split polysemy as a source of homonyms is not accepted by some scholars. It is really difficult sometimes to decide whether a certain word has or has not been sub­jected to the split of the semantic structure and whether we are deal­ing with different meanings of the same word or with homonyms, for the criteria are subjective and imprecise. The imprecision is recorded in the data of different dictionaries which often contradict each other on this very issue, so that board is represented as two homonyms in Professor V. K. Muller's dictionary, as three homonyms in Pro­fessor V. D. Arakin's and as one and the same word in Hornby's dictionary.

Spring also receives different treatment. V. K. Muller's and Hornby's dictionaries acknowledge but two homonyms: I. a season of the year, П. a) the act of springing, a leap, b) a place where a stream of water comes up out of the earth; and some other meanings, whereas V. D. Arakin's dictionary presents the three homonyms as given above.

Classification of Homonyms

The subdivision of homonyms into homonyms proper, homo­phones and homographs is certainly not precise enough and does not reflect certain important features of these words, and, most important of all, their status as parts of speech. The examples given in the be­ginning of this chapter show that homonyms may belong both to the same and to different categories of parts of speech. Obviously, a clas­sification of homonyms should reflect this distinctive feature. Also, the paradigm of each word should be considered, because it has been observed that the paradigms of some homonyms coincide completely, and of others only partially.

Accordingly, Professor A. I. Smirnitsky classified homonyms into two large classes: I. full homonyms, II. partial homonyms.

Full lexical homonyms are words which represent the same cate­gory of parts of speech and have the same paradigm.

E. g. / match, n. — a game, a contest

I match, n. — a short piece of wood used for I producing fire

wren, n. — a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service wren, n. — a bird

Partial homonyms are subdivided into three subgroups:

A. Simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words which belong to the same category of parts of speech. Their paradigms have one identical form, but it is never the same form, as will be seen from the examples.

E. g. / (to) found, v.

\ found, v. (Past Indef., Past Part. of to ( find)

/ to lay, v.

I lay, v. (Past Indef. of to lie)

[ to bound, v.

I bound, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to

( bind)

B. Complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words of different categories of parts of speech which have one identical form in their paradigms.

E. g. f rose, n.

rose, v. (Past Indef. of to rise)

maid, n.

made, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to make) left, adj.

left, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to leave) bean, n.

been, v. (Past Part, of to be) one, num.

won, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to win)

C. Partial lexical homonyms are words of the same category of parts of speech which are identical only in their corresponding forms.

E. g. \ to lie (lay, lain), v. to lie (lied, lied), v.

to hang (hung, hung), v. to hang (hanged, hanged), v.

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