Introduction 

    The theme of this work sounds as following: “Homonyms in modern English”. This work can be characterized by the following:

    The actuality of the work caused by several important points. We seem to say that the appearance of new, homonymic meanings is one of the main trends in development of Modern English, especially in its colloquial layer, which, in its turn at high degree is supported by development of modern informational technologies and simplification of alive speech. So the significance of our work can be proved by the following reasons:

a) Studying of homonyms of words is one of the developing branches of lexicology nowadays.

b) Homonyms reflect the general trend of simplification of a language.

c) Being a developing branch of linguistics it requires a special attention of teachers to be adequated to their specialization in English.

d) The investigation of homonyms and their differentiation with polysemantic words is not being still investigated in the sufficient degree and this problem is still waiting for its investigator. This work is one another attempt to investigate this problem.

    Having based upon the actuality of the theme we are able to formulate the general goals of our work:

1. To study, analyze, and sum up the specialized literature;
2. To mention all the major linguists’ opinions concerning the subject studied;
3. To give the definition of concept "homonymy";
4. To study all possible classifications of homonyms;
5. To get acquainted with different sources of homonyms;
6. To demonstrate the problems, which are connected with homonymy;

 

    Having said about the linguists studied the material before we can mention that this work was based upon the investigations made by a number of well known lexicologists as A.I.Smirnitsky, I.V.Arnold, R.S.Ginzburg, S.S.Khidekel, G. Y. Knyazeva, A. A. Sankin, G.B.Antrushina, O.V. Afanaseva, N.N.Morozova, V.V. Vinogradov, and some others.

    The general structure of our work looks as follows:

    The work is composed onto three major parts: introduction, main part and conclusion. . Each part has its subdivision onto the specific thematically items. There are two points in the introductory part: the first item tells about the general content of the work while the other gives us the general explanation of the lexicological phenomenon of homonymy in a language. The main part bears four chapters itself which, in their turn, are subdivided onto several specific items. The conclusion of the work sums up the ideas discussed in the main part. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1. Determination of Homonymy

    Two or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning, distribution and in many cases origin are called homonyms. The term is derived from Greek “homonymous” (homos – “the same” and onoma – “name”) and thus expresses very well the sameness of name combined with the difference in meaning.¹

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.²

    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.

    There is an obvious difference between the meanings of the symbol fast in such combinations as run fast ‘quickly’ and stand fast ‘firmly’. The difference is even more pronounced if we observe cases where fast is a noun or a verb as in the following proverbs:  

“A clean fast is better than a dirty breakfast;

Who feasts till he is sick, must fast till he is well.” 

      Fast as an isolated word, therefore, may be regarded as a variable that can assume several different values depending on the conditions of usage, or, in other words distribution. All the possible values of each linguistic sign are listed in the dictionaries. It is the duty of lexicographers to define the boundaries of each word, i.e. to differentiate homonyms and to unite variants deciding in each case whether the different meanings belong to the same polysemantic word or whether there are grounds to treat them as two or more separate words identical in form. In speech, however, as a rule only one of all the possible values is determined by the context, so that no ambiguity may normally arise. There is no danger, for instance, that the listener would wish to substitute the meaning ‘quick’ into the sentence: It is absurd to have hard and fast rules about anything³, or think that fast rules here are ‘rules of diet’.  Combinations when two or more meanings are possible are either deliberate puns, or result from carelessness. Both meanings of liver, i.e. ‘a living person’ and ‘the organ that secretes bile’ are, for instance, intentionally present in the following play upon words:  

1. “Is life worth living?” ”It depends upon the liver.”

2. “What do you do with the fruit?”  “We eat what we can, and what we can’t eat we can” 

    Very seldom can ambiguity of this kind interfere with understanding. The following example is unambiguous, although the words back and part have several homonyms, and maid and heart are polysemantic: 

«Maid of Athens, ere we part,

Give, oh give me back my heart»⁴ 

    Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. In the list of 2540 homonyms given in the “Oxford English Dictionary” 89% are monosyllabic words and only 9.1% are words of two syllables. From the viewpoint of their morphological structure, they are mostly one-morpheme words.

2. Classifications of Homonyms

1. The standard way of classification (given by I.V. Arnold)

 

    The most widely accepted classification is that recognising homonyms proper, homophones and homographs. Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling, like fast and liver above. Other examples are: back n ‘part of the body’; back adv ‘away from the front’; back v ‘go back’; ball n ‘a round object used in games’; ball n ‘a gathering of people for dancing’; bark n ‘the noise made by a dog’; bark v ‘to utter sharp explosive cries’; bark n ‘the skin of a tree’; bark n ‘a sailing ship’; base n ‘bottom’; base v ‘build or place upon’; base a ‘mean’; bay n ‘part of the sea or lake filling wide-mouth opening of land’; bay n ‘recess in a house or a room’; bay v ‘bark’; bay n ‘the European laurel’. The important point is that homonyms are distinct words: not different meanings within one word. Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning: air-heir; arms-alms; buy-by; him-hymn; knight-night; not-knot; piece-peace; rain-reign; scent-cent; steel-steal; storey-story; write-right and others. In the sentence The play-wright on my right thinks it right that some conventional rite should symbolise the right of every man to write as he pleases the sound complex [rait] is a noun, an adjective, an adverb and a verb, has four different spellings and six different meanings. The difference may be confined to the use of a capital letter as in bill and Bill, in the following example: “How much is my milk bill? “Excuse me, Madam, but my name is John. On the other hand, whole sentences may be homophonic: The sons raise meat-The sun’s rays meet. To understand these one needs a wider context. If you hear the second in the course of a lecture in optics, you will understand it without thinking of the possibility of the first. Homographs аrе words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling: bow [bou]-bow [bau]; lead [li:d]-lead [led]; row [rou]-row [rau]; sewer [’souэ]-sewer [sjuэ]; tear [tiэ]-tear [tea]; wind [wind]-wind [waind] and many more.

    It has been often argued that homographs constitute a phenomenon that should be kept apart from homonymy as the object of linguistics is sound language. This viewpoint can hardly be accepted. Because of the effects of education and culture written English is a generalised national form of expression. An average speaker does not separate the written and oral form. On the contrary he is more likely to analyse the words in terms of letters than in terms of phonemes with which he is less familiar. That is why a linguist must take into consideration both the spelling and the pronunciation of words when analysing cases of identity of form and diversity of content.

    Various types of classification for homonyms proper have been suggested. A comprehensive system may be worked out if we are guided by the theory of oppositions and in classifying the homonyms take into consideration the difference or sameness in their lexical and grammatical meaning, paradigm and basic form. For the sake of completeness we shall consider this problem in terms of the same mapping technique used for the elements of vocabulary system connected with the word sound. As both form and meaning can be further subdivided, the combination of distinctive features by which two words are compared becomes more complicated — there are four features: the form may be phonetical and graphical, the meaning — lexical and grammatical, a word may also have a paradigm of grammatical forms different from the basic form.

    The distinctive features shown in the Appendix I are lexical meaning (different denoted by A, or nearly the same denoted by A), grammatical meaning (different denoted by B, or same by B), paradigm (different denoted by C, or same denoted by C), and basic form (different D and same D).

    The term “nearly same lexical meaning” must not be taken too literally. It means only that the corresponding members of the opposition have some important invariant semantic components in common. “Same grammatical meaning” implies that both members belong to the same part of speech. Same paradigm comprises also cases when there is only one word form, i.e. when the words are unchangeable. Inconsistent combinations of features are crossed out in the table. It is, for instance, impossible for two words to be identical in all word forms and different in basic forms, or for two homonyms to show no difference either in lexical or grammatical meaning, because in this case they are not homonyms. That leaves twelve possible classes. They are:

    ABCD. Members of the opposition light n ‘the contrary of darkness’-light a ‘not heavy’ are different in lexical and grammatical meaning, have different paradigms but the same basic form. The class of partial homonymy is very numerous. A further subdivision might take into consideration the parts of speech to which the members belong, namely the oppositions of noun-verb, adjective- verb, n-adjective, etc.

    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 meaning 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. ⁵

2.2. Classification given by A.I. Smirnitsky     

    This classification 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 their show those homonyms may belong to both to the same and to different categories of parts of speech. Obviously, the classification of homonyms should reflect this distinctive feather. 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 classifieds homonyms into two large classes:

1. full homonyms;
2. partial homonyms.

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

    Match n – a game, a contest;

    Match n – a short piece of wood used for 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 only one identical form, but it is never the same form, as will be soon from the examples:

    (to) found v;

      Found v (past indef., past part. of to find).

    (to) lay v;

      Lay v (past indef. of to lie).

    (to) bound v;

      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 identical form in their paradigms.

    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).

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

    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).⁶ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

3. Sources of Homonyms

 

    There are a lot of different sources of homonyms in English language, so let’s talk about some of them, which are the most important ones, due to my point of view.   

    One source of homonyms is 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).