Sources of homonyms in English

One source of homonyms is phonetic changeswhich 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: OE. kmht (cf. OE niht). A more complicated change of form brought together another pair of homonyms: to knead (OE cnedan) and to need (OE neodian).

conversion which serves the creating of grammatical homonyms, e.g. iron -*to iron, work -* to work, etc.;

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 has three homonyms made by shortening:

repertory -> rep, n.,

representative -* rep, n.,

reputation -* rep, n.

Borrowingis 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:

ritus Lat. -* rite n. - write v. - right adj.;

pais OFr -* piece, n. - pettia OFr -> peace n.;

vitim Lat. - wrong, an immoral habit -* vice Eng. - evil conduct;

vilis Lat. - spiral -* vice Eng. - apparatus with strong jaws

in which things can be hold tightly;

vice Lat. - instead of, in place of -» vice - president Eng.

Words made by sound-imitationcan also form pairs of homonyms with other words:

bang, n. "a loud, sudden, explosive noise" - bang, n. "a fringe of hair combed over the forehead".

mew, n. "the sound a cat makes" - mew, n. "a sea gul" - mew, n. "a pen in which poul­try is fattened" - mews "small terraced houses in Central London".

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. As soon as a derived meaning is no longer felt to be connected with the primary meaning at all polysemy breaks up and separate words come into existence, quite different in meaning from the basic word but identical in spelling: bar - 6anKa;

bar - 6ap;

bar -

This type of formation of homonyms is called split polysemy.

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. 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.

3. Definition of the term “synonyms”

Synonymy are two or more words of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech, having a similar denotative component of the lexical meaning, interchangeable at least in some context, but different in sound-form, shades of meaning, emotional charge, valency and stylistic reference.

Synonyms are traditionally described as words different in sound-form but identical or similar in meaning. This definition has been severely criticised on many points. Firstly, it seems impossible to speak of identical or similar meaning of words as such as this part of the definition cannot be applied to polysemantic words. It is inconceivable that polysemantic words could be synonymous in all their meanings. The verb look, e.g., is usually treated as a synonym of see, watch, observe, etc., but in another of its meanings it is not synonymous with this group of words but rather with the verbs seem, appear (cf. to look at smb and to look pale). The number of synonymic sets of a polysemantic word tends as a rule to be equal to the number of individual meanings the word possesses.

Thus, synonyms are words only similar but not identical in meaning. This definition is correct but vague. E. g. horse and animal are also semantically similar but not synonymous. A more precise linguistic definition should be based on a workable notion of the semantic structure of the word and of the complex nature of every separate meaning in a polysemantic word.

One of the ways of discriminating between different meanings of a word is the interpretation of these meanings in terms of their synonyms, e.g. the two meanings of the adjective handsome are synonymously interpreted as handsome — ‘beautiful’ (usually about men) and handsome — ‘considerable, ample’ (about sums, sizes, etc.).

Secondly, it seems impossible to speak of identity or similarity of lexical meaning as a whоle as it is only the denotational component that may be described as identical or similar. If we analyse words that are usually considered synonymous, e.g. to die, to pass away; to begin, to commence, etc., we find that the connotational component or, to be more exact, the stylistic reference of these words is entirely different and it is only the similarity of the denotational meaning that makes them synonymous. The words, e.g. to die, to walk, to smile, etc., may be considered identical as to their stylistic reference or emotive charge, but as there is no similarity of denotational meaning they are never felt as synonymous words.

Thirdly, it does not seem possible to speak of identity of meaning as a criterion of synonymity since identity of meaning is very rare even among monosemantic words. In fact, cases of complete synonymy are very few and are, as a rule, confined to technical nomenclatures where we can find monosemantic terms completely identical in meaning as, for example, spirant and fricative in phonetics. Words in synonymic sets are in general differentiated because of some element of opposition in each member of the set. The word handsome, e.g., is distinguished from its synonym beautiful mainly because the former implies the beauty of a male person or broadly speaking only of human beings, whereas beautiful is opposed to it as having no such restrictions in its meaning.

Thus it seems necessary to modify the traditional definition and to formulate it as follows: synonyms are words different in sound-form but similar in their denotational meaning or meanings. Synonymous relationship is observed only between similar denotational meanings of phonemically different words.