Дипломная работа: Homonymy in the book of Lewis Carroll "Alice in Wonderland"

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: O. E. kniht (cf. O.E. niht). A more complicated change of form brought together another pair of homonyms: to knead ( O.E. cnedah) and to need (O.E. neodiah).

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 sae, and the verb to see from O.E. seon. The noun work and the verb to work also had different forms in Old Enhlish: 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,n., the first originates from Q.'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,ad]. - to pale, v. To make ,v.- make,n. are numerous in the same in sound and spelling but refer to different categories of parts of speech, are called lexico-grammatical homonyms.

Shortening is a further type of word-building which increases