Топик: Лекции Л. И. Городнего по лексикологии английского языка

Homophones

Homographs

1. Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling:

1. “Ball” as a round object used in game, “ball” as a gathering of people for dancing;

2. “Bark” v to utter sharp explosive cries; “bark” n is a noise made by dog or a sailing ship, etc.

2. “Bay” v is to bark; “bay” n is a part of the sea or the lake filling wide mouth opening of the land, or the European laurel¹, or гнедая лошадь.

You should remember, that homonyms are distinct words – not different meanings within one word.

2. Homophones are words of the same sound, but of different meaning, for example:

“Air” – “heir”, “arms” – “alms”, “bye” – “buy” – “by”, “him” – “hymn”, “knight” – “night”, “rain” – “reign”, “not” – “knot”, “or” – “ore” – “oar”, “piece” – “peace”, “scent” – “cent”, “steal” – “steel” – “still”, “write” – “right”, “sea” – “see”, “son” – “sun”.

In the sentence: “The play-write on my right thinks it that some conventional rite² should symbolize the right of every man to write as he pleases” the sound complex [rait] is noun, adjective, adverb and verb, has 4 different spellings and 6 different meanings.

The difference may be confined to the use of a capital letter as in “bill” and “Bill”: “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 this one needs a wide context.

3. Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling:

Bow [bou] – лук / [bau] – поклон или нос корабля

Lead [li:d] – вести / [led] – свинец

Row [rou] – грести или ряд / [rau] – шум, скандал

Sever [sov ] – шея / [sjuv ] – сточная труба

Tear [tεe] – рвать / [ti ] – слеза

Wind [wind] – ветер / [waind] – заводить (часы)

Classification of homonyms in full and partial see in: Kasheeva – pp 39-40, Antrushina – pp 128-129.

Sources of homonyms

On of source of homonyms is a phonetic change, which a word undergoes³ in the course of it historical development. As a result of such changes, less 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 (O.E.) as the initial “k” in the second word was pronounced. The verb “to write” in O.E. had the form “to writan” and the adjective “right” had the form “reht” or “riht”.

Another source of homonyms is borrowing. A borrowed word may, in the final stage of the phonetic adaptation conclude the form either with a native word or another borrowing. So in the group of homonyms “rite n – to write – right adj.” The second and third words are of native origin, whereas “rite” is Latin borrowing (Latin “ritus”); “bank “ n (“a shore”) is a native word, and bank n (a financial institution) is an Italian borrowing.

Word building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, the most important type of it being conversion. Such pairs of words as “comb” n – “comb” v; “pale” adj. – “pale” v; “make” v – “make” n, etc. are numerous in vocabulary. Homonyms of this type refer to different categories of parts of speech and called lexico-grammatical homonyms.

Shortening is a further type of word-building, which increases the number of homonyms. For example “fan” (an enthusiastic admirer of some sportsmen, actor, singer, etc.) is a shortening produced from “fanatic” [f nжtik]. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing “fan” – an element for waving and produce some cool wind.⁴

The noun, for instance, “rep”, a kind of fabric, has 4 homonyms:

1. rep = repertory;

2. rep = representative;