Structural and semantic features of homonymic terms in economic discourse

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Lviv national agrarian university

Structural and semantic features of homonymic terms in economic discourse

Dobrovolska S.R.,

candidate of economic sciences, associate professor, head of the department of foreign languages

Opyr M.B.,

senior lecturer at the department of foreign languages

Panchyshyn S.B.,

senior lecturer at the department of foreign language

Abstract

Importance of any linguistic phenomenon is determined by its longevity, diversity and multi-aspect definition, as well as prevalence range in different languages. Homonymy is a linguistic concept with contradictory approaches to its interpretation that has long provoked linguists' interest. Although the phenomenon of homonymy is long known, there is no common definition of the concept. Researches on homonymy are currently actual because of the wide popularity of English, which is the language containing many words, which sound identically, but are written differently and thus, have different conceptual meanings. Modern English is characterized by rather developed homonymy, and historical development of English vocabulary greatly contributes to an increase of the homonymic words number. Homonyms can be divided into two groups, full and partial. Full homonyms are identical in forms, spelling and pronunciation, but have different meanings. Partial homonyms include homophones and homographs. Homophones are words identical in sound-form but different both in spelling and in meaning. Homographs are words identical in spelling, but different both in their sound-form and meaning.

Within the economic sphere, homonymy is represented by vocabulary units at the level of words and is one of the most productive sources supplying the economic vocabulary with new lexical units. Production of homonymic words and homonymic abbreviations is not a targeted or expected process. Appearance of new concepts is a spontaneous, unregulated process, forced by some extra linguistic and linguistic factors. Terminological homonyms correspond to the linguistic characteristics of both general vocabulary and terms. The English economic terminological system includes homonyms at the level of word forms, and all kinds of homonyms formed due to the split of polysemy. A particular attention should be paid to interbranch and intersystem homonyms, because a class affiliation determines the semantic independence and etymological peculiarities of the concept.

Key words: homonymy, homophones, homographs, lexemes, morphemes, interbranch homonymy, intrabranch homonymy.

Анотація

Структурно-семантичні особливості омонімічних термінів в економічному дискурсі

Вагомість будь-якого мовного явища визначається довготривалістю існування, різноманітністю та багатоаспектністю вивчення, діапазоном розповсюдженості в різних мовах. Омонімія є лінгвістичним поняттям, що відзначається неоднозначністю підходів та трактувань і звертає на себе увагу лінгвістів багато століть. Але, незважаючи на те, що явище омонімії вивчається вже досить давно, досі не існує загальноприйнятого визначення поняття омонімії. Дослідження омонімів є актуальним у наш час, тому що при вивченні англійської мови всі часто зустрічаються зі словами, які звучать однаково, а пишуться по-різному, відповідно мають різні смислові значення. Сучасна англійська мова характеризується досить розвинутим рівнем омонімії, адже у процесі історичного розвитку словникового складу мови кількість омонімів тільки збільшувалася. Омоніми можна поділити на повні та часткові. Повні омоніми - це слова, які збігаються у формах, написанні та вимові, але мають різні значення. До часткових омонімів відносять омографи та омофони. Омофони - це слова, які збігаються тільки у вимові та мають різні написання і значення. Омографи, навпаки, збігаються тільки у написанні, а у значеннях та вимові різні.

Омонімія в межах економічної терміносистеми представлена мовними одиницями на рівні слів і є одним із плідних джерел збагачення мови економічної сфери новими лексичними одиницями. Утворення слів-омонімів та абревіатур-омонімів не є запланованим або ціле направленим процесом. Нові терміни виникають не регульовано і стихійно під впливом певних екстралінгвістичних та лінгвістичних факторів. Термінологічні омоніми відповідають лінгвістичним характеристикам, як загальновживаної лексики, так і термінів. В межах англійської економічної терміносистеми були виявлені всі типи омонімії на рівні словоформ, і всі види омонімів, які утворюються внаслідок розпаду полісемії. Особливе місце займають міжгалузеві та міжсистемні омоніми, оскільки належність до того чи іншого класу визначає семантичну незалежність і етимологічні особливості терміна.

Ключові слова: омонімія, омофони, омографи, лексема, морфема, міжгалузева омонімія, внутрішньогалузева омонімія

Main part

homonym semantic etymological economic

Problem setting. An ongoing progress of science and continuous development of international business and scientific relations greatly transform the linguistic and conceptual picture of the world, expanding the boundaries of branch terminologies and enriching their vocabulary. Formation of new and specification of already existing concepts needs their systematization and inventory that confirms relevance of the research on the vocabulary layer in its all aspects. Comparative analysis of professional terminological systems provides the opportunity to determine specificity of such vocabulary in one language against the background of other language picture of the world, as well as to identify general linguistic tendencies of term formation.

Task setting. Homonymy is often found in economic literature. Existence of homonymic words is sometimes a problem for translators. The present research aims to analyze difficulties and specific features of homonymy and peculiarities of the homonymic terms translation in the economic discourse of the modern English language.

Analysis of recent researches and publications. The process of studying the theory of homonymy has ancient traditions and is associated with the names of such scientists as M.V. Lomonosov, L.V. Shcherba, V.V. Vynohradov, N.M. Shansii, N.P Kolesnykov, Yu.S. Maslov, M.I. Fomina and many others. Homonyms are studied by such linguists as O.S. Akhmanova, O.I. Smyrnytskyi, I.S. Tyshler and others. Among foreign authors, a particular attention should be paid to the works by Sh. Balli and L. Blumfield. Aristotle was the first who noted homonyms were subjects with general name, but different meanings.

In the modern linguistic science, the common idea is that homonymy is an absolute universal. Each language has homonyms. That regularity is forced physiologically and by the language nature as a system. According to L.A. Bulakhovskyi, homonyms are legitimate children of linguistic art, similar to others [3]. Yu.S. Maslov studied the problem of presenting homonyms in dictionaries and noted that the wide use of homonyms was one of the most important aspects for differentiating one language from another and it had been spontaneously developed from the manmade semantic systems for hundreds and thousands years [6].

In the modern study of language, scientists are involved in studying economic discourses of different languages. Analysis of the scientific works devoted to terminological systems of some branches confirms a particular focus on the terms of different scientific branches. Researchers analyze particularities of formation and performance of economic terminological lexemes primarily on the materials of the English language (V.L. Ishchenko, 1999) and in its some subsystems, particularly in marketing terminological system (O.I. Hutyriak, 1999), financial and economic relations (O.M. Lotka, 2000), venture funding (L.V. Ivina, 2001), market relations (Z.B. Kudelko, 2003) and others, as well as on the material of the Ukrainian language, namely economic terminology (H.V. Chornovol, 2004), social and economic terminology (T.M. Diachuk, 2003), taxation terminology (O.V. Chorna), terminology of management (N.L. Krasnopolska, 2014), terminology of accounting and audit (H.K. Barvitska, 2015) and others.

Scope of the research. The issue of homonymy has long attracted attention of linguists and philologists. Sometimes, it is marked that homonymy is in conflict with the language logics, integrity of a sign and meaning, principals of «the law of a language sign» [12; p. 331-340].

In linguistics, the problem of homonymy was first studied in the late Middle Ages (in the 16^th and 17^th centuries) and the research considered three aspects, i.e. lexical and semantic, structural and grammatical, as well as word formation. In English, homonymy is a common feature. A great number of homonymic units in the language confirms the tendency to protection and stability of those elements. Homonymy is a specific way of vocabulary manifestation along with synonymy, antonymy, paronymy and others. According to L. Malakhovskyi, «homonymy is manifestation of the specific property of a language sign to have different meanings under the similar signifiers» [8, p. 3]. Therefore, homonymy is a kind of communication obstacle. A listener often has difficulties to identify which of the several meanings, expressed in the language form, is correct for clear understanding. O. Akhmanova says, that the problems can be faced not only by a listener, but also by a speaker, who tries to build his/her speech to be clear and mono - semantic [7, p. 145]. In modern English, the issue of homonymy has been studied in the dissertations of D.M. Novikova (2001), I.S. Hubanova (2010) and other researchers.

It is worth noting that in the modern linguistics, there is no a common classification of homonyms. The issue is heavily discussed by scientists. In many works, authors supply a partial classification of homonyms, neglecting opinions of other linguists. According to the classical classification, homonyms are divided into full (identical in all their forms) and partial (not identical in all forms); simple (underived words, identical in sound-form) and derived (from word formation); homophones (identical in soundform, but different in spelling), homographs (identical in spelling, but different in sound-form) and homoforms (identical in pronunciation but only in some forms). Homonyms are formed in the processes of borrowing, phonetic and orthographic changes, split of semantic integrity, word formation [11, p. 141].

Many linguists, both domestic and foreign, developed personal classifications, expanding the classical classification by applying some criterion. To choose the best and the most complete classification of homonyms, it is reasonable to consider some of them separately.

Linguistic researcher John Lyons [5] developed his personal classification of homonyms. He distinguished absolute homonyms, which were not related by their meanings, all their forms had to be identical and grammatically equivalent, and partial homonyms, which were identical in one form and only one or two conditions, identified for homonyms, were met [5, p. 54].

Professor O.I. Smyrnytskyi made differentiation of the kinds of homonyms that was ignored by foreign researchers. He named differences between the full and partial, lexical and lexical-grammatical homonymy [9, p. 96]. O.I. Smyrnytskyi [9] divides homonyms into two large groups:

1) full homonyms are words, which represent the same category of parts of speech and have the same paradigm,

2) partial homonyms are subdivided into three subgroups:

a) simple lexical-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 one, e. g. (to) found v. - found v. (past indef., past part. of to find), (to) lay v. - lay v. (past indef. of to lie).

b) complex lexical-grammatical partial homonyms are words of different categories of parts of speech, which have identical form in their paradigms, e. g. rose n. - rose v. (past indef. of to rise), maid n. - made v. (past indef., past part. of to make).

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.

Walter William Skeat grouped homonyms into 1) absolute homonyms (different in meaning, but identical in sound-form and spelling) e. g. back n «part of the body» - back adv «away from the front» - back v «go back»; 2) homographs are words, identical in spelling, but different in sound-form and meaning, e. g. bow [bou] - bow [bau]; lead [li:d] - lead [led];

3) homophones are words, identical in sound-form, but different in spelling and meaning, e. g. arms - alms; buy - by; him - hymn; knight - night; piece - peace; rain - reign; scent - cent; steel - steal; write - right and many others. [11, p. 126].

A more detailed classification was developed by I.V Arnold. Basing on the Skeat's classification, he distinguishes proper homonyms, homophones and homographs, whereas for full classification of proper homonyms, the researcher suggests division into 12 classes:

1. Partial homonyms, which have an identical initial form, but different paradigms (light n. - світло - the energy from the sun, a lamp, etc.that makes it possible to see things; light adj. - легкий - easy to lift or move).

2. Partial homonyms, which have some forms identical, but initial form is different (might n. - сила, влада - great strength, energy or power; might - Past Tense of may).

3. Words, which belong to the same part of speech, different in their initial form, but identical in some other forms (axe - axes, axis - axes).

4. Different lexical meaning under identical initial form, identical grammar meaning under different paradigm (lay - lain and lie - lied - lied).

5. Words, different in their lexical and grammatical meanings, but identical in the paradigm, because they are auxiliary words (for prep. - for conj.).

6. The most typical form of full homonymy is represented by words with different lexical meanings but of the same part of speech (spring - a quick sudden jump; spring - a place where water comes naturally to the surface from under the ground; spring - season between winter and summer when plants begin to grow).

7. A general component in the lexical meaning of homonyms (beforeprep., before adv., before conj.).

8. Pairs of words with maximum identity. They can be considered as variants of one polysemantic word.

9. Homonyms, produced by conversion (eye n. - eye v.). Meaning of the derived word can be guessed if meaning of the initial word is known.

10. Words, which belong to different parts of speech and coincide in one of their forms. The similarity is based on the common (thought n. - thought v.).

11. Similarity of both lexical and grammatical meanings in combination with different forms.

12. A small group of words, which consists of nouns, which have double set and slightly differ in their meaning (brother - brothers, brother - brethren) [2, p. 45].

The I.V Arnold's classification best covers all aspects and even rare cases of homonymy. In that classification, the author pays specific attention to the cases of proper homonyms (absolute homonyms), because that group is the largest in the language.

In the economic discourse of modern English, the following groups of homonyms are distinguished:

1) full

• nouns (change - здача - the money that you can get back when you have paid for sth giving more money than the amount it costs, change - біржа - a place where merchants met to do business; deal - певна кількість - much, a lot, deal - угода - an agreement, especially in business, on particular conditions for buying or doing sth);

• verbs (decline - знижуватися - to become smaller, fewer, weaker or less, decline - відхиляти - to refuse politely to accept or to do sth (an invitation or offer); exploit - експлуатувати - to treat sb unfairly by making them work and not giving them much in return, exploit - розробляти (родовище) - to develop or use sth for business or industry (a resource));

• adjectives (easy - вигідний - useful, unrepeatable, easy - той, що не має попиту (про товар) - drug in the market, express - чітко виражений - clearly and openly stated, definite, express - терміновий - operating at high speed);

2) partial, which include words belonging to different parts of speech, but grammatically and phonetically identical. Some homonymic models of that group are: noun - adjective (capital n. - капітал - wealth or property that is owned by a business or a person, capital adj. - головний - main, fine n. - штраф - a sum of money that must be paid as punishment for breaking law or rule, fine adj. - високоякісний - of high quality); noun - verb (demand n. - попит - the desire or need of customers for goods or services which they want to buy or use, demand v. - вимагати - to ask for sth very firmly); verb - adjective (even v. - вирівнювати - make or become even, even adj.-рівномірний - not changing very much in amount, speed etc., fit v. - пристосовувати - to make sb/sth suitable, fit adj. - той, що відповідає вимогам - suitable, of the right quality; with the right qualities or skills); noun - proposition (failing n. - невдача - a weakness or fault in sb/sth, failing prep. - за відсутності - used to introduce a suggestion that could be considered if the one just mentioned is not possible) [10, p. 262].

In the economic terminological system of modern English, linguists also distinguish homophones having equivalents in other terminological systems:

• buy (купувати - to obtain sth by paying money) - bye (до побачення - good-bye) - by (біля - near, at);

• cash (готівкові гроші - money in any form) - cache (сховище - a hidden store of things);

• sell (продавати - to give sth to sb for money, to offer smb to buy) - cell, клітина - the smallest unit of living matter),

• council (нарада - a group of people who are elected to govern an area such as a city or county) - counsel (адвокат - a lawyer),

• fair (справедливий - treating everyone equally and according to the rules or law, ярмарок - an event at which people, business show and sell their goods) - fare (плата за проїзд - the money that you pay to travel by bus, plane, taxi, etc.);

• loan (позика - money that an organization such as a bank lends and sb borrows) - lone (самотній - without any other people or things);

• profit (прибуток - the money that you make in business or by selling things) - prophet (пророк - a person sent by God to teach the people and give them messages from God);

• sale (розпродаж - an occasion when a shop/ store sells its goods at lower price than usual) - sail (вітрило - a sheet of strong fabric which the wind blows against to make a boat or ship travel through the water);

• sum (сума - an amount of money) - some (деякий - used to refer to certain members of a not all of them).

It is interesting to consider homonymy at the level of economic speaking practice and vocabulary of everyday communication [1]. In that aspect, adjectives are worth noting: ready (готовий - prepared), ready (ліквідний - liquid), strong (міцний - having physical power), strong (що характеризується високими показниками - having a value that as high or increasing), soft (м'який - smooth and pleasant to touch), soft (пільговий - privileged)

Economic concepts of the modern English language have their homoforms (words, identical in pronunciation with another word in some grammar forms) in other fields of vocabulary. In that context, the following homonymic combinations should be noted:

- past tense of a verb and an infinitive of another verb: fined (оштрафував - made sb pay money as an official punishment) - find (знайти - to discover sth/sb by searching, studying or thinking carefully);

- past tense of a verb and an adjective in the superlative degree: leased (орендував - used in exchange for rent or a regular payment) - least (найменший - smallest in size, amount, degree, etc);

- past tense of a verb and a noun: sent (послав - made stn go especiallyby post/mail, radio) - cent (цент - a coin, a unit of money in many countries);

- a verb and an adjective in the superlative degree: higher (вищий - greater than normal), hire (наймати - employ sb);

- plural form of a noun and an infinitive of a verb: rays (промені - narrow beams of light, heat or other energy; raise (підвищувати - move upwards, increase).

Not only lexemes but also morphemes can be homonymic and they are widely used in the economic discourse.

Specificity of the phenomenon of homonymy in different terminological systems of modern English is revealed in the interbranch (interdisciplinary, intersectoral) homonymy of terms, when one and the same phonetic complex coincides with the same real object, but has different meanings because the object is studied by different sciences.

Translators face significant difficulties because of homonyms (primarily terms), i.e. lexical elements, identical in their forms, but rather different in meaning [4, p. 54]. Referring to the sphere of usage, homonymic terms are divided into interbranch and intrabranch. According to the definition, suggested by A. Hirkova, interbranch homonyms are «terms of one branch meaning, which have been reconsidered and introduced into the terminological system of another science». Interbranch homonyms are characterized by at least two features: the terms should have different definitions, and the terms are used in different terminological systems. English economic terminology is used to define phenomena and concepts of more than 30 branches of economic activities within one terminological system.

Intrabranch homonymy is characterized by one and the same form with different meanings within one economic branch. The nature of such homonymic terms is determined by the original word belonging to some economic branch and a specific topic of the original text. However, translators can make mistakes by choosing a wrong meaning of the homonymic term that is from the adjacent economic branch. Moreover, one term can belong both to the interbranch and intrabranch homonymy.

Homonymy is also characteristic of abbreviations and acronyms. Since abbreviations and acronyms consist of not many letters, there is a great probability their forms coincide in different branches of economics [4, p. 55]. Therefore, abbreviations create semantic categories and subcategories of homonymic series, because they are full words. A detailed study of English shorted terms shows there are phonetic and phonetic-graphical, lexical, grammatical and lexical-grammatical homonymic abbreviations. Formation of homonymic abbreviations is greatly influenced by the factor of their belonging to different branches. Thus, there is interbranch homonymy of abbreviations and acronyms and intrabranch homonymy, when the same set of letters defines totally different concepts [4, p. 55]. Homonymic series of terminological abbreviations significantly depend on the rapid development of economic environment, appearance, elimination, and substitution of one phenomenon with another one.

A great number of homonyms classification is justified by the diversity of language materials. A translator should master all the knowledge, and while working with economic texts containing homonymic terms, he/she should be familiar with the text topic to avoid wrong interpretations.

Conclusions and prospects of the future search. To sum up, the research shows a great importance of classification for studying homonymy of any language. It is confirmed by a great number of works, where linguists propose different classifications. However, the issue of homonyms classification is still open because researchers propose new variants of it. The research findings prove that homonymy is brightly represented in the English language generally, and in economic discourse particularly. The language experiences transformations, related with the studied phenomenon, which are manifested both in internal (within the economic sphere) and external processes (relation of economic terms with the terms from other fields of vocabulary). It confirms a continuous language development and enrichment, strengthens the dominating status of English as a language of international communication, particularly in the economic domain.

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