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?аза?стан Республикасыны? Білім Ж?не ?ылым Министрлігі

?аза? гуманитарлы? за? университеті

Кафедрасы: Ж.Т.Б. ж?неА.І.

Курсты? ж?мыс

Та?ырыбы: «Problems of homonymy. Diachronic approach to homonymy»

Орында?ан:

Айтенова А.Г.

?абылда?ан:

Джолшибекова К.Ж.

Астана 2013 ж.

Content

Introduction

1. Chapter I GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT HOMONYMS

1.1 Concept of homonymy

1.2 Classification of homonyms

1.3 Problems of homonymy

1.4 Diachronic approach to homonyms

2. Chapter II ANALYSIS OF HOMONYMS

2.1 Practical approach in studying homonyms

2.2 Diachronic analysis of grammatical homonyms of adjectives and adverbs

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings. Thus homonyms are simultaneously homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of their pronunciation) and homophones (words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of their spelling). The state of being a homonym is called homonymy. Examples of homonyms are the pair stalk(part of a plant) and stalk (follow/harass a person) and the pair left (past tense of leave) and left (opposite of right). A distinction is sometimes made between "true" homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as skate (glide on ice) and skate (the fish), and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as mouth (of a river) and mouth (of an animal).

In non-technical contexts, the term "homonym" may be used (somewhat confusingly) to refer to words that are either homographs or homophones. In this looser sense, the word row (propel with oars) and the American pronunciation of row (argument) are considered homonyms, as are the words read (peruse) and reed (waterside plant).

Topicality of the present research is evident because at present time there are a lot of researches made in sphere of homonyms, and it is fundamentally important to understand problems of homonyms.

Object is homonymy.

Subject is problems of homonymy and diachronic approach to homonymy.

The main aim of the present research is to study problems of homonymy and diachronic approach to homonymy.

The aim has identified the following tasks:

· to study the concept of homonymy

· to make an overview of classification of homonyms

· to find out problems of homonyms

· to study diachronic approach to homonymy

· to analyze homonyms

The methods of investigation are researching method, method of comparison and demonstration method.

Researching method: The final thesis is studied making analysis on the basis of works of English and Russian scientists.

Method of comparison: This method is used in drawing similarities and differences between the theories taken from various investigations.

Demonstration method: Some authentic materials are presented with the help of this method.

Theoretical value is providing additional materials to the information of homonyms and identifying specific feautures of homonyms in English.

Practical application is that the given materials help teachers in teaching the students to use easily homonyms in English.

This research work is consisting of Introduction, two Chapters, Conclusion and Bibliography. In introduction we have identified topicality, main aim and tasks of the research. In the first chapter we have studied general information about homonymy. In the second chapter we have analyzed homonyms. In conclusion we have provided results of the investigation. In bibliography there are list of researchers, whose works we have used in the course paper.



1. Chapter I GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT HOMONYMS

1.1 Concept 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.

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: [1, p.112]

“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 anything2, 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: [2, p.58]

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”1

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. [3, p.69]

1.2 Classification of homonyms

Modern English has a very extensive vocabulary; the number of words according to the dictionary data is no less than 400, 000.A question naturally arises whether this enormous word-stock is composed of separate independent lexical units, or may it perhaps be regarded as a certain structured system made up of numerous interdependent and interrelated sub-systems or groups of words. This problem may be viewed in terms of the possible ways of classifying vocabulary items. Words can be classified in various ways. Here, however, we are concerned only with the semantic classification of words which gives us a better insight into some aspects of the Modern English word-stock. Attempts to study the inner structure of the vocabulary revealed that in spite of its heterogeneity the English word-stock may be analyzed into numerous sub-systems the members of which have some features in common, thus distinguishing them from the members of other lexical sub-systems. Classification into monosynaptic and polysemantic words is based on the number of meanings the word possesses. More detailed semantic classifications are generally based on the semantic similarity (or polarity) of words or their component morphemes. Below we give a brief survey of some of these lexical groups of current use both in theoretical investigation and practical class-room teaching. [4, p.56]

A. The standard way of classification

(given by I.V. Arnold)

The most widely accepted classification is that recognizing homonyms proper, homophones and homographs.

	PRONUNCIATION	PRONUNCIATION
SPELLING	SAME	DIFFERENT
SAME	A. Homonym proper	C. Homograph (or heteronym)
DIFFERENT	B. Homophone (or heteronym)	D. Allonym

Most words differ from each other in both spelling and pronunciation - therefore they belong to the sell D in this table - I shall call them allonyms. Not so many linguists distinguish this category. But it must be admitted that Keith C. Ivey, in his discussion of homonyms, recognizes this fact and writes: [5, p.69]

These familiar with combinatorics may have noticed that there is a fourth possible category based on spelling and pronunciation: words that differ in spelling and pronunciation as well as meaning and origin (alligator/true). These pairs are technically known as different words.

1. G.G. Byron, Peter Washington “Poems of Lord Byron”

Unfortunately, this seemingly neat solution doesn't work because all heteronyms are different words as Ivey's examples show. He illustrates homophones with board/bored, clearly two different words though pronounced alike, and his example of homographs (the verb desert/the noun desert) again shows, by their pronunciation, that they are different words. Even his example of a homonym -- words having both the same sound and spelling, as illustrated by "to quail and a quail" -- clearly shows they are different words. Lexicographers underline this point by writing separate entries for different words, whether or not they have the same spelling and pronunciation.

One could stipulate a phrase, like uniquely different words to represent category D, but this expedient is cumbersome and not transparent. A simpler solution, I believe, can be found by means of a neologism. It is not difficult to think of a suitable term. [6, p.156]

An allonym is a word that differs in spelling and pronunciation from all other words, whereas both homonyms and heteronyms identify words that are the same, in some ways, as other words.

No doubt in ordinary usage, we will have little need for this term, although it would simplify lexical explanation if one could start by making the claim that the most words in English are allonyms. The clear exceptions are other groups.

Different words that are spelled and pronounced the same way are classed in cell A and are correctly called homonyms proper - but some writers, confusingly, call them heteronyms.

When different words are spelled the same way but pronounced differently, they belong to category B. It is precise to call them homographs and they are sometimes misleadingly called heteronyms. By contrast, when different words are pronounced the same way but spelled differently, we may properly call them homophones - rarely, they have also been called heteronyms. [7, p.96]

Homonyms proper

Homonyms proper are words, as I have already mentioned, 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 gathering of people for dancing' - ball n `round object used in games'; bark n `the noise made by 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 room' - bay v `bark' - bay n `the European laurel'.

The important point is that homonyms are distinct words: not different meanings within one word. [8, p.129]

Homophones

Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning:

air - hair; arms - alms; buy - by; him - hymn; knight - night; not - knot; or - oar; piece - peace; rain - reign; scent - cent; steel - steal; storey - story; write - right and many others.

In the sentence The play-wright on my right thinks it right that some conventional rite should symbolize 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. [9, p.95]

Homographs

Homographs are 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 [`soue] - sewer [sjue]; tear [tie] - tear [te]; 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 generalized national form of expression. An average speaker does not separate the written and oral form. On the contrary he is more likely to analyze 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 analyzing cases of identity of form and diversity of content. [10, p.159]

1.3 Problems of Homonymy

The synchronic treatment of English homonyms brings to the forefront a set of problems of paramount importance for different branches of applied linguistics: lexicography, foreign language teaching and information retrieval. These problems are: the criteria distinguishing homonymy from polysemy, the formulation of rules for recognizing different meanings of the same homonym in terms of distribution, and the description of difference between patterned and non-patterned homonymy. It is necessary to emphasize that all these problems are connected with difficulties created by homonymy in understanding the message by the reader or listener, not with formulating one's thoughts; they exist for the speaker though in so far as he must construct his speech in a way that would prevent all possible misunderstanding. [11, p.98]

All three problems are so closely interwoven that it is difficult to separate them. So we shall discuss them as they appear for various practical purposes. For a lexicographer it is a problem of establishing word boundaries. It is easy enough to see that match, as in safety matches, is a separate word from the verb match `to suit'. But he must know whether one is justified in taking into one entry match, as in football match, and match in meet one's match `one's equal'.

On the synchronic level, when the difference in etymology is irrelevant, the problem of establishing the criterion for the distinction between different words identical in sound form, and different meanings of the same word becomes hard to solve. Nevertheless the problem cannot be dropped altogether as upon an efficient arrangement of dictionary entries depends the amount of time spent by readers in looking up a word: a lexicographer will either save or waste his readers' time and effort.

Actual solutions differ. It is a wildly spread practice in English lexicography to combine in one entry words of identical phonetic form showing similarity of lexical meaning or, in other words, revealing a lexical invariant, even if they belong to different parts of speech. In our country a different trend has settled. The Anglo-Russian dictionary edited by V.D. Arakin makes nine separate entries with the word right against four items given in the dictionary edited by A.S. Hornby. [12, 114]

The truth is that there exists no universal criterion for distinction between polysemy and homonymy.

Polysemy characterizes words that have more than one meaning -- any dictionary search will reveal that most words are polysemes -- word itself has 12 significant senses, according to WordNet1. This means that the word, word, is used in texts scanned by lexicographers to represent twelve different concepts.

The point is that words are not meanings, although they can have many meanings.

Lexicographers make a clear distinction between different words by writing separate entries for each of them, whether or not they are spelled the same way. The dictionary of Fred W. Riggs has 5 entries for the form, bow -- this shows that lexicographers recognize this form (spelling) as a way of representing five different words. Three of them are pronounced bo and two bau, which identifies two homophones in this set of five homographs, each of which is a polyseme, capable of representing more than one concept. To summarize: bow is a word-form that stands for two different homophones and, as a homograph, represents five different words. [13, p.93]

Moreover, the form bow is polysemic and can represent more than 20 concepts (its various meanings or senses). By gratuitously putting meaning in its definition of a homograph, WordNet can mislead readers who might think that a word is a homonym because it has several meanings -- but having one word represent more than one concept is normal -- just consider term as an example: it can not only refer to the designator of a concept, but also the duration of something, like the school year or a politician's hold on office, a legal stipulation, one's standing in a relationship (on good terms) and many other notions -- more than 17 are identified in the dictionary edited be Fred W. Riggs. By contrast, homonyms are different words and each of them (as a polyseme) can have multiple meanings.

To make their definitions precise, lexicographers need criteria to distinguish different words from each other even though they are spelled the same way. This usually hinges on etymology and, sometimes, parts of speech. One might, for example, think that that firm `steadfast' and firm `business unit' are two senses of one word (polyseme). Not so! Lexicographers class them as different words because the first evolved from a Latin stem meaning throne or chair, and the latter from a different root in Italian meaning signature.

Dictionaries are not uniform in their treatment of the different grammatical forms of a word. In some of them, the adjective firm (securely) is handled as a different word from the noun firm (to settle) even though they have the same etymology. Fred W. Riggs isn't persuaded such differences justify treating grammatical classes (adjectives, nouns, and verbs) of a word-form that belongs to a single lexeme as different words -- the precise meaning of lexeme is explained below. The relevant point here is that deciding whether or not a form identifies one or more than one lexeme does not hinge on meanings. There is agreement that a word-form represents different words when they evolved from separate roots, and some lexicographers treat each grammatical use of a lexeme (noun, verb, adjective) as though it were a different word. [14, p.65]

The etymological criterion may lead to distortion of the present day situation. The English vocabulary of today is not a replica of the Old English vocabulary with some additions from borrowing. It is in many respects a different system, and this system will not be revealed if the lexicographers guided by etymological criteria only.

A more or less simple, if not very rigorous, procedure based on purely synchronic data may be prompted by analysis of dictionary definitions. It may be called explanatory transformation. It is based on the assumption that if different senses rendered by the same phonetic complex can be defined with the help of an identical kernel word-group, they may be considered sufficiently near to be regarded as variants of the same word; if not, they are homonyms. [15, p.45]

Consider the following set of examples:

1. A child's voice is heard.1

2. His voice…was…annoyingly well-bred.2

3. The voice-voicelessness distinction…sets up some English consonants in opposed pairs…

4. In the voice contrast of active and passive…the active is the unmarked form.

The first variant (voice1) may be defined as `sound uttered in speaking or singing as characteristic of a particular person', voice2 as `mode of uttering sounds in speaking or singing', voice3 as `the vibration of the vocal chords in sounds uttered'. So far all the definitions contain one and the same kernel element rendering the invariant common basis of their meaning. It is, however, impossible to use the same kernel element for the meaning present in the fourth example. The corresponding definition is: “Voice - that form of the verb that expresses the relation of the subject to the action”. This failure to satisfy the same explanation formula sets the fourth meaning apart. It may then be considered a homonym to the polysemantic word embracing the first three variants. The procedure described may remain helpful when the items considered belong to different parts of speech; the verb voice may mean, for example, `to utter a sound by the aid of the vocal chords'.

1. Maugham W.S. “The Kite”

2. London J. “The Call of the Wild and White Fang”

This brings us to the problem of patterned homonymy, i.e. of the invariant lexical meaning present in homonyms that have developed from one common source and belong to various parts of speech.

Is a lexicographer justified in placing the verb voice with the above meaning into the same entry with the first three variants of the noun? The same question arises with respect to after or before - preposition, conjunction and adverb.

English lexicographers think it quite possible for one and the same word to function as different parts of speech. Such pairs as act n - act v; back n - back v; drive n - drive v; the above mentioned after and before and the like, are all treated as one word functioning as different parts of speech. This point of view was severely criticized. It was argued that one and the same word could not belong to different parts of speech simultaneously, because this would contradict the definition of the word as a system of forms.

This viewpoint is not faultless either; if one follows it consistently, one should regard as separate words all cases when words are countable nouns in one meaning and uncountable in another, when verbs can be used transitively and intransitively, etc. In this case hair1 `all the hair that grows on a person's head' will be one word, an uncountable noun; whereas `a single thread of hair' will be denoted by another word (hair2) which, being countable, and thus different in paradigm, cannot be considered the same word. It would be tedious to enumerate all the absurdities that will result from choosing this path. A dictionary arranged on these lines would require very much space in printing and could occasion much wasted time in use. The conclusion therefore is that efficiency in lexicographic work is secured by a rigorous application of etymological criteria combined with formalized procedures of establishing a lexical invariant suggested by synchronic linguistic methods. [16, p.214]

As to those concerned with teaching of English as a foreign language, they are also keenly interested in patterned homonymy. The most frequently used words constitute the greatest amount of difficulty, as may be summed up by the following jocular example: I think that this “that” is a conjunction but that that “that” that that man used as pronoun.

A correct understanding of this peculiarity of contemporary English should be instilled in the pupils from the very beginning, and they should be taught to find their way in sentences where several words have their homonyms in other parts of speech, as in Jespersen's example: Will change of air cure love? To show the scope of the problem for the elementary stage a list of homonyms that should be classified as patterned is given below:

Above, prp, adv, a; act, n, v; after, prp, adv, cj; age, n, v; back, n, adv, v; ball, n, v; bank, n, v; before, prp, adv, cj; besides, prp, adv; bill, n, v; bloom, n, v; box, n, v. The other examples are: by, can, close, country, course, cross, direct, draw, drive, even, faint, flat, fly, for, game, general, hard, hide, hold, home, just, kind, last, leave, left, lie, light, like, little, lot, major, march, may, mean, might, mind, miss, part, plain, plane, plate, right, round, sharp, sound, spare, spell, spring, square, stage, stamp, try, type, volume, watch, well, will.

For the most part all these words are cases of patterned lexico-grammatical homonymy taken from the minimum vocabulary of the elementary stage: the above homonyms mostly differ within each group grammatically but possess some lexical invariant. That is to say, act v follows the standard four-part system of forms with a base form act, an s-form (act-s), a Past Indefinite Tense form (acted) and an ing-form (acting) and takes up all syntactic functions of verbs, whereas act n can have two forms, act (sing.) and act (pl.). Semantically both contain the most generalized component rendering the notion of doing something. [17, p.89]

Recent investigations have shown that it is quite possible to establish and to formalize the differences in environment, either syntactical or lexical, serving to signal which of the several inherent values is to be ascribed to the variable in a given context. An example of distributional analysis will help to make this point clear.

The distribution of a lexico-semantic variant of a word may be represented as a list of structural patterns in which it occurs and the data on its combining power. Some of the most typical structural patterns for a verb are: N + V + N; N + V + Prp + N; N + V + A; N + V + adv; N + V + to + V and some others. Patterns for nouns are far less studied, but for the present case one very typical example will suffice. This is the structure: article + A + N.

In the following extract from “A Taste of Honey” by Shelagh Delaney the morpheme laugh occurs three times: I can't stand people who laugh at other people. They'd get a bigger laugh, if they laughed at themselves.

We recognize laugh used first and last here as a verb, because the formula is N + laugh + prp + N and so the pattern is in both cases N + V + prp + N. In the beginning of the second sentence laugh is a noun and the pattern is article + A + N.

This elementary example can give a very general idea of the procedure which can be used for solving more complicated problems. [18, p.25]

We may sum up our discussion by pointing out that whereas distinction between polysemy homonymy is relevant and important for lexicography it is not relevant for the practice of either human or machine translation. The reason for this is that different variants of a polysemantic word are not less conditioned by context then lexical homonyms. In both cases the identification of the necessary meaning is based on the corresponding distribution that can signal it and must be present in the memory either of the pupil or the machine. The distinction between patterned and non-patterned homonymy, greatly underrated until now, is of far greater importance. In non-patterned homonymy every unit is to be learned separately both from the lexical and grammatical points of view. In patterned homonymy when one knows the lexical meaning of a given word in one part of speech, one can accurately predict the meaning when the same sound complex occurs in some other part of speech, provided, of coarse, that there is sufficient context to guide one.

1.4 Diachronically approach of homonyms

Now let us analyze the semantic similarity of morphemes. Lexical groups composed of words with semantically and phonemically identical root-morphemes are usually described as word-families or word-clusters. The term itself implies close links between the members of the group. Such are word-families of the type: lead, leader, leadership; dark, darken, darkness; form, formal, formality, and others. It should be noted that members of a word-family as a rule belong to different parts of speech and are joined together only by the identity of root-morphemes. In the word-families discussed above the root-morphemes are identical not only in meaning but also in sound-form. There are cases, however, when the sound-form of root-morphemes may be different, as for example in sun, sunny, solar; mouth, oral, orally; brother, brotherly, fraternal, etc.; their semantic similarity however, makes it possible to include them in a word-family. In such cases it is usual to speak of lexical supplementation, i.e. formation of related words of a word-family from phonemically different roots. As a rule in the word-families of this type we are likely to encounter etymologically different words, e.g. the words brother and mouth are of Germanic origin, whereas fraternal and oral can be easily traced back to Latin. We frequently find synonymic pairs of the type fatherly -- paternal, brotherly--fraternal. Semantic and phonemic identity of affixation morphemes can be observed in the lexical groups of the type darkness, cleverness, calmness, etc.; teacher, reader, writer, etc. In such word-groups as, e.g. teacher, doctor, musician, etc., only semantic similarity of derivational affixes is observed. As derivational affixes impart to the words a certain generalized meaning, we may single out lexical groups denoting the agent, the doer of the action (Nomina Agenti)--teacher, reader, doctor, etc. or lexical groups denoting actions [Nomina Acti] -- movement, transformation, and others. [19, p.58]

Now we shall study the semantic similarities and polarities of words. Semantic similarity or polarity of words may be observed in the similarity of their denotational or connotation meaning. Similarity or polarity of the denotational component of lexical meaning is to be found in lexical groups of synonyms and antonyms. Similarity or polarity of the connotation components serves as the basis for stylistic stratification of vocabulary units. Stylistic features of words and problems of stylistic stratification in general were discussed in connection with different types of meaning. So here let us confine ourselves mainly to the discussion of the problems of the main word phenomena containing the English word stock: i.e. we mean synonyms and antonyms.

2. Chapter II ANALYSIS OF HOMONYMS

2.1 Practical approach in studying homonyms

The synchronic treatment of English homonyms brings to the forefront a set of problems of paramount importance for different branches of applied linguistics: lexicography, foreign language teaching and machine translation. These problems are: the criteria distinguishing homonymy from polysemy, the formulation of rules for recognizing different meanings of the same homonym in terms of distribution, and the description of difference between patterned and irregular homonymy. It is necessary to emphasize that all these problems are connected with difficulties created by homonymy in understanding the message by the reader or listener, not with formulating one's thoughts; they exist for the speaker only in so far as he must construct his speech in a way that would prevent all possible misunderstanding. [20, p.36]

All three problems are so closely interwoven that it is difficult to separate them. So we shall discuss them as they appear for various practical purposes. For a lexicographer it is a problem of establishing word boundaries. It is easy enough to see that match, as in safety matches, is a separate word from the verb match 'to suit'. But he must know whether he is justified in taking into one entry match, as in football match, and match in meet one's match 'one's equal'. Can the English verb bear in bear a burden, bear troubles, bear fruit, bear offspring be viewed as a single word or as a set of two or perhaps even more homonyms? Similarly, charge, in charge the gun, charge the man with theft, charge somebody a stiff price can be viewed in several ways.

On the synchronic level, when the difference in etymology is irrelevant, the problem of establishing the criterion for the distinction between different words identical in sound form, and different meanings of the same word becomes hard to solve. The semantic criterion which ultimately is reduced to distinguishing between words that "have nothing in common semantically" and those that "have something in common" and therefore must be taken as one lexical unit, is very vague and hopelessly subjective. Nevertheless the problem cannot be dropped altogether as upon an efficient arrangement of dictionary entries depends the amount of time spent by the readers in looking up a word: a lexicographer will either save or waste his readers' time and effort.

Actual solutions differ. It is a widely spread practice in English lexicography to combine in one entry words of identical phonetic form showing similarity of lexical meaning or, in other words, revealing a lexical invariant, even if they belong to different parts of speech. In post-war lexicography in our country a different trend has settled. The Anglo-Russian dictionary edited by V. D. Arakin makes nine separate entries with the word “right” against four items given in the dictionary edited by Hornby.

The truth is that there exists no universal criterion for the distinction between polysemy and homonymy, unless one accepts the solution offered by V. I. Abayev and follows the data of etymology, separating as homonyms only those words that have different sources and only accidentally coincided phonetically. The necessary restriction is that different sources must be traced within the history of the language. Words that coincided phonetically before they penetrated into the English vocabulary are not taken into account. The etymological criterion, however, may very often lead to distortion of the present-day situation. The English vocabulary of to-day is not a replica of the Old English vocabulary with some additions from borrowing. It is in many respects a different system, and this system will not be revealed if the lexicographer is guided by etymological criteria only. A more or less simple, if not very rigorous, procedure based on purely synchronic data may be prompted by transformational analysis. It may be called explanatory transformation. It is based on the assumption that if different senses rendered by the same phonetic complex can be defined with the help of an identical kernel word-group, they may be considered sufficiently near to be regarded as variants of the same word; if not, they are homonyms. [21, p.75]

Consider the following set of examples:

1. A child's voice is heard. 2. His voice ... was ... annoyingly well-bred.

2. The voice-voicelessness distinction ... sets up some English consonants in opposed pairs...

3. In the voice contrast of active and passive ... the active is the unmarked form.

The first variant (voice1 may be defined as 'sounds uttered in speaking or singing as characteristic of a particular person', voice2 as 'mode of uttering sounds in speaking or singing', voice3 as 'the vibration of the vocal chords in sounds uttered'. So far all the definitions contain one and the same kernel element rendering the invariant common basis of their meaning. It is, however, impossible to use the same kernel element for the meaning present in the fourth example. The corresponding definition is: "Voice -- that forms of the verb that expresses the relation of the subject to the action". This failure to satisfy the same explanation formula sets the fourth meaning apart. It may then be considered a homonym to the polysemantic word embracing the first three variants.

The procedure described may remain helpful when the items considered belong to different parts of speech; the verb voice may mean, for example, 'to utter a sound by the aid of the vocal chords'.

This brings us to the problem of patterned homonymy, i. e. of the invariant lexical meaning present in homonyms that have developed from one common source and belong to various parts of speech. [30, p.254]

Is a lexicographer justified in placing the verb to voice with the above meaning into the same entry with the first three variants of the noun? The same question arises with respect to after or before -- preposition, conjunction and adverb.

The elder generation of English linguists thought it quite possible for one and the same word to function as different parts of speech.1 Such pairs as act n -- act v, back n -- back v, drive n -- drive v, the above mentioned after and before and the like, were all treated as one word functioning as different parts of speech. Later on this point of view was severely criticized. It was argued that one and the same word could not belong to different parts of speech simultaneously because this would contradict the definition of the word as a system of forms. This viewpoint is not faultless either: if one follows it consistently one should regard as separate words all cases when words are countable nouns in one meaning and uncountable in another, when verbs can be used transitively and intransitively, etc.

In this case hair 'all the hair that grows on a person's head7 will be one word, an uncountable noun; whereas a single thread of hair will be denoted by another word (hair2) which, being countable, and thus different in paradigm, cannot be considered the same word. It would be tedious to enumerate all the absurdities that will result from choosing this path. A dictionary arranged on these lines would require very much space in printing and could occasion much wasted time in use. The conclusion therefore is that efficiency in lexicographic work is secured by a rigorous application of etymological criteria combined with formalized procedures of establishing a lexical invariant suggested by synchronic linguistic methods.

As to those concerned with teaching of English as a foreign language, they are also keenly interested in patterned homonymy. The most frequently used words constitute the greatest amount of difficulty, as may be summed up by the following example: I think that this "that" is a conjunction but that «that" man that used was a pronoun. [22, p. 79]

A correct understanding of this peculiarity of contemporary English should be instilled in the pupils from the very beginning, and they should be taught to find their way in sentences where several words have their homonyms in other parts of speech, as in Jespersen's1) example: Will change of air cure-love? l To show the scope of the problem for the elementary stage a list of homonyms that should be classified as patterned is given below:

“Above” - prep., adv., adj.; “act”- n., v.; “after” - prep., adv., conj.; “age” - n., v.; “back” - n., adv., v.; “ball” - n., v.; “bank”

We may give the other examples: by, can, case, close, country, course, cross, direct, draw, drive, even, faint, flat, fly, for, game, general, hard, hide, hold, home, just, kind, last, leave, left, lie, light, like, little, lot, major, march, match, may, mean, might, mind, miss, part, plain, plane, plate, right, round, sharp, sound, spare, spell, spring, square, stage, stamp, try, type, volume, watch, well, will, etc.

For the most part all these words are cases of patterned lexico-grammatical homonymy taken from the minimum vocabulary of the elementary stage: the above homonyms mostly differ within each group grammatically but possess some lexical invariant. That is to say, act v follows the standard four-part system of forms with a base form act, an s-form (act-s), a Past Tense form (acted) and an -ing- form (acting) and takes up all syntactic functions of verbs, whereas act n can have two forms, act (singular.) and acts (plural). Semantically both contain the most generalized component rendering the notion of doing something. [29, p.169]

Recent investigations have shown that it is quite possible to establish and to formalize the differences in environment, syntactical or lexical, serving to signal which of the several inherent values is to be ascribed to the variable in a given context.

An example of distributional analysis will help to make this point clear. The distribution of a lexico-semantic variant of a word may be represented as a list of structural patterns in which it occurs and the data on its combining power. Some of the most typical structural patterns for a verb are: N + V -f- N, N + V -f- Prep.; V- N, N-f-V-f-Adj., N + V + Adv., N + V + t o -f- V and some others. Patterns for nouns are far less studied, but for the present case one very typical example will suffice. This is the structure article for A + N. In the following extract from "A Taste of Honey" by Sheath

Delaney the morpheme “laugh” occurs three times:

1.I can't stand people who laugh at other people.

2. They'd get a bigger laugh, if they laughed at themselves.

We recognize laugh used first and last here as a verb because the formula is N + laugh + prep + N and so the pattern is in both cases \ -[-V H-prep -- N. In the beginning of the second sentence laugh is a noun and the pattern is article -f- A -J- N.

This elementary example can give a very general idea of the procedure which can be used for solving more complicated distributional analysis of this type is of great practical importance both in foreign language teaching and in machine translation. In order to translate a sentence the machine must analyze it, i.e. determine the types of elementary configurations that constitute it. Practically speaking, the pupil even if taught by patterns, must do the same. Elementary configurations are not mere word-groups but combinations of word classes. Therefore in the process of identification of the symbols given, it is necessary to establish to what classes they belong. As homonymy prevents this, the first step to be taken in machine translation aims at getting rid of homonymy. The system of formal rules aimed at revealing and eliminating lexico-grammatical homonymy in machine translation has been described by T. Moloshnaya. l These rules begin with morphological criteria: if the word form considered has an ending typical of one class and impossible in all others, its class is thus determined. Laughed is obviously a verb, as the noun does not take the ending -ed. Of the two homonyms complete v and complete adj. only the verb can have such endings as -ed, -ing. When the morphological data are exhausted, syntactical combinations are analyzed. [23, p.154]

Without attempting to give a more detailed analysis of these operations since they belong rather to grammar than to lexicology, we may sum up our discussion by pointing out that whereas distinction between polysemy and homonymy is relevant and important for lexicography it is not relevant for the practice of either human or machine translation. The reason for this is that different variants of a polysemantic word are not less conditioned by context than lexical homonyms. In both cases the identification of the necessary meaning is based on the corresponding .distribution that can signal it and must be present in the memory either of the pupil or the machine. The distinction between patterned and non-patterned homonymy, greatly underrated until now, is of far greater importance. In non-patterned homonymy every unit is to be learned separately both from the lexical and grammatical points of view. In patterned homonymy when one knows the lexical meaning of a given word in one part of speech, one can accurately predict the meaning when the same sound complex occurs in some other part of speech, provided, of course, that there is sufficient context to guide one.

2.2 Diachronic analysis of grammatical homonyms of adjectives and adverbs

The phenomenon of grammatical homonymy of English adjectives and adverbs are directly linked to the process of development of English. Radical restructuring of the morphological system of English has led to extensive development of the grammatical homonymy language. The apparent simplification of the morphological system of English is actually marked a significant complication of the grammatical homonymy due to the loss of the measure of morphological definition in this system, which was inherent in it earlier in the development of the English language - in the Old English period. [27, p.89]

Adverbs in Old English were divided into two main types - primary, i.e. not derived from any other part of speech, and secondary, i.e. derived from other parts of speech. While the primary adverbs group was minor, secondary adverbs made from nouns and from adjectives, were much more numerous. The formation of these dialects was in fact that any case forms of the noun or adjective is divorced from the declension system and froze as an adverb, so it turned into a derivational suffix or completely ceased to be a separate morpheme.

Whole category of adverbs, adverbs in-e (diope, faeste, hlude), originated from a frozen form of the instrumental case singular neuter. It 's turned into a derivational suffix. These adverbs can be formed in principle from any adjective, the value of which allows the formation of adverbs.

Great importance for further development of the morphology of adverbs in English was that adjective suffix -lic existed in the Old English (origin - a noun meaning "image", "view", and the adjective meaning "similar", "shaped" ). Adjectives claenlic and deadlic, for example are formed with this suffix. In some cases, there were parallel versions of adjectives with the suffix-lic and without it, for example, gesaelig and gesaeliglic "blessed", and hence the parallel versions of adverbs: gesaelige and gesaeliglice. Under such conditions, the adverb gesaeliglice could be understood as formed directly from the adjective gesaelig, ie -Lice, is the original mix of the two suffixes (-lic +-e), it was converted into a single derivational suffix. From this it becomes possible to form an adverb-lice from such an adjective, which was not at all parallel version with the suffix-lic, such as adverb freolice from freo "free," though the adjective * freolic existed. [24, p.87]

Old English adverbs formed from adjectives by adding the suffix-e, for example the adjective fayre fayr "beautiful", faste by fast "strong", "fast" existed in Middle English.

Along with this, way of formation of adverbs by adding the suffix-lic, passed into Middle English in-ly, eg special - specially, from the thrifty - thriftily were developing in Old English.

The fundamental process in the morphology of adverbs describing New England period in contrast to Middle English, is that the suffix-ly became the only panacea formation of adverbs from adjectives. This suffix can be fundamentally connected to the heart of any adjective, the value of which allows the formation of adverbs.

Middle English adverbs with the suffix-e, inherited from the Old English period, in connection with the falling unstressed-e, coincided with the appearance of adjectives. A small number of adverbs, which do not differ in appearance from adjectives, preserved in the New English language. [25, p.48]

There are excerpts from the Greater Oxford Dictionary below, which include the etymology and definition of some homonymous adjectives and adverbs in English.

CLEAN adj.

1. Clear (1040)

2. Pure, undefiled, unsullied (1000)

3. Free from dirt or filth (897)

CLEAN adv.

Forms : see Clean adj.

1. Of manner : In a “clean” manner

2. In a manner free from dirt; or so as to leave no dirt, refuse, or obstructions. (1000)

CLEANLY adj.

Claen + lic = Clean + body:

It appears to have been first used of moral and spiritual purity and thence extended to certain senses of clean but its main sense still refers to habit and tendency rather than to actual state.

1. Morally or spiritually clean. (888)

2. Clean as clothes or the like. (1340)

3. Of persons (or beasts) : Addicted to cleanness, habitually clean. (1500)

CLEANLY adv.

1. In a cleanly manner (1000)

CLEAR adj.

1. Brightly shining, bright, brilliant. (1297)

2. a) Of the day, daylight: Fully light, bright; opposed to dusk, twilight. (1320)

b) Of the weather: sunshine, cloudless sky. (1297)

3. Transparent. (1300)

CLEAR adv. Forms : see CLEAR adj.

Clear is not originally an adverb, and its adverbial use arose partly out of the predicative use of the adjective, as in “the sun shines clear”; partly out of the analogy of natitive English adverbs which by loss of final - e had become formally identical with their adjectives especially of Clean adv. Which it has largely supplanted.)

1. Brightly, with effulgence, with undimmed or unclouded lustre. (1300)

2. † Distinctly. (1300) (now Clearly)

3. † Manifestly, evidently. (1562) (now Clearly)

4. With clear voice, distinctly. (1450)

CLEARLY adv.

1. † Brightly; luminously; transparently. (1350)

2. With optical distinctness. (1297)

3. Of mental vision: with full understanding, distinctly. (1350)

4. Manifestly, evidently. (1590)

CLOSE adj.

1. Closed, shut; having no part left open. Often as extention of predicate as in “to shut close”. (1325)

2. Enclosed or shut in, esp. with walls or barriers. (1489)

3. Shut up in prison, confined. (1393)

4 shut up from observation, secret, occult. (1393)

CLOSE adv. Forms : see CLOSE adj.

(No strict dividing line can be drawn between the predicative uses of the adjective, and the adverbial use into which both gradually pass; but where the latter is fully developed, Closely is now preferred in ordinary prose.)

1. In (into) position in which the intervening place is closed up so that there is no interval; in immediate contact or proximity

a) Of the mutual proximity of ywo or more things. (1489)

b) Of the proximity of one thing to another. (1400)

2. † Secretly, covertly. (1387)

3. In strict confinement. (1399)

CLOSELY adv.

In a close manner; usually opposed to openly.

1. So as to leave no passage out or in. (1594)

2. Spec. With closed lips, inarticulately

3. † Secretly. (1423)

4. In close proximity. (1634)

DEAD adj.

1. That has ceased to live; deprived of life; in that state in which the vital functions and powers have come to an end and are incapable of being restored:

...