Homonyms in English and their specific features — страница 10

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the Latin “buxus”. The Concise Oxford Dictionary1) has five separate entries for box: 1.box n. - 'a kind of small evergreen shrub'; 2. box n. 'receptacle made of wood, cardboard, metal, etc. and usually provided with a lid'; 3. box v. 'to put into a box'; 4. box n. 'slap with the hand on the ear'; 5. boxt v. ‘a sport term meaning 'to fight with fists in padded gloves'.10 Such homonyms may be partly derived from one another but their common point of origin lies beyond the limits of the English language. In these with the appearance of a new meaning, very different from the previous one, the semantic structure of the parent word splits. The new meaning receives a separate existence and starts a new semantic structure of its own. Hence the term disintegration or split of

polysemy. It must be noted, however, that though the number of examples in which a process of this sort could be observed is considerable, it is difficult to establish exact criteria by which disintegration of polysemy could be detected. The whole concept is based on stating whether there is any connection between the meanings or not, and is very subjective. Whereas in the examples dealing with phonetic convergence, i.e. when we said that “case1” and “case2” are different words because they differ in origin, we had definite linguistic criteria to go by, in the case of disintegration of polysemy there are none to guide us; we can only rely on intuition and individual linguistic experience. For a trained linguist the number of unrelated homonyms will be much smaller than

for an uneducated person. The knowledge of etymology and cognate languages will always help to supply the missing links. It is easier, for instance, to see the connection between beam 'a ray of light' and beam 'the metallic structural part of a building' if one knows the original meaning of the word, i.e. 'tree' (OE beam, Germ Baum), and is used to observe similar metaphoric transfers in other words. The connection is also more obvious if one is able to notice the same element in such compound names of trees as hornbeam, white beam, etc. The conclusion, therefore, is that in diachronistic treatment the only rigorous criterion is that of etymology observed in explanatory dictionaries of the English language where words are separated according to their origin, For example, in the

words matcH2 'a piece of inflammable material you strike fire with' (from OFr “mesche”, Fr “meche”) and matcH3 (from OE “gemcecca” 'fellow'). It is interesting to note that out of 2540 homonyms listed in a dictionary1) only 7% are due to disintegration of polysemy, all the others are etymologically different. One must, however, keep in mind that patterned homonymy is here practically disregarded. This underestimation of regular patterned homonymy tends to produce a false impression. Actually the homonymy of nouns and verbs due to the processes of loss of endings on the one hand and conversion on the other is one of the most prominent features of present-day English. . It may be combined with semantic changes as in the pair “long” (adj.) – “long” (verb). The

explanation is that when it seems long before something comes to you, you long for it (long (adj.) comes from OE “lang”, whereas “long” (v.)comes from OE “langian”, so that the expression “Me longs” means 'it seems long to me'. The opposite process of morphemic addition can also result in homonymy. This process is chiefly due to independent word-formation with the same affix or to the homonymy of derivational and functional affixes. The suffix -er forms several words with the same stem: trail — trailer 'a creeping plant' vs. trailer 'a caravan', i.e. 'a vehicle drawn along by another vehicle'. The suffix -s added to the homonymous stems -arm- gives “arms” (n.) 'Weapon' and “arms” (v.) 'Supplies with weapons'. In summing up this dichromatic analysis of

homonymy it should be emphasized that there are two ways by which homonyms come into being, namely convergent development of sound form and divergent development of meaning (see table below). The first may consist in (a) phonetic change only, (b) phonetic change combined with loss of affixes, (e) independent formation from homonymous bases by means of homonymous morphemes. The second, that is divergent development of meaning may be (a) limited within one lexico-grammatical class of words, (b) combined with difference in lexico-grammatical class and therefore difference in grammatical functions and distribution, (c) based on independent formation from the same base by homonymous morphemes. The process can sometimes be more complicated. At present there are at least two homonyms: