Table of Contents

1.  Introduction  2

2.  Homonymy and Types of Homonyms 3  5

3.  Reasons for Homonymy  6

3.1  Phonetic Convergence  6

3.2  Semantic Divergence 6  8

3.3  Foreign Influence 8  9

3.4  Loss of Sounds 9  10

4.  Problems of Homonymy  11

4.1  Ambiguity 11  12

4.1.1  Safeguards against the Confusion of Ambigious  

  Homonyms 12  13

5.  Examples  14

5.1  tear 14  15

5.2  ball 15  17

5.3  let 18  20

5.4  fine 20  21

6.  Conclusion  22

  Bibliography  23

  Hiermit erkläre ich dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbst angefertigt und alle  

  von mir benutzten Hilfsmittel und Quellen angegeben habe alle wörtlichen  

  Zitate und Entlehnungen aus fremden Arbeiten sind als solche gekennzeichnet  

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1. Introduction

Comunicating via language is a significant property of human beings. The Oxford English Dictionary contains about 400 000 lexemes and the vocabulary of an average English speaker covers 250 000 words. During normal conversations about 4,000 or 5,000 words are used per hour and while reading a person reaches an amount of 14,000 or 15,000 words in an hour. 1 Usually one does not think about any relations between the words, the words we need in a particular situation come to our mind and we use them because they fulfill the function of communicating with others. When communicating via language we do not think about where the words historically come from or how they are related to each other.

From the linguistic point of view the words are not single units for themselves they are linked to each other by semantic (paradigmatic and syntagmatic) and formal relations. Syntagmatic relations are explained on the basis of meaning of words and paradigmatic relations deal with semantic and grammatical features. Formal relations are based on the form of lexemes. The focus of this paper will be on homonymy, which is a formal relationship between lexemes. In the first part the phenomenon will be explained in regard to its types, development and problems which can arise from homonymy. In the second part examples of homonymous lexemes will be analysed. It will be explained which type of homonymy they belong to, why they are homonyms and which problems can arise in written and spoken language when those homonymous lexemes are used.

1 See: Aitchison, Jean, Linguistics (London: Hodder Headline Plc, 1999) 3.

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2. Homonymy and Types of Homonyms

Briefly said homonyms are two or more different lexemes which have the same form but are unrelated in meaning and have different historical sources in language. The words which are homonyms usually have different entries in dictionaries. 2 While investigating homonymy one also has to consider homophony and homography. Homophones are lexemes that have the same pronunciation, but can differ in spelling.

Homographs are spelled the same and are either different or identical in pronunciation. 3

Homonymy can therefore be seen as a subclass of homophony and homography. 4 Homonymy can also be divided in absolute and partial h omonymy. Absolute homonyms are unrelated in meaning, all their forms are identical in pronunciation as well as in spelling (citation forms and word forms) and those identical forms are grammatical equivalent. 5 Grammatical equivalents belong to the same word-class, have the same syntactic function and occur in the same grammatical environment.

2 See: Yule, George, The Study of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 96-97.

3 See: Leisi, E., Das heutige Englisch (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1985) 48. 4 Ibid, 48.

5 See: Lyons, J., Linguistic Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 55.

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mail 1 [meIl] (noun ‘posted letters and parcels’) mail 2 [meIl] (noun ‘armour made of rings or chains’) lap 1 [læp] (noun ‘top part of the legs, forming a flat surface when sitting down’) lap 2 [læp] (noun ‘a section of a journey or trip’)

Partial homonyms fail to fulfill one or more features of absolute homonymy. 6 There may be differences in form, pronunciation or spelling or a lack of grammatical equivalence.

visit 1 [vIzIt] (verb ‘to see a person or a place for a short time’) visit 2 [vIzIt] (noun ‘a period of time when sb goes to see a person or a place’) rung 1 [r? ?] (noun ‘a bar that forms a step of the ladder’) rung 2 [r? ?] (past part. of the verb ring)

To find out if lexemes are homonyms one has to investigate the etymology of the words, that means sources which the lexemes derive from, because homonyms have different origins in language. 7 If the words have the same historical source they are polysemous lexemes.

race 1 ‘running’ race 2 ‘people, nationality’

A polysemous lexeme has two or more related senses, like tongue in the

example above. Homonyms are, in contrast to polysemes, different lexemes which are semantically unrelated, there can not be found a relation between the

6 Ibid, 55.

7 Ibid, 28.

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meanings of the lexemes. 8 This feature can also be proved in the example: between the meanings of race 1 and race 2 can not be found any relation. In the example of tongue the common feature of sememes (1) and (2) is shape (metaphor) and sense (3) of the lexeme is impossible without (1) (a human needs the tongue to produce spoken language), which is a relation of metonomy.

8 Ibid, 28.

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