Lecture III. Systemic Relations in the Lexical System

1. Homonymy and Its Sources Homonyms are words different in meaning but identical in sound or spelling, or both in sound and spelling. The causes by which homonymy is brought may be divided into 2 groups:

1) homonymy through convergent sound development – 2 or 3 words of different origin accidentally coincide in sound form E.g.: the homonyms case ‘instance of thing occurring’ and case ‘a box’ originated from two different Latin verbs - cadere ‘to fall’ and capere ‘to hold’.

2) homonymy through divergent sense development – arising from polysemy, and sometimes accompanied by morphological processes such as loss of ending. E.g.: box (a kind of receptacle, a slap on the ear with the hand, to put into a box (verb), to fight with fists in padded gloves (verb, sports)).

The arisal of homonyms through divergent sense development is very difficult to establish – the only way of doing it is by judging if there is any connection between the meanings or not. And for linguistically trained people there will also be less unrelated homonyms than for an untrained person.

Walter Skeat classified homonyms according to their spelling and sound forms and he pointed out three groups: perfect homonyms, words identical in sound and spelling: school – косяк рыбы and школа; homographs, words with the same spelling but pronounced differently: bow – поклон and bow – лук; homophones, words pronounced identically but spelled differently: night - ночь and knight - рыцарь.

Another classification was suggested by A.I. Smirnitsky. He added to Skeat’s classification one more criterion: grammatical meaning. he subdivided the group of perfect homonyms into two types:

- perfect homonyms: seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’ and seal₂ — ‘a design printed on paper by means of a stamp’. The paradigm “seal, seal’s, seals, seals’ ” is identical for both of them.

- and homoform, e.g. seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’ and (to) seal, — ‘to close tightly’, we see that although some individual word- forms are homonymous, the whole of the paradigm is not identical

In other books these types are called full and partial homonyms.

Homonyms may be also classified by the type of meaning into lexical, lexico-grammatical and grammatical homonyms. We can say that seal₂ and seal₁ are lexical homonyms because they differ in lexical meaning. If we compare seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’, and (to) seal₃ — ‘ to close tightly, we shall observe not only a difference in the lexical meaning of their homonymous word-forms but a difference in their grammatical meanings as well. We describe these homonymous word-forms as lexico-grammatical. Grammatical homonymy is the homonymy of different word-forms of one and the same word.

2. Polysemy and homonymy These two phenomena are closely interrelated due to opposite tendencies:

1) Homonymy may arise from polysemy – disintegration, or split of polysemy. The resulting meanings lose all their connections with the other meanings and start separate existence. E.g., flower and flour – originally they were two meanings of the same word.

2) Polysemy may arise from homonymy - ear (human organ) and ear (of corn)- now perceived as one word with metaphorically connected meanings, but used to be different Latin words.

There are several criteria of differentiating:

- etymology

- semantics

- spelling

- distribution

Only etymological criterion is diachronic, the rest are synchronic. And they all have their drawbacks:

etymological: words that differ in origin are homonyms. But this doesn’t work for homonyms arising from polysemy, because transition is very gradual.

semantic: words that aren’t related to each other semantically – homonyms. But this criterion is often criticized as being very subjective. Draw – to cause to move by pulling and to depict in lins, esp. with a pencil seem quite different in meaning but have the same origin, they are meanings of one word. Ear – vice versa.

spelling – if the words differ in graphic form they are homonyms. But it doesn’t work with homonyms having identical spelling (bow and bow, row and row)

distribution – if words are never found in identical distribution, they are homonyms. But it works only with different parts of speech. As to words belonging to the same part of speech, it doesn’t work. (race – One race is different from another – забег или раса). And the distribution of different meanings of a polysemantic word can also be different – green apple – green boy (inexperienced).

Some scholars such as V.I. Abayev think only words resulting from different sources etymologically can be considered homonyms. others disagree, taking into account structural and semantic criteria as well.

3. Synonyms Synonyms are words different in their outer aspects, but identical or similar in their inner aspects. There are some absolute synonyms in the language, which have exactly the same meaning and belong to the same style: to moan, to groan; homeland, motherland. If two synonyms differ in this or that component of their denotative meaning, then such synonyms is called ideographic. Sometimes one of the absolute synonyms is specialized in its usage and we get stylistic synonyms: to begin (native) – to commence (borrowing). Stylistic synonyms can also appear by means of abbreviation: exam (colloquial), examination (neutral).

There are also contextual synonyms which are similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions: buy and get are not synonyms out of context but they are synonyms in the following examples: I‘ll go to the shop and buy some bread and I‘ll go to the shop and get some bread.

In each group of synonyms there is a word with the most general meaning, which can substitute any word in the group. Such words are called synonymic dominants: piece is the synonymic dominant in the group piece, slice, lump. morsel.

The peculiar feature of English is the contrast between simple native words which are stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and learned words of Greko-Latin origin, e.g.: to ask - to question - to interrogate.

A source of synonymy also worthy of note is the so-called euphemism in which by a shift of meaning a word of more or less ‘pleasant or at least inoffensive connotation becomes synonymous to one that is harsh, obscene, indelicate or otherwise unpleasant. A euphemistic expression coincides in denotation with the word it substitutes, but it doesn’t have the connotations associated with it and so the utterance on the whole is milder, less offensive: pregnant:: in the family way. Very often a learned word which sounds less familiar is therefore less offensive, as in drunkenness:: intoxication; sweat:: perspiration.

4. Paronyms

Paronyms are words which are partially similar in form but different in meaning and usage: proscribe-prescribe, prosecute - persecute. The coinciding parts are not morphemes but meaningless sound-clusters. Pairs like historic-historical (words containing the same root-morpheme) are usually treated as synonyms. Improper usage of learned and sonorous language results in the so-called malapropisms – for example, the incorrect usage of the word supercilious instead of superficial: have a supercilious (superficial) knowledge in accounts. Malapropisms may be viewed as a kind of paronyms.

5. Antonyms

Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions. V.N. Comissarov classified antonyms into two groups: absolute (root) antonyms (late - early) and derivational antonyms (to please – to displease, honest - dishonest). Absolute antonyms have different roots and derivational antonyms have the same roots but different affixes. Derivational antonyms express contradictory notions, one of them excludes the other: active-inactive. Absolute antonyms express contrary notions. If some notions can be arranged in a group of more than two members, the most distant members of the group will be absolute antonyms: ugly, plain, good-looking, pretty, beautiful, the antonyms are ugly and beautiful.

6. Stylistically Marked and Stylistically Neutral Words

The basic stylistic division of the vocabulary is stylistically neutral and stylistically marked words. The former can be used in any situation and make up the greater part of every utterance. The latter are found only in specific contexts. horse (neutral) – steed (poetic) – gee-gee (a nursery word).

Stylistically marked words are subdivided into formal and informal. Formal vocabulary includes special terms (morpheme, phoneme), learned words (initial, to exclude), official words (to dispatch, to summon) and poetic words (woe, to behold, lone). Informal vocabulary is subduvided into standard colloquial and substandard: slang, argot, dialectal, familiar and vulgar words. Colloquial vocabulary includes common polysemantic words (thing, get, really, nice), nouns converted from verbs (give a scare, make-up), verbs with postpositives (think out, come on), substantivized adjectives (woolies, daily), emotional units (a bit tired, by God, oh), modal words and expressions (definitely, in a way, rather, by no means). Slang words are fresh and shocking words for usual things: drunk – boozy, cock-eyed, soaked, tight.

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