Evolution of consonants through the periods

HISTORICAL PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

LECTURE 6

PARONYMS

Polysemy and Homonymy

One of the most debatable problems in semasiology is the demarcation line between homonymy and polysemy. Scholars use different criteria to distinguish between polysemy and homonymy.

1. ______________ criterion. It implies that the difference between polysemy and homonymy is actually reduced to _____________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________.

2. The criterion of ____________________. This criterion is helpful in cases of lexico-grammatical homonyms. For example, in the homonymic pair paper. n. – paper v. the distribution of these words is different. This formal criterion can be used only with lexico-grammatical homonyms, but it often fails in case of lexical homonymy.

3. The criterion of ________________. Homonyms differing in graphic forms such as knight – night, flower – flour, etc. are easily perceived to be two different lexical units.

The term comes from Greek, it means para – ‘beside’, onyma ‘name’. So, paronyms are words that are kindred both in sound form and meaning and therefore liable to be mixed but in fact different in meaning and usage and therefore only mistakenly interchanged. This is the case with the verbs to affect and to effect.

Paronyms are somewhat related to homonyms. They are words alike in ________, but different in ____________________, e.g.:

1) words having one and the same root but different derivational _____________, e.g. precede and proceed; prescription and proscription ’; preposition and proposition; anterior and interior;

2) words having one and the same root but different derivational suffixes, e.g.: popular and populous;

3) words derived from different roots, the likeness may be accidental, e.g. complement and compliment.

English Consonants were on the whole far more stable than vowels. A large number of consonants have probably remained unchanged through all historical periods. Thus we can assume that the sonorants [m, n, l], the plosives [p, b, t, d] and also [k, g] in most positions have not been subjected to any noticeable changes. They are found in many words descending from OE though their correlations in the system of phonemes have altered to a varying degree.

The most important developments in the history of English consonants were the growth of new sets of sounds, – affricates and sibilants, and the new phonological treatment of fricatives.

Both changes added a number of consonant phonemes to the system. On the other hand, some consonants were lost of vocalized, which affected both the consonant and vowel system. Like vowel changes, consonant changes can be shown as occurring in the transition period from written OE to the language of the 18^th century, that is in the Early MnE period.

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