Classification of homonyms by the type of meaning

Full and partial homonymy

Classification of homonyms

Homonymy of words and homonymy of word-forms

Definition of homonymy

Lecture 4. Homonymy

The term homonym is derived from Greek homos ‘similar’ and onoma ‘name’. Two or mere words identical in sound and / or spelling but different in meaning, distribution and often in origin are called homonyms. Homonyms may also be defined as words possessing identical sound forms and / or spelling but different semantic structure.

Some words are homonymous in all their forms. In this case we observe full homonymy of the paradigm of two or more different words. E.g. seal₁ ‘a sea animal’:: seal₂ ‘a stamp’. Here the paradigm “ seal, seal’s, seals’, seals ” is identical for both of them.

If we compare the paradigms of the words seal₁ ‘a sea animal’:: (to) seal₃ ‘to stamp’ we see that although some individual word-forms are homonymous, the whole of the paradigm is not identical; cf.

seal₁ seal₃

seal’s seals

seals’ sealed

seals sealing

In such cases we observe homonymy of individual word-forms or partial homonymy.

Consequently all cases of homonymy may be classified into full and partial homonymy or homonymy of words and homonymy of individual word-forms.

The bulk of full homonyms are to be found within the same parts of speech; e.g. seal₁:: seal₂ both as nouns.

Partial homonymy is also possible within one part of speech; e.g. in the verbs: lie₁ ‘to be in horizontal position’:: lie₂ ‘to make an untrue statement’; cf.

lie₁ lie₂

lies lies

lay lied

lain lied

Here only the first two forms are homonymous.

Homonyms may also be classified by the type of meaning into lexical, lexico-grammatical and grammatical homonyms.

Lexical homonyms are words identical in their part-of-speech and grammatical meaning of all their homonymous word-forms but different in their lexical meaning. E.g. in the case of the nouns seal₁:: seal₂ the difference is confined to the lexical meaning only, as they belong to the same part-of-speech and “noun” and the grammatical meanings of their Common and Possessive Cases Singular and Plural are identical.

Lexico-grammatical homonyms are words identical in the sound-forms of some of their grammatical word-forms but different in their part-of-speech meaning and in the lexical and grammatical meaning of their homonymous word-forms. E.g. in the case seal₁:: seal₃ the identical sound- and spelling-forms seals₁ [sÖlz] (Common case Plural of the noun) and seals₃ [sÖlz] (third person Singular of the verb) are different in their lexical and grammatical meaning.

There are cases when lexico-grammatical homonymy is observed within the same part of speech; e.g. in the verbs (to) find:: (to) found; here the homonymic word-forms found₁:: found₂ differ both grammatically and lexically.

Grammatical homonymy is the homonymy of different word-forms of one and the same word. E.g. in the paradigm of the majority of verbs the form of the Past Tense is homonymous with the form of Participle II; cf. asked:: asked.

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