Homonymy [Grk óNyma (=óNoma) ‘Name’]

About 1 pages (346 words)

Homonym Summary

Know this topic well? Help others and get FREE products!

Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics

homonymy [Grk ónyma (=ónoma) ‘name’]

A type of lexical ambiguity involving two or more different words: Homonymous expressions are phonologically ( homophony) and orthographically ( homography) identical but have different meanings and often distinct etymological origins, e.g. found (‘establish’ or ‘cast’), kitty (‘fund’ or ‘cat’), scour (‘polish’ or ‘search'). Occasionally, homonyms have a common etymological origin, e.g. meter (‘unit of length’ or ‘instrument used to measure’). The etymological criterion is generally problematic, since the point of divergence from a common etymological origin is often unclear. Homonymy is traditionally distinguished from polysemy in that a polysemic expression has several closely related variations in its meaning, e.g. green (‘fresh,’ ‘inexperienced,’ and ‘raw’, among others), while the meanings of homonymous expressions have no apparent semantic relation to one another.

Diachronically, homonymy arises through ‘coincidental’ phonetic and semantic developments, through which (a) originally distinct expressions collapse into a single form (e.g. sound₁ ‘distinctive noise’<ME sun, soun< MFr. son<Lat. sonus; sound₂ ‘healthy; secure’ <ME sund<OE gesund; sound₃ ‘channel of water’<ME sound<OE sund; and sound₄ ‘probe, investigate’<ME sounden<OFr. sonder; or (b) a single original expression branches into two or more expressions retaining the original orthographic (and phonological) form, e.g. snow₁ ‘solid precipitation’ and snow₂ ‘cocaine.’ Synchronically, the etymological criterion does not apply in most cases, since the genetic relationships are not generally part of competence ( competence vs performance) of a speaker.

Problems in homonymy are often language-specific. Consider morphosyntactic criteria, such as distinct genders in some languages (e.g.

Ger. der/das Band (‘volume,’ ‘ribbon’) or different plural forms (e.g. Ger. die Leiter/ Leitern (‘leaders,’ ‘ladders’)). Allan (1986) has established various causes for homonymy in English. Rhyming slang (china₁ ‘plates’ vs china₂ ‘mate’), euphemisms (bull₁ ‘male, bovine’ vs bull₂ ‘nonsense’), and dialectal differences or regionalisms (braces Brit. ‘support straps for trousers’) are among the many ways homonyms arise. The most essential, if not sufficiently exact, criterion between homonymy and polysemy is the distinctness of meaning between the expressions in question.