Р е ф е р а т homonyms in the English language Знобищева Мария Сергеевна ученица «Г» класса Головко Ольга Владимировна Тамбов 2013 Lyceum 29 Report Homonyms in the English language Znobishcheva Masha g teacher: Golovko O

2.2. Sources of homonyms

There are a lot of sources of homonyms in the English language, here are the most important ones, according to my point of view.

1. 
   One source of homonyms has already been mentioned: phonetic changes which words undergo in the course of their historical development. As a result of such changes, two or more words which were formerly pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms.
   

Night and knight, for instance, were not homonyms in Old English as the initial k in the second word was pronounced, and was not dropped as it is in its modern sound form.

2. 
   The linguistic and etymological analysis showed that the increase of the number of homonyms in the English language is strongly influenced by borrowings mostly from Latin and French. Phonetic structure of borrowed words is usually changing in conformity with the rules of pronunciation and sounds of borrowing language. So borrowing is another source of homonyms. A borrowed word may, in the final stage of its phonetic adaption, duplicate in form either a native word or another borrowing. So, in the group of homonyms rite n. – to write v. – right adj. the second and the third words are of native origin whereas rite is a Latin borrowing (Lat. Ritus). Fair, adj. (in the meaning of honest) is native, and fair, n. (“a gathering of buyers and sellers”) is a French borrowing.
   
3. 
   Word-building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, and the most important type in this respect is conversion (the creation of a word (of a new word class) from an existing word (of a different word class) without any change in form). Such pairs of words as comb n. – to comb v., pale adj. – to pale v., to make v. – make n. Homonyms of this type, which are the same in spelling and sound but refer to different categories of parts of speech, are called lexico-grammatical homonyms.
   
4. 
   Shortening is a further type of word-building which increases the number of homonyms. For example, fan n. in the sense of “an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer etc.” is a shortening produced from fanatic. And its homonym is fan. In the meaning of piece of paper etc. By waving it you feel cooler.
   
5. 
   Words made by sound-imitation can also form pairs of homonyms with other words. For example, bang, n. (“a loud, sudden, explosive noise”) – bang, n. (“a fringe of hair combed over the forehead”)
   

The sources of homonyms described above have one important feature in common. In all mentioned cases the homonyms developed from two or more different words, and their similarity is purely accidental.