If you analyze any language system, you can observe the same phenomena: homonymy and polysemy, synonymy and antonymy. This is observed even in the vocabulary of absolutely any dialects. In this article, we will try to understand the characteristics of these phenomena.
What is a homonym?
This is a concept that has developed in the Russian language, when words that are absolutely identical in sound and spelling are radically different in meaning. The most common example is the word "pen". Is it a writing instrument, a key detail on a door, or a lady's pen waiting to be kissed? It all depends on the context in which the word occurs. Thus, this phenomenon can be designated - homonymy. And polysemy differs from it in all observable ways.
This word itself means ambiguity, if translated from Greek. When a word has many meanings, this is not always homonymy. And polysemy implies several different meanings of the same word. However, all these words are somehow connected by a single meaning or byhistorical origin. People constantly use in their speech - both oral and written - both homonymy and polysemy, they do it easily and simply, without setting themselves the task of somehow distinguishing between such phenomena.
Origin of concepts
Colloquial speech simply does not exist without homonyms, because in our language there are a lot of identical words that have completely different meanings. And in English - even more so. And this concept appeared precisely due to the fact that the Russian language is enriched with borrowings. So, the word "marriage" came to us from German, and it meant precisely a flaw, a flaw. And then somehow it replaced the verb "to take", and now when a husband takes a wife, this is also called marriage.
Distinguishing polysemy and homonymy is not so easy to do. The given example with a different meaning of the word "marriage" is clearly a homonymy. This phenomenon is not necessarily related to borrowing. The Russian language has changed historically, words have changed both morphological and phonetic meaning. Letters from the original alphabet disappeared, for example, if earlier the word "fly" was written through yat (Ъ) and meant medical practice, then later a homonymous word from the verb "fly" was obtained. Which is not the same at all. But this does not show the ambiguity of this word, it is clearly a homonym.
Distinguishing polysemy and homonymy
This task is very difficult. And in its solution it is impossible to do without the ability to find and analyze the meaning of synonyms. Polysemy, homonymy and the science of identical lexical unitsare highly interconnected. First of all, you need to pick up a number of words that are similar in meaning and arrange them in two or more (depending on the number of values) lists. For example, take the word "root". "Inhabitant of the indigenous" and "question of the indigenous" seem to have different meanings. Synonyms for the first meaning are "original", "basic". To the second - also "main", that is - "main". They can be placed in the same row. And so the difference between polysemy and homonymy is immediately guessed. There is no last one here. "Root" is a polysemantic word. So we are dealing with the first one.
The difference between homonymy and polysemy can be seen in any other example. Take the word "thin". In the first meaning - dry or skinny. In the second - bad, nasty. You can’t put it in one row, skinny is not necessarily bad. This means that the phenomenon of homonymy is observed here, if synonyms from different columns cannot be combined in one row by value.
Difficulty identifying
Homonymy and polysemy in a language are not always easy to determine. Here is also a common example: the word "scythe" is a girl's beauty or a tool of an old woman who takes lives. Miscellaneous! But this is polysemy, because in terms of outlines, in both senses, this word means something long, thin and pointed. You need to understand that with homonymy, the coincidence of the sound of words is obtained by chance, but polysemy always retains a common meaning, at least in shades. It's pretty hard to find it. However, there are many ways to distinguish between homonymy andpolysemy.
If you remember that polysemy is formed by selecting the semantic variants of this or that word according to its meaning, it is quite possible to detect its functions in speech. The work of this ambiguity is that the meanings are, as it were, redistributed, mutually replaced, without changing the context and general meaning. These connections are especially well seen in folk speech - in dialects.
Homonyms and synonyms
In homonymy, as already mentioned, the semantic relations in the word are not internally connected, their meanings are not motivated, they are simply expressed by the same form in sound and spelling. Homonyms are different words, their meanings diverge far, even they are often formed from different roots that coincide in sound, or from the same root, but with a different stem.
Synonymy is another language ability. This is the expression of content by different means, using identical words that are close in meaning. The larger the set of synonyms, the richer the language. And this is the best way to determine the difference between polysemy and homonymy. Synonyms tend to carry various kinds of functionality - both semantic and stylistic. Including the function of evaluating the aesthetic level. Synonyms from other dialects, from literature, from foreign languages are actively included in the arsenal of Russian speech.
Connections of synonymy and polysemy
This bond is very strong. The ambiguity of words in different variants is present simultaneously in different synonymic rows. This is especially evident in speeches. For example, Tomsk peasants distinguish three meaningsthe words "strong": fertile, fertile black soil, strong, rich owner, hefty, powerful elk or car. With the use of this word, one can almost always observe the phenomenon of polysemy, and homonymy is not present here. Since all rows of synonyms are easily combined. They must be precisely built, this is the main task, otherwise this definition is impossible to make. The criteria for distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy are always the same.
We analyzed three phenomena, but there is a fourth, no less important. This is an antonym. Synonymy, homonymy, polysemy are strongly associated with this phenomenon. And in the absence of any of these components, the speech will be sparse and insufficiently complete. Antonymy draws absolutely opposite meanings in relation to the same word. And these oppositions are easily built into correlations of synonymous series, which brings the concepts of synonymy and antonymy very close, although the correlation of these series is only approximate.
Different readings
The criteria for distinguishing between the phenomena of polysemy and homonymy are so contradictory that even scientists have not yet fully agreed with each other regarding many words and concepts. Of course, ordinary linguists also have many difficulties. Far from always such a plan, the distinction is made unambiguously and adequately. Firstly, it is very difficult to clearly and consistently define and build synonymous rows, this is precisely what the modern practice of lexicography points to. There are many words that in some dictionaries are interpreted aspolysemantic, while others are considered as homonyms.
And not only the complexity of the problem is to blame, more often - insufficiently scrupulous and consistent approach to these phenomena. There was a period when the fascination with homonymization was even superfluous. For example, even the word "kind" was considered as a homonym: a good (meaning - good) day and a kind (meaning - not evil) person - this is a polysemy, although some sources speak of two different words.
First separation method
The main way to distinguish between homonymy and polysemy is the selection of synonyms for each of the meanings of a given word, followed by a comparison of all components of these series with each other. Is there semantic similarity? This is clearly polysemy! If the values are not comparable, we are dealing with homonymy. Take the word "fight". In the first sense, this is a battle. In the second - this is the name of the boy serving in the hotel. No semantic similarity, lexical units are different. So it's homonymy. But there is a catch here too. Even in the first meaning alone, this word is not so unambiguous.
Line up in a row: wrestling, battle, battle, competition, duel and so on (since the fight can be fist, sea, dog or bullfight and the like, this is a long line), and then we notice that the semantic proximity still there is in battle, struggle and duel. So it's just a slightly different meaning of the word "fight".
This clash in the war of military units is the first meaning. This competition, struggle, duel, single combat - insecond. This is a massacre, a fight - in the third. This is the slaughter of animals (farmers call it "cattle fighting") - the fourth meaning. This is the striking of a clock or a bell - ringing or sounding, the fifth meaning. A total of nine values are indicated in the dictionary. Also: the battle of glass, the battle of a gun, that is, the definition of its strength. Well, and a boy-woman, as they say in many localities, which means - a lively woman, troubled. And all this means that the word "battle" only in the first sense already shows the phenomenon of polysemy.
Second way of delimitation
You can also distinguish a homonymous word from a multi-valued one by simply comparing word forms, that is, you need to select cognate related words (otherwise it is called a derivational connection). If the resulting word forms are similar or identical in meaning, and between them there are words related, identical in the way of formation, if the semantic proximity is not lost, then everything indicates the presence of polysemy.
Let's take the same word - "fight". Almost all of its meanings in word forms and related formations are similar, like twins: fight-in-fight-about-fight-fight-fight-fighter-fighter-fighter and so on. Everything matches. Now, if there were differences in word forms that would clearly draw a line between concepts, isolating word-formation connections, then we could talk about homonymy. Here in the second meaning the word "fight" does not intersect with any derivative of the first meaning, the fight (servant boy) does not have a single root word in Russian.
Types of polysemy
The first type of polysemy differs according to the nature of linguistic motivation in the meaning of the given word. A new meaning is formed as a result of the appearance of an associative similarity of the features of an object (metaphor) or their contiguity (metonymy). In the first case, the metaphorical connection is based on the similarity of form, location, appearance, function, and so on. In the second, the metonymic connection of meanings is based on the juxtaposition, the adjacency of the indicated realities: part-whole and vice versa, the action and its result (synecdoche) and so on.
The second type of polysemy is distinguished by the dependence of the particular and the main in meaning. When meanings are concatenated in a word, three main types of ambiguity are distinguished by their nature: radial (secondary meanings are associated with the main one), chain (each meaning is associated only with adjacent ones), radial-chain (mixed type).
The third type is associative polysemy, when the meanings are far away in content and are connected only with the help of associations. Subtype - associative-semantic polysemy, when the meanings are connected both associatively and by the content of the component composition.
Why language needs homonymy and polysemy
Human knowledge, unlike any language, has a resource that is basically unlimited, practically unlimited, and ambiguity always reflects and reproduces reality in a very generalized way. We must not forget about the laws of asymmetry of sign and meaning, they rarely fully reveal the meaning and sometimes even do not correspond to each other. This is whatis the main reason for the emergence and triumph of polysemy.
Homonymy arose for almost the same reasons - linguistic means required enrichment. Moreover, history does not stand still, it develops, and with its course, the language undergoes changes. From time to time, words of different origin begin to formally coincide with each other both in sound and in spelling, however, they remain different in meaning. These are purely etymological reasons. But there are also cases when the word-formation need of the language affects the appearance of homonyms. That is why homonyms by their nature are so heterogeneous, although in composition they can be both partial and complete.
Homonyms full and partial
Homonyms distinguish between two types. Full lexical homonyms are always the same part of speech, coinciding throughout the entire system of formation. For example - a bow: both the one that is eaten and the one that is shot from behave the same in cases, numbers, no matter what we do with them.
Partial lexical homonyms are consonant words, one of them will necessarily completely coincide with a separate form or with a part of another meaning. For example: fall low and the mouth of a tiger.
