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Divergence of word meaning is the process observed in those cases when different meanings of the same word deviate so far from each other that they come to be regarded as two separate units.
/flauə/
flower from Lat. flos, florem, OFr. flour, flor > ME flour ‘flower’;
flour ‘powder made by crushing grain’. Used from 13c. in the sense of the ‘finest part’ of meal (cf. Fr. fleur de farine ‘flower of flour’). Spelled flower until flour became the accepted form c. 1830 to end confusion.
toast, n
-a slice of bread made brown and crisp by cooking in high temperature, from O.Fr. toster ‘to brown with heat’ (12c.);
-a call to drink to someone's health (1700), originally referring to thebeautiful or popular woman whose health is proposed and drunk, from the use of spiced toast to flavor drink.
Convergent sound development is the process which leads to the phonetic coincidence of two (or more) words that were phonetically distinct at an earlier date, e.g.
-OE ic and eaʒe > ModE I and eye /ai /;
-the disappearance of the sound k before n, e.g. knight – night, knot – not;
-the convergence of the ME ā, ai, ei, e.g. fair – fare, pale – pail, wait – weight;
-race 1 and race 2 fromOld Norse rās 'running' and MFr from It razza 'ethnic group';
- Fr. mèche ‘ w ick’ (фитиль), OE meche ‘partner’ > match 1 ‘сірник’, match 2 ‘a relationship, a partnership’, as in matchmaker.
Loss of inflections, e.g.OE lufu (n) and lufian (v) - ModE love; OE sunne and sunu – ModE sun and son.
Conversion which serves the creation of grammatical homonyms, e.g. iron, n. - iron, v.; work, n. - to work, v.
Shortening,e.g. fan, n. ‘an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc.’ (a clipping from fanatic) – fan, n. ‘an implement for waving li8ghtly to produce a cool current of air’.
Sound-imitation, e.g. bang, n. ‘a loud, sudden, explosive noise’ – bang, n. ‘a fringe of hair combed over the forehead’; mew, n. ‘the sound a cat makes’ – mew, n. ‘a seagull’.
From the viewpoint of their origin homonyms are classified into:
- historical homonyms which result from the breaking up of polysemy; then one polysemantic word will split up into two or more separate words (see the examples on the divergence of word meanings);
- etymological homonyms, i.e. words of different origin which come to be identical in sound or / and in spelling (see the examples on the convergent sound development).
From the point of view of the correlation between the sound form and the graphic forms, homonyms are classified into:
homonyms proper (perfect, absolute, full) are words identical both in pronunciation and in spelling but different in meaning, e.g. back n. ‘part of the body’ - back adv. ‘away from the front’ - back v. ‘go back’; bear n. ‘animal’ - bear v. ‘carry, tolerate’;
homographs are words identical in spelling but different in sound and meaning e.g. bow /bəu/ - bow /bau/; lead /li:d/ - lead /led/; homophones are words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning: son – sun; pair – pear; air - heir, buy - by, him - hymn, steel – steal; storey – story;
homoforms are words identical in some of their grammatical forms: bound, v. ‘to jump, to spring’ - bound (past participle of bind); found, v. ‘establish’ - found (past participle of find);
capitonyms are words that share the same spelling but have different meanings when capitalised, e.g. polish, v. ‘to make shiny’ - Polish, adj. ‘coming from Poland’; Boxing Day (26th of December) – boxing ‘ a kind of sport’.
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| Polysemy. Semantic structure of English words. Diachronic and synchronic approaches to polysemy. Types of polysemy. | | | The classification based on the distinction between homonymy of words and homonymy of individual word-forms (suggested by Prof. Smirnitskiy). |