MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINE

Kyiv National Linguistic University

Korunets Department

Of English and German Philology and Translation

Project work

in Contrastive Lexicology of the English and Ukrainian languages

HOMONYMS IN THE ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

Barbara Tolkachova

Group ПА04-19

Translators’/Interpreters’ Department

Research supervisor:

V.G. Nikonova

Professor, Doctor of Philology

Kyiv 2021
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Homonyms exist in many languages but in English this language phenomenon is

especially frequent, mostly in monosyllabic words (nearly 90 % of homonyms).

Homonyms are words which have the same form but are different in meaning.
"The same form" implies identity in sound form or spelling, i.e., all the three
aspects are taken into account: sound-form, graphic form and meaning. The term is
derived from Greek (homos – the same, onoma – name, i.e., the same name
combined with the difference of meaning).

There are 3 classifications of homonyms. The first one, according to Walter Skeet,
is based on all three aspects (sound-form, graphic form and meaning). Homonyms
are divided into homonyms proper; homophones and homographs.

Homonyms proper (or perfect, absolute) are words identical in pronunciation аnd
spelling but different in meaning, like back n. "part of the body" - back adv. "away
from the front" - back v. "go back"; bear n. "animal" - bear v, "carry, tolerate";
Ukrainian: мати дієсл. “жінка стосовно дитини, яку вона народила” -мати ім. “
володіти чимось”; варта ім. “сторожа”- варта прикм. ж. р. “ який заслуговує
чогось”; три числів. “число” - три дієслл. наказового способу “ натискуючи
чимось, водити туди й сюди по якійсь поверхні”.
Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning:
sea n ‘море’ and see v ‘бачити’; son n ‘син’ and sun n ‘сонце’; piece ‘шматок’
-peace ‘мир’; knight ‘лицар’-night ‘ніч’; Ukrainian: мене ‘займенник я у знахід.
відмінку’-мине ‘пройде’, біль ‘відчуття фізичного страждання’-білль ‘у
США, Великій Британії тощо – проект закону, що виноситься урядом або
членом парламенту’, etc.

Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical
in spelling: bow /bou/ 'a piece of wood curved by a string and used for shooting
arrows' - bow /bau/ 'the bending of the head or body', tear n —'a drop of water that
comes from the eye' and tear v /tea/—'to pull apart by force'; Ukrainian: дорога
‘смуга землі по якій ходять або їздять’-дорога ‘коштовна, цінна’; замок
‘палац’-замок ‘пристрій для замикання дверей’; брати ‘схопити’-брати
‘кожен із синів по відношенню до інших дітей’.

Homoforms - words identical in some of their grammatical forms. To bound

(jump, spring) - bound (past participle of the verb bind); found (establish) -found
(past participle of the verb find)
According to Ginsburg R. S. classification, which is based on the type of meaning,
homonyms are subdivided into lexical, lexico-grammatical and grammatical.
Lexical homonyms belong to one and the same time part of speech and the
grammatical meanings of all their forms are identical, but they are different in their
lexical meaning, e.g., bank: 1) a shore, a river bank; 2) a financial institution; ball:
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1) any spherical body; 2) a large dancing party; Ukrainian: блок: 1)пристрій для
підіймання вантажів; 2)союз, об'єднання; клепати: 1)загострювати (косу,
ніж); 2)зводити наклеп; лимонка:1)груша; 2)ручна граната

Lexico-grammatical homonymys differ both in lexical and grammatical meanings,

they belong to different parts of speech, e.g., seal ‘a sea animal’ and seal ‘to close
tightly’; Ukrainian: віз ‘засіб пересування’- віз ‘минулий час від слова везти’.

Grammatical homonyms differ in grammatical meaning only e.g., found (The past
Indefinite) and found (Participle 2); Ukrainian: відносно(prep.)-відносно(adverb)
As for nouns, we usually find homonymous forms of the Possessive Case Singular
and the Common Case Plural, e.g., brother's – brothers.

From the view point of their origin, homonyms can be: historical homonyms and
ethymological ones.

Historical homonyms are those which result from the breaking up of polysemy;
then one polysemantic word will split up into two or more separate words, e.g., to
bear /терпіти/ - to bear /народжувати/ pupil /ученик/ - pupil /зіниця/
plant /рослина / - plant /завод/
Etymologiсal homonyms are words of different origin which come to be alike in
sound or in spelling (and may be both written and pronounced alike)… E.g., the
Latin vitis -"spiral" has given the English ''vice" - тиски "apparatus with strong
jaws in which things can be hold tightly"; the Latin vice - "instead of", "in place
of" will be found in vice - president. It should be noted that the most debatable
problem in homonymy is the demarcation line between homonymy and polysemy,
i.e., between different meanings of one word and the meanings of two or more
homonymous words.

There are several sources of homonymy:

1)One source of homonyms are phonetic changes which words undergo in the

course of their historical development. As a result of such changes, two or more
words which were pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and
thus become homonyms. Night (ніч) and knight (лицар), for instance, were not
homonyms in Old English as the initial k in the second word was pronounced, and
not dropped as it is in its modern sound form.

2) Borrowing is another source of homonyms. A borrowed word may duplicate in

form a native word or another borrowing. So, in the group of homonyms rite, n
(обряд) – to write, v – right, adj. the second and third words are of native origin
whereas rite (обряд) is a Latin borrowing.
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3)Word-building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, and

the most important type in this respect is conversion. Such pairs of words
as comb, n (гребінь) – to comb, v (розчісувати); water(вода) –to water(текти) are
numerous in the vocabulary.

4)Shortening is a further type of word-building. E.g., fan, n in the sense of “an

admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer” is a shortening produced
from fanatic. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing fan,  which denotes an implement
for waving lightly to produce a cool current of air.

5)Words made by sound-imitation can also form pairs of homonyms with other

words: e.g., bang, n (a loud, sudden, explosive noise) – bang, n (a fringe of hair
combed over the forehead – чуб).

6) Now we come to a further source of homonyms which differs from all the above
cases. Two or more homonyms can originate from different meanings of the same
word when the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts. This type
of formation of homonyms is called split polysemy (розпад полісемії). The
semantic structure of a polysemantic word presents a system within which all its
constituent meanings are held together by logical associations. In most cases, the
function of the arrangement and the unity is determined by one of the meanings
(e.g., the meaning “flame” in the noun fire). If this meaning happens to disappear
from the word’s semantic structure, associations between the rest of the meanings
may be severed, the semantic structure loses its unity and falls into two or more
parts which then become accepted as independent lexical units.
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Key words and expressions from the text:

1.monosyllabic-односкладовий

2.sound form\graphic form-звукова та письмова форми

3.homonyms -омоніми

4.homophones-омофони

5.homographs -омографи

6.borrowing-запозичення

7.spelling-правопис

8.meaning-значення

9.polysemy-полісемія

10.shortening-скорочення

Interpretation of the text:

Exercise 1. Give definitions to the terms

Lexical homonyms, lexico-grammatical homonyms, grammatical homonyms,

historical and etymological homonyms, conversion, polysemy

Keys:

Lexical homonyms-belong to one and the same part of speech and grammatical
meanings of all their forms are identical, but they are different in their lexical
meaning.

lexico-grammatical homonyms- differ both in lexical and grammatical meanings,

they belong to different parts of speech.

grammatical homonyms- differ in grammatical meaning only; it’s the homonymy

of different word-forms of one the same word.

historical homonyms- those which result from the breaking up of polysemy; then
one polysemantic word will split up into two or more separate words

etymological homonyms- words of different origin which come to be alike in

sound and spelling.
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conversion- is sometimes referred to as an affixless way of word-building, a

process of making a new word from some existing root word by changing the
category of a part of speech without changing the morphemic shape of the original
root-word.

polysemy- is characteristic of word possessing more than one meaning

Exercise 2. Match the definitions with the terms

1)homonym a) is the naming of an action or a thing by a more or

2) homonyms proper
3)homophones
4)homographs
5) sound-imitation
6) phonetic change
less exact reproduction of the sound associated with
it
b) generally, a word that sounds the same or is
spelled the same as another word but has a different
meaning
c) a change in pronunciation patterns
d) words identical both in sound-form and in
graphic form but different in meaning.
e) words identical in sound-form but different both
in spelling and meaning.
f) identical in spelling but different both in their
sound-form and in meaning

Keys: 1-b; 2-d; 3-e; 4-f; 5-a; 6-c.

Exercise 3. Indicate whether the following statements are True(T) or False(F).

1)The term homonymy is derived from Greek.

2)Homographs are words identical in pronunciation and spelling but different in

meaning.

3)By the type of meaning, homonyms are divided into lexical, lexico-semantic, and
grammatical

4)Borrowing, word-builidng and phonetic changes can be a source of homonyms.

5)If both homonyms belong to the same part of speech and if grammatical
meanings of all their forms are identical, they are lexical homonyms.

6)This language phenomenon is especially frequent in English language in

monosyllabic words.

7) Ginsburg R. S. classification is based on all three aspects (sound-form, graphic

form and meaning).
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Keys: 1-T; 2-F; 3-F; 4-T; 5-T; 6-T; 7-F.

Exercise 4. Insert words missing in the text below:

borrowing Conversion monosyllabic meaning grammatical

lexical Meaning polysemy shortening paradigm

Most homonyms are ___words. The trend towards monosyllabism, greatly

increased by the loss of inflections and ___, must have contributed much toward
increasing the number of homonyms in English.

Among the other ways of creating homonyms the following processes must be
mentioned: onomatopoeia, knows as ___ which serves the creating of ___
homonyms, e.g., iron -to iron, work - to work, etc.; ___ - as soon as a derived
meaning is no longer felt to be connected with the primary meaning at all (as in bar
- балка; bar - бар; bar - адвокатура) polysemy breaks up and separate words come
into existence, quite different in meaning from the basic word but identical in
spelling. In other cases, homonyms are a result of ___ when several different
words become identical in sound or spelling.

According to Ginsburg R. S. classification, which is based on the type of ___,

homonyms are subdivided into: ___, which belong to the same category of parts of
speech and have the same ___, lexico-grammatical, which differ both in meanings
and belong to different parts of speech and ___, which differ in grammatical
meaning only.

Keys:

1.monosyllabic 2. shortening 3. conversion 4. grammatical 5. Polysemy 6.

Borrowing 7. meaning 8. Lexical 9. Paradigm 10. Grammatical

Exercise 5. Answer the questions.

1.Provide some examples to show differences between homonyms perfect,

homophones and homographs

2. What’s the differences between lexico-grammatical and lexical homonyms?

3. What homonyms exist from the view point of their origin?

4.What sources of homonymy do you know?

5. What does split polysemy mean?

Keys:
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1.Homonyms proper: bay1-бухта, затока, bay2-гавкіт, гавкання

Homophones: meat-м’ясо, meet-зустрічати

Homographs: row /rəʊ/-ряд, row /raʊ/-шум

2. Lexical homonyms belong to one and the same time part of speech and the
grammatical meanings of all their forms are identical, but they are different in their
lexical meaning, while lexico-grammatical homonymys differ both in lexical and
grammatical meanings and belong to different parts of speech.

3.Historical and etymological ones.

4.Shortening, conversion, borrowing, phonetic changes, sound imitation, etc.

5. Two or more homonyms can originate from different meanings of the same
word when the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts. This type
of formation of homonyms is called split polysemy.

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENTS

Exercise 1. Find homonyms proper in the sentences, contrast their meaning and
define parts of speech

1.He held the bird gently in the palm of his hand. Last weekend’s rainstorm
loosened the soil and a 40-year-old palm tree fell on the ground.

2.You remembered my favourite band is The Beatles…She always ties her hair
back in a band

3.You are proved that you know English well. We used to get our water from a
well.

4. У мене до тебе справа. Його попросили стати справа.

5. У лісах живуть бурі медведі. Сьогодні були повітряні бурі.

6. Він ніс подарунок на день народження його друга. Її ніс був закладений,
бо вона захворіла

Keys:

1.palm1(noun)- the inside part of your hand from your wrist to the base of your
fingers, while palm2(noun)- a tree that grows in hot countries and has a tall trunk
with a mass of long pointed leaves at the top
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2.band1(noun)- a group of musicians who play music together

band2(noun)- a thin, flat piece of cloth

3.well(adverb)1- in a good way, to a high or satisfactory standard

well2(noun)- a deep hole in the ground from which you can get water, oil, or gas

4.справа1(іменник)-робота, заняття

Справа2(прислівник)-з правого боку

5.бурі1(прикметник)-колір хутра

бурі2(іменник у множині)-сильний вітер і дощ

6.ніс1(дієслово у мин.ч.)-від дієслова ‘нести’, переносити кудись

ніс2(іменник)- частина обличчя, орган і початковий відділ дихальних шляхів.

Exercise 2. Match homonyms which belong to the same type in the English
sentences with the Ukrainian ones.

1. Грицю вже не до коси: виплив
човен з-за коси, в нім русявих дві
коси
2.Йди до лісу і швидше греби на
будь-який смак осінні гриби
3.Брати не хотіли мене брати
4. The date of our first date is 29th
August 2016.
5.No sweet without sweat
a) Please, tell me if I 'm right that to get
to this street we have to turn right?
b) The wind was too strong to wind the
sail.
c) I like to eat cereal for the TV series.
d) Де лисички бродили, там лисички
вродили.
e) Компанія, в якій працює мій тато,
проводить рекламні кампанії.

Keys: 1-A; 2-C; 3-B; 4-D; 5-E;

Exercise 3. Point out the cases of: a) homonyms proper; b) homophones; c)

homographs

Route-root; cell-sell; mean-mean; allowed-alloud; rock-rock; cereal-serial; wind-

wind; content-content; бони-бонни; кома-кома; віла-вілла; плакати-плакати;
компанія-кампанія; запах-запах; балка-балка; наряд-наряд.

Keys:

a) homonyms proper b) homophones c) homographs

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mean-mean route-root wind-wind;

rock-rock cell-sell content-content
балка-балка allowed-alloud плакати-плакати
наряд-наряд cereal-serial запах-запах
бони-бонни
віла-вілла
компанія-кампанія

Exercise 4. In the words given below, define whether the homonyms are: a)
lexical; b) grammatical; c) lexico-grammatical

1.This famous bank is located on the left bank of Kiev.

2.The apples are beginning to drop from the trees. A single drop of blood splashed
onto the floor.

3. Jasper never found the high-paying clients. The bodies, found in the forest,
belonged to two robbers.

4. Повсюди чад, а ворог лютий Пекельні бенкети справля, Гнітить скрізь сили
неокуті і точить мозок, наче тля! Тут з діда-прадіда, із віку в вік збирали мед,
з беріз точили сік.

5.Він віз багато сувенірів з Америки. Проїздив з навісним брязкотом віз,

навантажений будівничим матеріалом.

6. Відносно цієї справи, поки що ми нічого не можемо сказати. Трохи ширила

книжки інтелігенція, але відносно мало.

Keys:

1,4-lexical

2,5- lexico-grammatical

3,6-grammatical

Exercise 5. Define the sources of homonyms

1.iron-to iron; 2. water-to water; 3.to knead (OE cnēdan) and to need (OE
nēodian); 4. rite from Latin n (обряд) – to write, v – right, adj.; 5. bang, n (a loud,
sudden, explosive noise) – bang, n (a fringe of hair combed over the forehead
– чуб); 6. base from the French base (Latin basis) and base(low) from the Latin bas
(Italian basso). 7. mew, n. "the sound a cat makes" – mew, n. "a sea gul" – mew, n.
 11

"a pen in which poultry is fattened" – mews "small terraced houses in Central
London. 8. repertory → rep, n., representative → rep, n., reputation → rep, n.

Keys:

1.conversion; 2. conversion; 3. phonetic change; 4. borrowing; 5. sound imitation;

6. borrowing; 7. sound imitation; 8. shortening

THE LITERATURE USED:

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1. A Course in Contrastive Lexicology of the English and Ukrainian

Languages/Курс зіставної лексикології англійської та української мов:
Навч. посібник / В. Г. Ніконова, К. П. Никитченко. Київ: Видавничий
центр КНЛУ, 2020. 460 с.
2. Лексикология английского языка: Учебник для ин-тов и фак. иностр.
яз./Р. 3. Гинзбург, С. С. Хидекель, Г. Ю. Князева и А. А. Санкин. — 2-е
изд., испр. и доп. — М.: Высш. школа, 1979.— 269 с,
3. Лексикология английского языка. English Lexicology: Учебное пособие
по английскому языку для переводчиков в сфере профессиональной
коммуникации / Сост. С.М. Вишнякова. – М.: ВГНА Минфина России,
2010. – 79 с.
4. Examples of Homonyms (yourdictionary.com)