Let us give the classification of homonyms according to the point of view of famous British lexicologist Walter Skeat.

       So Walter Skeet classified homonyms according to their spelling and sound forms and he pointed out three groups: perfect homonyms that is words identical in sound and spelling, such as : «school» - «косяк рыбы» and «школа» ; homographs, that is words with the same spelling but pronounced differently, e.g. «bow» -/bau/ -«noклон» and /bou/ - «лук»; homophones that is words pronounced identically but spelled differently, e.g. «night» - «ночь» and «knight» -«pыцарь».

        A.I Smirnitsky added to Skeat's classification one more criterion: grammatical meaning. He subdivided the group of perfect homonyms in Skeat's classification into two types of homonyms: perfect which are identical in their spelling, pronunciation and their grammar form, such as «spring» in the meanings: the season of the year, a leap, a source, and homo-forms which coincide in their spelling and pronunciation but have different grammatical meaning, e.g. «reading» - Present Participle, Gerund, Verbal noun., to lobby - lobby.

      A more detailed and the standard way of classification was given by I.V. Arnold. He classified only perfect homonyms and suggested four criteria of their classification: lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, basic forms and paradigms.

     According to these criteria I.V. Arnold pointed out the following groups:

      a) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings, basic forms and paradigms and different in their lexical meanings, e.g. «board»  in the meanings «a council» and «a piece of wood sawn thin»; 

     b) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings and basic forms, different in their lexical meanings and paradigms, e.g. to lie - lied - lied, and to lie - lay - lain;  

     c) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, paradigms, but coinciding in their basic forms,

     e.g. «light» / «lights»/, «light» / «lighter», «lightest»/;  

     d) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, in their basic forms and paradigms, but coinciding in one of the forms of their paradigms, e.g. «a bit» and «bit» (from «to bite»). 

     In I. V. Arnold's classification there are also patterned homonyms, which, differing from other homonyms, have a common component in their lexical meanings. These are homonyms formed either by means of conversion, or by leveling of grammar inflexions. These homonyms are different in their grammar meanings, in their paradigms, identical in their basic forms, e.g. «warm» - «to warm». Here we can also have unchangeable patterned homonyms which have identical basic forms, different grammatical meanings, a common component in their lexical meanings, e.g. «before» an adverb, a conjunction, a preposition. There are also homonyms among unchangeable words which are different in their lexical and grammatical meanings, identical in their basic forms, e.g. «for» - «для» and «for» - «и6o». 
 

      The most widely accepted classification is that recognising homonyms proper, homophones and homographs.   

 

 

 

      Most words differ from each other in both spelling and pronunciation – therefore they belong to the sell D in this table – we shall call them allonyms. Not so many linguists distinguish this category. But it must be admitted that Keith C. Ivey, in his discussion of homonyms, recognizes this fact and writes: 

      These familiar with combinatorics may have noticed that there is a fourth possible category based on spelling and pronunciation: words that differ in spelling and pronunciation as well as meaning and origin (alligator/true). These pairs are technically known as different words.

      Unfortunately, this seemingly neat solution doesn't work because all heteronyms are different words as Ivey's examples show. He illustrates homophones with board/bored, clearly two different words though pronounced alike, and his example of homographs (the verb desert/the noun desert) again shows, by their pronunciation, that they are different words. Even his example of a homonym -- words having both the same sound and spelling, as illustrated by "to quail and a quail" -- clearly shows they are different words. Lexicographers underline this point by writing separate entries for different words, whether or not they have the same spelling and pronunciation.

      One could stipulate a phrase, like uniquely different words to represent category D, but this expedient is cumbersome and not transparent. A simpler solution, I believe, can be found by means of a neologism. It is not difficult to think of a suitable term.

      An allonym is a word that differs in spelling and pronunciation from all other words, whereas both homonyms and heteronyms identify words that are the same, in some ways, as other words.

      No doubt in ordinary usage, we will have little need for this term, although it would simplify lexical explanation if one could start by making the claim that the most words in English are allonyms. The clear exceptions are other groups.

      Different words that are spelled and pronounced the same way are classed in cell A and are correctly called homonyms proper – but some writers, confusingly, call them heteronyms.

      When different words are spelled the same way but pronounced differently, they belong to category B. It is precise to call them homographs and they are sometimes misleadingly called heteronyms. By contrast, when different words are pronounced the same way but spelled differently, we may properly call them homophones – rarely, they have also been called heteronyms.

    Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling, like fast and liver above. Other examples are: back n ‘part of the body’ : : back adv ‘away from the front’ : : back v ‘go back’; ball n ‘a round object used in games’ : : ball n ‘a gathering of people for dancing’; bark n ‘the noise made by a dog’ : : bark v ‘to utter sharp explosive cries’ : : bark n ‘the skin of a tree’ : : bark n ‘a sailing ship’; base n ‘bottom’ : : base v ‘build or place upon’ : : base a ‘mean’; bay n ‘part of the sea or lake filling wide-mouth opening of land’ : : bay n ‘recess in a house or a room’ : : bay v ‘bark’ : : bay n ‘the European laurel’. The important point is that homonyms are distinct words: not different meanings within one word.

    Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning: air : : heir; arms : : alms; buy : : by; him : : hymn; knight : : night; not: : knot; or: : oar; piece : : peace; rain: : reign; scent: : cent; steel : : steal; storey : : story; write : : right and many others.

      In the sentence The play-wright on my right thinks it right that some conventional rite should symbolise the right of every man to write as he pleases the sound complex [rait] is a noun, an adjective, an adverb and a verb, has four different spellings and six different meanings.

     The difference may be confined to the use of a capital letter as in bill and Bill, in the following example:

“How much is my milk bill? -“Excuse me, Madam, but my name is John.

      On the other hand, whole sentences may be homophonic:

The sons raise meat : : The sun’s rays meet.                                                                              

     To understand these one needs a wider context. If you hear the second in the course of a lecture in optics, you will understand it without thinking of the possibility of the first.

     Homographs аrе words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling: bow [bou] : : bow [bau]; lead [li:d] : : lead [led]; row [rou] : : row [rau]; sewer [’souэ] : : sewer [sjuэ]; tear [tiэ] : : tear [tea]; wind [wind] : : wind [waind] and many more.

      It has been often argued that homographs constitute a phenomenon that should be kept apart from homonymy as the object of linguistics is sound language. This viewpoint can hardly be accepted. Because of the effects of education and culture written English is a generalised national form of expression. An average speaker does not separate the written and oral form. On the contrary he is more likely to analyse the words in terms of letters than in terms of phonemes with which he is less familiar. That is why a linguist must take into consideration both the spelling and the pronunciation of words when analysing cases of identity of form and diversity of content [7:214-224]. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2.1 Phonetic coincidence and semantic differentiation of homonyms.

      Many words, especially characterized by a high frequency rating, are not connected with meaning by a one-to-one relationship. On the contrary, one symbol as a rule serves to render several different meanings. The phenomenon may be said to be the reverse of synonymy where several symbols correspond to one meaning.

      Two or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning, distribution and in many cases origin are called homonyms. The term is derived from Greek “homonymous” (homos – “the same” and onoma – “name”) and thus expresses very well the sameness of name combined with the difference in meaning.

      There is an obvious difference between the meanings of the symbol fast in such combinations as run fast ‘quickly’ and stand fast ‘firmly’. The difference is even more pronounced if we observe cases where fast is a noun or a verb as in the following proverbs:  

“A clean fast is better than a dirty breakfast; 

Who feasts till he is sick, must fast till he is well.” 

      Fast as an isolated word, therefore, may be regarded as a variable that can assume several different values depending on the conditions of usage, or, in other words distribution. All the possible values of each linguistic sign are listed in the dictionaries. It is the duty of lexicographers to define the boundaries of each word, i.e. to differentiate homonyms and to unite variants deciding in each case whether the different meanings belong to the same polysemantic word or whether there are grounds to treat them as two or more separate words identical in form. In speech, however, as a rule only one of all the possible values is determined by the context, so that no ambiguity may normally arise. There is no danger, for instance, that the listener would wish to substitute the meaning ‘quick’ into the sentence: It is absurd to have hard and fast rules about anything², or think that fast rules here are ‘rules of diet’.  Combinations when two or more meanings are possible are either deliberate puns, or result from carelessness. Both meanings of liver, i.e. ‘a living person’ and ‘the organ that secretes bile’ are, for instance, intentionally present in the following play upon words:

1. “Is life worth living?” ”It depends upon the liver.” 

2. “What do you do with the fruit?” “We eat what we can, and what we can’t eat we can”

     Very seldom can ambiguity of this kind interfere with understanding. The following example, quoted from Leisi sounds somewhat artificial, but may be also a deliberate joke and not carelessness:  

“The girls will be playing cricket in white stockings. We hope they won’t get too many runs.”  

      Runs in this context may mean either ‘ladders in stockings’ or ‘the units of scoring, made by running once over a certain course’ (a cricket term)

Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. In the list of 2540 homonyms given in the “Oxford English Dictionary” 89% are monosyllabic words and only 9.1% are words of two syllables. From the viewpoint of their morphological structure, they are mostly one-morpheme words. [8:164] 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2.2 Diachronically approach of homonyms 

        The intense development of homonymy in the English language is obviously due not to one single factor but to several interrelated causes, such as the monosyllabic character of English and its analytic structure. Inflections have almost disappeared in present-day English and have been superseded by separate words of abstract character (prepositions, auxiliaries, etc.) stating the relations that once expressed by terminations [8:284].

     The abundance of homonyms is also closely connected with a characteristic feature of the English language as the phonetic unity of word and stem or, in other words, the predominance of free forms among the most frequent roots. It is very obvious that the frequency of words stands in some inverse relationship to length, the monosyllabic words will be the most frequent. Moreover, as the most frequent words are also highly polysemantic, it is only natural that they develop meanings which in the course of time may deviate very far from the central one. When the inter-mediate links fall out, some of these new meanings lose all connection with the rest of the structure and start a separate existence. The phenomenon is known as disintegration or split of polysemy.

     Different causes by which homonymy may be brought about subdivided into two main groups:

     1) Homonymy through convergent sound development, when two or three words of different origin accidentally coincide in sound;

     2) Homonymy developed from polysemy through divergent sense development. Both may be combined with loss of endings and other morphological processes.

         In Old English the words zesund ‘healthy’ and sund ‘swimming’ were separate words both in form and in meaning. In the course of time they have changed their meaning and phonetic form, and the latter accidentally coincided: OE sund>ModE sound ‘strait’; OE зesund>ModE sound ‘healthy’. The group was joined also accidentally by the noun sound ‘what is or may be heard’ with the corresponding verb that developed from French and ultimately from the Latin word sonus, and the verb sound ‘to measure the depth’ of dubious etymology. The coincidence is purely accidental.

       Two different Latin verbs: cadere ‘to fall’ and capere ‘to hold’ are the respective sources of the homonyms case₁ ‘instance of thing’s occurring’ and case₂ ‘a box’. Indeed, case₁<OFr cas < Lat casus ‘fall’, and case₂<Old Northern French casse<Lat capsa. Homonymy of this type is universally recognised. The other type is open to discussion. V.I. Abayev accepts as homonymy only instances of etymologically different words. Everything else in his opinion is polysemy. Many other scholars do not agree with V.I. Abayev and insist on the semantic and structural criteria for distinguishing homonymy from polysemy.

Unlike the homonyms case and sound all the homonyms of the box group due to disintegration or split of polysemy are etymologically connected. The sameness of form is not accidental but based on genetic relationship. They are all derived from one another and are all ultimately traced to the Latin “buxus”. The Concise Oxford Dictionary¹⁾ has five separate entries for box:

     1.box n. - 'a kind of small evergreen shrub';

     2. box n. 'receptacle made of wood, cardboard, metal, etc. and usually provided with a lid';

     3. box v. 'to put into a box';

     4. box n. 'slap with the hand on the ear';

     5. box v. ‘a sport term meaning 'to fight with fists in padded gloves' [3:29]

      Such homonyms may be partly derived from one another but their common point of origin lies beyond the limits of the English language. In these with the appearance of a new meaning, very different from the previous one, the semantic structure of the parent word splits. The new meaning receives a separate existence and starts a new semantic structure of its own. Hence the term disintegration or split of polysemy.

It must be noted, however, that though the number of examples in which a process of this sort could be observed is considerable, it is difficult to establish exact criteria by which disintegration of polysemy could be detected. The whole concept is based on stating whether there is any connection between the meanings or not, and is very subjective. Whereas in the examples dealing with phonetic convergence, i.e. when we said that “case1” and “case2” are different words because they differ in origin, we had definite linguistic criteria to go by, in the case of disintegration of polysemy there are none to guide us; we can only rely on intuition and individual linguistic experience. For a trained linguist the number of unrelated homonyms will be much smaller than for an uneducated person. The knowledge of etymology and cognate languages will always help to supply the missing links. It is easier, for instance, to see the connection between beam 'a ray of light' and beam 'the metallic structural part of a building' if one knows the original meaning of the word, i.e. 'tree' (OE beam, Germ Baum), and is used to observe similar metaphoric transfers in other words. The connection is also more obvious if one is able to notice the same element in such compound names of trees as hornbeam, white beam, etc.

    The conclusion, therefore, is that in diachronic treatment the only rigorous criterion is that of etymology observed in explanatory dictionaries of the English language where words are separated according to their origin, as in match₁ ‘a piece of inflammable material you strike fire with’ (from OFr mesche, Fr mèche) and match₂ (from OE gemæcca ‘fellow’).

    It is interesting to note that out of 2540 homonyms listed in “The Oxford English Dictionary” only 7% are due to disintegration of polysemy, all the others are etymologically different. One must, however, keep in mind that patterned homonymy is here practically disregarded.

    This underestimation of regular patterned homonymy tends to produce a false impression. Actually the homonymy of nouns and verbs due to the processes of loss of endings on the other is one of the most prominent features of present-day English. The process has been analysed in detail in the chapter on conversion. It may be combined with semantic changes as in the pair long a : : long v. The explanation is that when it seems long before something comes to you, you long for it (long a<OE 1апz, lonz a <OE lanzian v), so that me lonzs means ‘it seems long to me’.

      The opposite process of morphemic addition can also result in homonymy. This process is chiefly due to independent word-formation with the same affix or to the homonymy of derivational and functional affixes. The suffix -er forms several words with the same stem: trail — trailer₁ ‘a creeping plant’ : : trailer₂ ‘a caravan’, i.e. ‘a vehicle drawn along by another vehicle’.