Phonetic coincidence and semantic differentiation of homonyms

      As it was mentioned before, 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 (homos 'similar' 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 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, 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 anything 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: "Is life worth living?" - "It depends upon the liver.''

      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. Many words, especially those 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.

      Homonymy and polysemy are two well-known semantic problems. Bank in river bank and Bank of England are homonymous: they share no meaning whatsoever; they function as two totally unrelated words. River bed and hospital bed seem to be somehow semantically linked: it is a case of polysemy. This paper first examines how the problem is usually treated. Dictionaries list polysemes under one entry and homonyms under several, although there are marked differences between dictionaries. Semantic theories tend to explain homonymy an polysemy in terms of metaphor and metonymy, or in terms of a subsuming cognitive element with specific meanings triggered by the context or by rules. We offer a typology of polysemy and an explanation in terms of reference: the engine of meaning is our desire to grasp and convey our shared experience with the help of polysemous lexical items.

 

1. Lexicographical treatment of homonymy and polysemy

 

      Lexicographers are keenly aware of polysemy and homonymy because semantic closeness and referential dispersion are especially obvious when words are considered out of context.  In everyday speech our usage of words is almost never ambiguous. On saying, or hearing, "The Bank of England has lowered its rates", the other meanings of bank are probably not even considered. Dictionaries, on the other hand,  consist of out of context words and phrases. Homonyms are usually listed under different entries and  polysemes under one entry only, but not always. Some dictionaries lump homonyms together and others separate polysemes, which may be an indication  that the boundary between polysemy and homonymy is not clear cut.

 

2. Semantic treatment of polysemy

 

      Dictionaries are not meant to explain language from a theoretical point of view: all they do is offer a snapshot of usage at one particular moment.  Theories of polysemy, on the other hand, usually rest on one of two hypotheses:

i) there is a literal meaning from which the other meanings are derived (a linear explanation)

ii) there is a core meaning with specific senses triggered either by the context or by rules (a subsuming explanation).

 

The linear explanation: literal and derived meanings:

     According to this point of view, words do possess a literal meaning, all other meanings are merely derived and figurative. For example, the literal meaning of mouse is the rodent; a derived meaning is the computer mouse. A bed is "a piece of furniture that you lie on" (literal); it is something flat at the bottom of something else (a river bed) or a place where something can be found in abundance (a shellfish bed, a bed of roses) in a figurative way.

      But literal meanings are not always so easy to spot. For example, a position can be a physical position (a crouched position), a psychological position, a stand, a point of view (the Soviet position on German unity), or a social position, a job (his position as Speaker). Which one is the literal meaning ? We may be inclined to think it is the physical sense, but we are clearly not as sure as with mouse or bed.

 

      Another problem is the link between literal and derived meanings ? What does it consist of? Let us consider the word knocker, which can mean door knocker, someone who knocks, or (not very nicely) women's breasts. I asked my native English-speaking informants if they felt these meanings were somehow linked and if they could formulate these links. All informants felt that they were indeed linked. The person meaning was definitely considered as the literal meaning. The door-knocker meaning was explained in terms of metonymy (the object used to knock is named after the person who is doing the knocking). As for the breast meaning, a wealth of links were offered:

• metaphorical links to the door-knocker meaning

- breasts resemble some door knockers

- breasts protrude like door knockers

• a metonymical link to the door-knocker meaning

- breasts are something one grabs (or feels like grabbing) like a door-knocker

• metaphorical links to senses of to knock

- the sexual impact of breasts may knock you over

- when women run, breasts may move up and down, which resembles the act of knocking on doors

- breasts knock together

 

      Thus the linear theory fails on two counts:

1. there is no definite way of deciding which is the literal meaning; and
2. the link between literal and derived meanings cannot always be specified with certainty, even when it is established.

 

       The subsuming theory : core and specific meanings:

      The  subsuming theory assumes that words are endowed with a core meaning and that specific meanings are triggered either by the context or by generative rules. This means that understanding is an interpretation and that meaning is the result of some sort of unconscious calculus. Let us examine these assumptions.

     According to this point of view, a particular interpretation of a word is selected by the context. For example, in Bank of England, the financial institution meaning is triggered by the words of England. All other meanings are blocked. But how does the process work ? Let us consider the following Italian sentence, taken from (Velardi & Pazienza 1988):

 

L'associazone degli industriali ha approvato un nuovo piano di investimenti nel Mezzogiorno

which means

The association of manufacturers has approved a new investment plan in the South of Italy.

 

     The authors point out that if all word meanings in a sentence depend on the other words, the interpretation process can hardly get started. For example, industriali could be an adjective or a verb, piano could be an adjective or an adverb (part-of speech ambiguity). Mezzogiorno could mean noon, south, or South of Italy; piano could mean plan, project, the floor of a building, a musical instrument; investimenti could mean financial investment or accident (lexical ambiguity). In the phrase un nuovo piano di investimenti for example, the selection of the plan meaning of piano can be achieved if the investment meaning of investimenti has already been established;  but the selection of the investment meaning rests on the plan meaning of piano. The selection process, if there is such a thing, is clearly more complex than mutual influence. Such a very general and unspecified use of the context is certainly too powerful an explanation. It provides no insight into how the selection of meanings is actually done. What is needed here is a theory of how we use the context to select meaning [19:internet]

 

     Generative rules. One idea is that interpretation rules have to be spelled out. For example, according to Pustejovsky (1991, 1993, 1995), words are naturally ambiguous: they possess something Pustejovsky calls logical polysemy, where logical is endowed with the meaning analytical philosophers have given to logics, i.e. the entity which structures the universe and the mind. If polysemy is "natural" then there must also be a "natural" way of selecting  senses. Pustejovsky hypothesises a number of very general predicative mechanisms, such as type coercion, which govern the phrase and sentence levels.

 

For example, let us consider one of Pustejovsky's favourite examples :

1) Mary began a book

2) Mary began reading a book

3) Mary began writing a book

4) Mary bought a book

 

Sentence 1 is interpreted as 2 or 3 according to the context. If we know that Mary is a writer, 3 may be correct, else it is 2. But how is this possible ?

 

Pustejovsky describes word meanings in terms of qualia roles For example, this is the qualia structure of book (Pustejovsky 1995) :

Book (x)

Constituve : pages (z), ...,

Formal :  physobj (x), ...,

Telic :  read (P, y, x), ...,

Agentive :  write (T, w, x), ...,

 

      This representation captures the fact that a book is a physical object (formal role), that it is made of pages (constitutive role), that it is something one reads (telic role) and that it has been written by somebody (agentive role). Book is thus viewed as an object with procedural aspects (reading and writing). The interpretation of sentence 4 is fairly straightforward: to buy needs an object as an argument and book is formally an object. But begin normally expects a process. For sentence 1 to be well-formed, the type coercion mechanism must be able to select a procedural role in the qualia structure (the telic and agentive roles happen to offer such meanings). It then coerces the type of book from object to process.

 

      This theory of Pustejovsky's has been extensively criticised, for example in (Kleiber 1999), but this is not the place to go deeply into the matter. Relevant to our problem is the fact that the type coercion explanation does not say anything about how we actually use the context to select meanings; it only explains how a sentence can be well-formed after the context has been used. In other words, it does not say anything about why some semantic entity selects book as an argument of begin, which is considered illegal, but only how some mechanism steps in to fix the problem. Also, it is difficult to imagine how a device of that type could explain why we should interpret 1 as 2 (reading) or 3 (writing). Finally, the type coercion explanation addresses a very narrow kind of polysemy, called referential polysemy, but more of that in a later section.

 

      The subsuming explanation assumes that a word somehow contains all its possible meanings, and that some interpretation rule is able to select the "correct" meaning according to the context. But is there always such an all-encompassing subsuming entity? For example, is there a subsuming entity containing the computer and the rodent meanings of mouse.

 

      In the end, the context and subsuming theories both fail for the same reason: they are unable i) to define the original (literal or subsuming) semantic entity, and ii) to explain the links between the original and (derived or subsumed) meaning of a word. What is lacking, in a nutshell, is the engine which powers the semantic process. No explanation in terms of rules can be totally satisfying because explaining some linguistic phenomenon A by a set of rules B begs the question of how B is set in motion, and so on in an endless regress. For example, how does the type coercion device select the formal, telic or agentive role of book? Do we need yet another set of rules?

 

      Language is probably not mainly a matter of interpretation, of calculus. It is probably not a rule-based device, and if it is, then only marginally. In The Blue and Brown Book, Wittgenstein wonders why is it that we tend to explain meaning in terms of rules. Is it not because we are trying to solve problems which are only artifacts created by a false conception of language?

 

      The engine of language is our desire to talk, or think, about objects. The following sections offer an alternative view based on reference. I shall first look at the evidence, and then try and formulate a general theory of homonymy and polysemy.

 

3. The evidence

 

      Let us examine a few examples. Some have been taken from the British National Corpus Sampler CD-ROM, some from other sources, some have been made up for the purpose.

 

1. She could hear the piano (sound)

2. She polished the piano (piece of furniture)

 

3. Elizabeth could hear voices through the open door (opening)

4. They painted the door (panel)

5. ... serving as an open door to the East (channel)

 

6. The bank was flooded yesterday (building)

7. The bank was very nice and understanding (personnel)

8. The bank was founded in 1990 (institution)

9. I am the bank (when playing Monopoly)

10. A blood bank, a memory bank (a place where something is stored)

11. A river bank (the rising ground bordering a river)

12. We were protected by a bank of about two feet high (a small flat mound)

13. Also a ridge, an undersea elevation, etc.

 

14. I saw armed men in a crouched position by the swimming pool (physical)

15. He could become Speaker, a position of some honour but no great responsibility (job)

16. The Soviet position on German unity (point of view, stand)

 

17. The compartment resisted the fire for an hour (German : aushalten)

18. The rebels resisted the Russians (German : widerstehen, Widerstand leisten)

 

19. She worked hard (French : travailler)

20. The lift doesn’t work (French : fonctionner)

21. I worked on him to come to the wedding (influence s.o.)

 

22. I just bought a book on boring postcards (object)

23. Malcolm wrote a book on boring postcards (text)

24. Jenny is a bookkeeper at Barclay’s bank (job)

25. We booked in at the hotel (US check in)

26. We booked our tickets this morning (buy, reserve a seat)

 

27. Les oiseaux volent (birds fly)

28. On nous a volé tout notre argent (all our money was stolen)

29. L’aigle vola un lapin (the eagle caught a rabbit)

 

30. Une bande de papier (a strip of paper)

31. Une bande de criminels (a gang of criminals)

32. Le navire donne de la bande (the ship is listing)

 

4. Analysis

 

These examples show that polysemy is not a single homogeneous phenomenon.

       Referential polysemy. Let us now consider a first subset of examples:

- piano 1 (sound), 2 (piece of furniture)

- door 3 (opening), 4 (panel)

- bank 6 (building), 7 (personnel), 8 (institution)

- book 22 (object), 23 (text)

 

      In piano 1 and 2, both usages refer to the same object, but viewed from two different points of view. The same is true for the other examples as well.  Bank for example can be considered as a cue which conjures up a complex object, of which one aspect in particular is retained (either the building, personnel or institution meaning) without suppressing the others. Since all meanings are linked by the object they refer to, this sort of polysemy may be called referential polysemy [20:37-54].

 

      Non-linguists hardly notice any polysemy at all in those examples, probably because it seems quite obvious that a piano should be a music producing piece of furniture and a door a panel on hinges which may serve as a temporary opening through a wall. Professional linguists have nevertheless given it various explanations, for example Pustejovsky and his  qualia roles (see section 2). Other theories of referential polysemy include Langacker's Cognitive Grammar where the difference between 1 and 2 is explained in terms of active zones (1984): the sound is active in 1, the piece of furniture in 2.