Homonymy - coincidence of sound forms for different meanings of words._Homonyms proper - words identical in pronunciation and spelling: eg.case (situation, bag) and seal (print, animal) Homonyms are 2 or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning, distribution and in some cases origin. e.g.: well — adv., n.
Classification. 1 Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling. e.g.: ball. The important point is that homonyms are distinct words — not different meanings within 1 word. homonyms proper are further subdivided into: partial homonymy know, know, knew: no, nose, new; patterned homonymy the invariant lexical meaning present in homonyms that have developed from 1 common source and belong to various parts of speech: e.g.: eye n., v.
2 Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning: e.g.: air, hair.
3 Homographs are words different in sounds and meaning but accidentally identical in meaning: e.g.: row [#u] — ряд; [au] — ссора.
Homonyms may be also classified by the type of meaning into:
1 Lexical homonyms differ in lexical meaning only: e.g.: seal — морской котик, печать.
2 Lexico-grammatical homonyms differ in both: grammatical and lexical meaning: e.g.: seal — морской котик, запечатать.
3 Grammatical homonymy is the homonymy of different word-forms of one and the same words. In the paradigms of the majority of verbs the form of the past tense is homonymous with the form of Participle II. And also in the paradigm of nouns we may find homonymous forms of the possessive case singular and the common case plural: e.g.: Its my brothers house. — I have 2 brothers. Split of polysemy is one of the sources of the homonyms.
Polysemantic words develop meanings which in the course of time may deviate very far from the central one, when the intermediate links fall out some of these new meanings lose all connections with the rest of the structure and start their separate existence. Another cause by which homonymy may be brought about is through convergent sound homonymy. When 2 or 3 words of different origin coincide in sound.
