Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- An introduction to the textbook
- Chapter One Word origins
- Chapter Two The background of English
- Chapter Three Composition of the Early Modern and Modern English vocabulary
- Chapter Four Smaller than words: morphemes and types of morphemes
- Chapter Five Allomorphy, phonetics, and affixation
- Chapter Six Replacement rules
- Chapter Seven Deletion rules and other kinds of allomorphy
- Chapter Eight Fossilized allomorphy: false cognates and other etymological pitfalls
- Chapter Nine Semantic change and semantic guesswork
- Chapter 10 The pronunciation of classical words in English
- Appendix I An introduction to dictionaries
- Appendix II Morpheme list
- Index
Chapter Nine - Semantic change and semantic guesswork
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- An introduction to the textbook
- Chapter One Word origins
- Chapter Two The background of English
- Chapter Three Composition of the Early Modern and Modern English vocabulary
- Chapter Four Smaller than words: morphemes and types of morphemes
- Chapter Five Allomorphy, phonetics, and affixation
- Chapter Six Replacement rules
- Chapter Seven Deletion rules and other kinds of allomorphy
- Chapter Eight Fossilized allomorphy: false cognates and other etymological pitfalls
- Chapter Nine Semantic change and semantic guesswork
- Chapter 10 The pronunciation of classical words in English
- Appendix I An introduction to dictionaries
- Appendix II Morpheme list
- Index
Summary
Terminology
Homophony. The term homophony (“sounding the same”) is commonly used to cover three types of semantic identity: homonymy, homophony, and polysemy. All of these count as homophones:
corn: on the cob vs. corn on toe
ear: of corn vs. ear of head
flight: from danger (flee), vs. flight in an airplane (fly), vs. flight of stairs
load: of dirt vs. lode in a gold mine
meal: ground up vs. meal at dinner time
mettle: in the sense of courage vs. metal in the sense of iron, copper
pupil: of your eye vs. pupil who is a student
score: score the table with a nail, vs. score high in game
sea: body of water vs. see verb of perception
sole: type of fish vs. sole only vs. sole the base of a shoe, vs. soul in a religious sense
trip: journey vs. trip to obstruct, cause to fall
waist: of a person vs. waste squander
To be homonymous (“having the same name”), words that sound alike must have different meanings and different origins: thus bear “carry,” bear “grizzly,” and bare “nude,” riddle “puzzle” and riddle “pierce with holes,” rock “stone” and rock “sway to and fro,” fit this definition. Homophony means approximately the same thing but even more broadly: words that sound alike but have different meanings, whether they have different origins or not. Dictionaries have separate entries for homonyms and homophones, thus fast(1) “quick, swift,” while fast(2) is “to abstain from food, or from some kinds of food.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- English WordsHistory and Structure, pp. 147 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001