Homonymy in the book of Lewis Carroll "Alice in Wonderland" (стр. 4 из 6)

E.g. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. (Dickens)

Anadiphsis (the final element of one sentence, paragraph, stanza is repeated in the initial part of the next sentence, paragraph, stanza.

E.g. Three fishers went sailing out into the West. Out into the West, as the sun went down. (Kingsley)

Chiasmus (parallelism reversed, two parallel syntactical constructions contain a reversed order of their members).

E. g. That he sings and he sings, and for ever sings he-I love my Love and my Love loves me! (Coleridge)

Syntagmatic semasiology or semasiology of sequences deals with semantic relationships expressed at the lengh of a whole text. As distinct from paradigmatic semasiology which studies the stylistic effect of renaming syntagmatic semasiology studies types of names used for linear arrangement of meanings.

Skrebnev calls these repetitions of meanings represented by sense units in a text figures of co-occurrence. The most general types of semantic relationships can be described as identical, different or opposite. Accordingly he singles out figures of identity, figures of inequality and figures of contrast.

Figures of identity

Simile (an explicit statement of partial identity: affinity, likeness,

similarity of 2 objects).

E. g. My heart is like a singing bird. (Rosetti)

Synonymous replacement (use of synonyms or synonymous phrases

to avoid monotony or as situational substitutes).

E. g. He brought home numberless prizes. He told his mother countless

stories. (Thackeray)

E. g. I was trembly and shaky from head to foot.

Figures of inequality

Clarifying (specifying) synonyms (synonymous repetition used to characterise different aspects of the same referent).

E.g. You undercut, sinful, insidious hog. (O'Henry)

Climax (gradation of emphatic elements growing in strength).

E. g. What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned? (O'Henry).

Лпп-climax (back gradation—instead of a few elements growing in intensity without relief there unexpectedly appears a weak or contrastive element that makes the statement humorous or ridiculous).

E. g. The woman who could face the very devil himself or a mouse—goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. (Twain)

Zeugma (combination of unequal, or incompatible words based on the economy of syntactical units).

E.g. She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief. (Dickens) Pun (play upon words based on polysemy or homonymy).

E. g. What steps would you take if an empty tank were coming toward you?—Long ones.

Disguised tautology (semantic difference in formally coincidental parts of a sentence, repetition here does not emphasise the idea but carries a different information in each of the two parts).

E. g. For East is East, and West is West... (Kipling)

Figures of contrast

Oxymoron (a logical collision of seemingly incompatible words).

E. g. His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

(Tennyson)

Antithesis (anti-statement, active confrontation of notions used to show the contradictory nature of the subject described).

E. g. It was the bestof times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the era of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of Darkness... Hope... Despair. (Dickens)

His fees were high, his lessons were light. (O'Henry)

An overview of the classifications presented here shows rather varied approaches to practically the same material. And even though they contain inconsistencies and certain contradictions they reflect the scholars' attempts to overcome an inventorial description of devices. They obviously bring stylistic study of expressive means to an advanced level, sustained by the linguistic research of the 20th century that allows to explore and explain the linguistic nature of the stylistic function. This contribution into stylistic theory made by modern linguistics is not contained to classifying studies only. It has inspired exploration of other areas of research such as decoding stylistics or stylistic grammar that will be discussed in further chapters.

carroll book expressive mean

II.2 Homonyms

Many words, especially characterized by a high frequency rating, are not connected with meaning by a one relation-ship. 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 (homos 'similar' and onoma 'name') and thus expresses very well the sameness of name combined with the difference in meaning.

E. g. bank, n.- a shore

bank, n.-an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging money

ball, n. — a sphere; any spherical body

ball, n.- a large dancing party

English vocabulary is rich in such pairs and even groups of words. Their identical forms are mostly accidental : the majority of homonyms coincided due to phonetic changes which they suffered during their development.

Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. In the list of 2,540 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.

If synonyms and antonyms can be regarded as the treasury of the language's expressive resources, homonyms are of no interest in this respect, and one cannot expect them to be of particular value for communication. Metaphorically speaking, groups of homonyms and pairs of antonyms are created by the vocabulary system with a particular purpose whereas homonyms are accidental creations, and therefore purposeless.

In the process of communication they are more of an encumbrance, leading sometimes to confusion and misunderstanding. Yet it is this very characteristic which makes them one of the most important sources of popular humour.

The pun is a joke based upon the play upon words of similar form but different meaning (i.e. on homonyms) as in the following: "A tailor guarantees to give each of his customers a perfect fit."

(The joke is based on the homonyms: 1 .fit, n.-perfectly fitting clothes; 2.fit,u. — a nervous spasm)

Homonyms which are the same in sound and spelling (as the example given in the beginning of this chapter) are traditionally termed homonyms proper.

The following joke is based on a pun which makes use of another type of homonyms:

"Waiter!"

"Yes, sir."

"What's this? " "It's bean soup. "

"Never mind what it has been. I want to know what it is now."

Bean, n.-and bean, Past Part, of to be are homophones. As the example shows they are the same in sound but different in spelling. Here are some more examples of homophones:

Night, n.- knight, n.; piece, n. -peace, n. ; scent, n. -cent, n. - sent, v. (Past Indef., Past Perf., of to send); rite, n.-to write, v.-right, adj.; sea, n.-to see, v.-C[si:] (the name of a letter).

The third type of homonyms is called homographs. These are words which are the same in spelling but different in sound.

E.g. to bow [bau],v.-to incline the head or body in salutation

bow [bju],n.-a flexible strip of wood for propelling arrows

to lead [li:d],v.-to conduct on the way, go before to show the way lead [led],n.-a heavy, rather soft metal

to tear [tea-], v.-to pull apart or in piece by force

tear [tw],n.-a drop of the fluid secreted by the lacrimal glands of the eye

II.2.1Sources of Homonyms

One source of homonyms has already been mentioned: phonetic changes which words undergo in the course of their historical development. As a result of such changes, two or more words which were formerly pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms.

Night and knight, 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: O. E. kniht (cf. O.E. niht). A more complicated change of form brought together another pair of homonyms: to knead ( O.E. cnedah) and to need (O.E. neodiah).

In Old English the verb to write had the form writan, and the adjective right had the forms reht, riht. The noun sea descends from the Old English form sae, and the verb to see from O.E. seon. The noun work and the verb to work also had different forms in Old Enhlish: wyrkean and weork respectively.

Borrowing is another source of homonyms. A borrowed word may , in the final stage of its phonetic adaptation, duplicate in form either a native word or another borrowing. So, in the group of homonyms rite, n.- to write, v.-right, adj. the second and third words are of native origin whereas rite is a Latin borrowing (<Lat. ritus). In the pair piece ,n.-peace,n., the first originates from Q.'F.pais, and the second from O.F. (<Gaulish) pettia. Bank ,n.("shore") is a native word, and bank ,n. ("a financial institution") is an Italian borrowing. Fair, adj. (as in a fair deal, it's not fair] is native, and fair, n. ("a gathering of buyers and sellers") is a French borrowing. Match, n. ("a game; a contest of skill, strength") is native, and match ,n. ("a slender short piece of wood used for producing fire") is a French borrowing.

Word-building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, and the most important type in this respect is undoubtedly conversion. Such pairs of words as comb,n.- to comb,v.,pale,ad]. - to pale, v. To make ,v.- make,n. are numerous in the same in sound and spelling but refer to different categories of parts of speech, are called lexico-grammatical homonyms.

Shortening is a further type of word-building which increases the number of homonyms. E.g. fan, n. in the sense of "an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer , etc." is a shortening produced from, fanatic. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing/aw, n. which denotes an implement for waving lightly to produce a cool current of air. The noun rep, n. denoting a kind of fabric (cf. with the R. penc) has three homonyms made by shortening : rep,n. (<repertory), rep,n.(<representative), rep,n.(<reputationy, all the three are informal words. During World War II girls serving in the Women Royal Naval Service (an auxiliary of the British Royal Navy) were jokingly nicknamed Wrens (informal). This neologistic formation made by shortening has the homonym wren,n. "a small bird with dark brown plumage barred with black" (R. KpanuenuK).

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"). Also: mew, n. ("the sound a cat makes") - mew, n. ("a sea gull") — mews ("a small terraced houses in Central London").

The above-described sources of homonyms have one important feature in common. In all the mentioned cases the homonyms developed from two or more different words, and their similarity is purely accidental. (In this respect, conversation certainly presents an exception for in pairs of homonyms formed by conversation one word of the pair is produced from the other: a find < to find.)

Now we come to a further source of homonyms which differs essentially from all the above cases. Two or more homonyms can originate from different meanings of the same word when, for some reason, the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts. This type of formation of homonyms is called split polysemy. From what has been said in the previous chapters about polysemantic words, it should have become clear that the semantic structure of a polysemantic words 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/ire). 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.

Let us consider the history of three homonyms:

board, n. - a long and thin piece of timber

board, n. - daily meals, especially as provided for pay,

E. g. room and board

board, n. - an official group of persons who direct or supervise some activity, e. g. a board of directors

It is clear that the meanings of these three words are in no way associated with one another. Yet, most larger dictionaries still enter a meaning of board that once held together all these other meanings "table". It developed from the meaning "a piece of timber" by transference based on contiguity (association of an object and the material from which it is made). The meanings "meals" and "an official group of persons" developed from the meaning "table", also by transference based on contiguity: meals are easily associated with a table on which they are served; an official group of people in authority are also likely to discuss their business round a table.

Nowadays, however, the item of furniture, on which meals are served and round which boards of directors meet, is no longer denoted by the word board but by the French Norman borrowing table, and board in this meaning, though still registered by some dictionaries, can very well be marked as archaic as it is no longer used in common speech. That is why, with the intrusion of the borrowed table, the word board actually lost its corresponding meaning. But it was just that meaning which served as a link to hold together the rest of the constituent parts of the word's semantic structure. With its diminished role as an element of communication, its role in the semantic structure was also weakened. The speakers almost forgot that board had ever been associated with any item of furniture, nor could they associate the concepts of meals or of a responsible committee with a long thin piece of timber (which is the oldest meaning onboard). Consequently, the semantic structure of board was split into three units.

A somewhat different case of split polysemy may be illustrated by the three following homonyms:

spring, n. — the act of springing, a leap

spring, n. - a place where a stream of water comes up out of the earth (R. родник, источник)

spring, n. — a season of the year.

Historically all three nouns originate from the same verb with the meaning of "to jump, to leap" (O.E. springan), so that the meaning of the first homonym is the oldest. The meanings of the second and third homonyms were originally based on metaphor. At the head of a stream the water sometimes leaps up out of the earth, so that metaphorically such a place could well be described as a leap. On the other hand, the season of the year following winter could be poetically defined as a leap from the darkness and cold into sunlight and life. Such metaphors are typical enough of Old English and Middle English semantic transferences but not so characteristic of modern mental and linguistic processes. The poetic associations that lay in the basis of the semantic shifts described above have long since been forgotten, and an attempt to re-establish the lost links may well seem far-fetched. It is just the near-impossibility of establishing such links that seems to support the claim for homonymy and not for polysemy with these three words.