Volume 03 Issue 04-2023
50
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
–
2771-2141)
VOLUME
03
ISSUE
04
Pages:
50-54
SJIF
I
MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
993
)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
ABSTRACT
This article analysizes the difficulty of distinguishing between polysemy and homonymy, their meaning and the
differences between them according to using in different context. The issue of developing an integrated approach to
the study of such a phenomenon in lexicology as polysemy and homonomy seems interesting and especially topical
at the present time due to the huge number of polysemantic words both in English and other languages, which is the
relevance of this scientific article.
KEYWORDS
Lexicology, context, syntactic context, lexical context, contextual analysis, lexical homonyms.
INTRODUCTION
Among the problems of general lexicology that allow
the use of contextual analysis, first of all, we can name
the removal of ambiguity of lexical units in the text.
The context contains all the necessary information for
an unambiguous understanding of the statement,
while all the elements of the context are informative -
the structure of the phrase, and the grammatical form
of the word, and the semantics of the combined words,
and the order of the elements.
Context (from Latin contextus
─
connection) is a
fragment of text that includes a unit chosen for
analysis, necessary and sufficient to determine the
meaning of this unit, which is consistent with the
general meaning of this text. The concept of "context"
Research Article
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN POLYSEMY AND HOMONYMY
Submission Date:
April 20, 2023,
Accepted Date:
April 25, 2023,
Published Date:
April 30, 2023
Crossref doi:
https://doi.org/10.37547/ajsshr/Volume03Issue04-10
Alijonov Yorkin
Teacher Of Karshi International University, Uzbekistan
T M,;/.e$
Journal
Website:
https://theusajournals.
com/index.php/ajsshr
Copyright:
Original
content from this work
may be used under the
terms of the creative
commons
attributes
4.0 licence.
Volume 03 Issue 04-2023
51
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
–
2771-2141)
VOLUME
03
ISSUE
04
Pages:
50-54
SJIF
I
MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
993
)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
is not equivalent to the concept of "text". The number
of context in the text depends on the number of its
constituent units, where each has its own context
1
.
Depending on the functions, several types of proper
linguistic context are distinguished: permissive,
supporting, repaying, compensating, intensifying. In
modern linguistics, the concept of context has
expanded significantly. The phrases that form the
immediate environment of the word, and even a
complete sentence, may not be enough to determine
the meaning of the word, which becomes clear only in
the context of the entire paragraph or superphrasal
unity that reveals the entire situation being described,
or even in the context of the entire work.
Thus, the primary role of the context in its various
types in clarifying meanings becomes obvious.
Awareness of this role, however, should not lead to a
methodologically very important conclusion that the
word has no meaning of its own, meaning outside the
context, that its semantics follows entirely from the
context, a conclusion that is quite widespread and
essentially incorrect. Without denying or belittling the
role of context, one should still recognize the
indisputable fact that words have more or less
constant meanings. The delimitation of the lexical
meanings of a word, however, is significantly
1
Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary 1990, p. 682
complicated by their diffuseness, indefiniteness and
unsteadiness of their boundaries, which determines
both the possibility of erroneous interpretation of
certain meanings, and the difficulty of distinguishing
the meanings themselves, determining the status of
the meaning as a separate lexico-semantic variant of
the word.
2
When translating texts from English into Russian, there
are numerous problems with the choice of words due
to the polysemy of the English language. Context plays
an important role in choosing the right value.
Contextual meanings arise in the process of using
words in speech, depending on the environment, and
are realized under the influence of a narrow, wide and
extralinguistic context. Within the general concept of
context, a narrow context (or micro context) and a
broad context (or macro context) are distinguished.
Narrow context can be divided into syntactic and
lexical.
1. The syntactic context is the syntactic construction in
which the given word, phrase or subordinate clause is
used.
2
Chupilina E.I. "Issues of English Contextology" vol. 1, ─ M.,
1974. ─ S.129.
Volume 03 Issue 04-2023
52
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
–
2771-2141)
VOLUME
03
ISSUE
04
Pages:
50-54
SJIF
I
MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
993
)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
2. The lexical context is a set of specific lexical units,
words and set phrases, in the environment of which
this unit occurs.
The most important function of the context is to
resolve the ambiguity of linguistic units. Thus, the
context makes this or that language unit unambiguous
and makes it possible to choose one of several
potentially existing equivalents of this unit in the target
language. In the process of translation, to resolve
ambiguity and determine the choice of equivalent,
sometimes it is enough to take into account the
syntactic context of the word.
As already mentioned, contextual meanings arise in
the process of using words in speech, depending on
the environment and are realized under the influence
of a narrow, wide and extralinguistic context.
According to the degree of frequency, one can
distinguish between ordinary (repeating) and
occasional (random, individual) contextual meanings.
Over time, the usual contextual meanings move into
the category of variant correspondences. Occasional
meanings are a manifestation of the subjective use of
words by one or another author and are most often
found in fiction. It is the occasional, unusual use of the
word and the reasons for this that must be taken into
account when translating. Along with this, there are
cases when even the widest possible context does not
3
Karimova N.R. 1975, p. 251
contain any indication of the meaning in which this or
that unit is used in this case. In these cases, in order to
obtain the required information, it is necessary to go
beyond the linguistic context and refer to the
extralinguistic situation. By "situation" is meant,
firstly, the situation of communication, i.e. the
environment in which the communicative act takes
place; secondly, the subject of the message, i.e. the
situation (a set of facts) described in the text; thirdly,
the participants in communication, i.e. writing,
speaking, listening, reading
3
.
The ideological orientation of the work, the ideological
position of the author may not always be clear from the
content of individual parts of the text or even the
entire translated whole. In such cases, the ideological
orientation of the text has to be established with the
help of an extralinguistic context or an extralinguistic
situation.
Polysemy (polysemy) is inherent in both words and
morphemes; it is also inherent in constructive objects.
Polysemy characterizes the vast majority of words,
which can be easily seen by opening an explanatory
dictionary of any language.
In the lexical system of the language, along with
polysemy, there is another type of semantic ambiguity,
related to and bordering on polysemy, but
Volume 03 Issue 04-2023
53
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
–
2771-2141)
VOLUME
03
ISSUE
04
Pages:
50-54
SJIF
I
MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
993
)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
nevertheless different from it
─
this is homonymy.
Homonymy (from the Greek honfnymia
─
same name)
in linguistics
─
the sound coincidence of different
language units, the meanings of which are not related
to each other. Lexical homonyms are identical-
sounding words that do not have common elements of
meaning (semia) and are not associated associatively.
The reasons for the emergence of homonyms are
different:
1)
as a result of sound changes, words that were
previously different in sound may coincide (for
example, flaw crack and flaw gust of wind);
2)
borrowing foreign words;
3)
a break in the originally unified semantics of a
polysemantic word, etc.
There are full and partial homonymy, in which only
certain forms of words, called homoforms, coincide
(for example, saw saw and saw form of the verb to see
to see). Along with homonyms, homographs are also
distinguished - words that have the same spelling, but
different stress or pronunciation in general (for
example, lead [led] "lead" and lead [li: d] "lead"), and
homophones - words that are pronounced the same,
but differ in spelling (for example, write
─
right; week
─
weak).
So, homonymy is a phenomenon in which the same
linguistic form has several meanings that, unlike
polysemy, have no common semantic features, no
common elements of meaning and, accordingly, are
not related to each other. However, no matter how
significant the number of homonyms may seem, even
in the English language, in which, according to the
observations of researchers, there are much more
homonymous units than in Uzbek, in general,
homonymy is not as common as polysemy, despite the
fact that it permeates not only vocabulary, but also
morphology, word formation, syntax. In general, in
modern English, homonyms make up no more than 16-
18% of the total vocabulary, and the number of
homonyms within the same part of speech (such as
those given earlier) does not exceed 8-9%. Probably, it
is precisely the lack of connections between the
meanings of homonyms, depriving native speakers of
the necessary support for them in mastering and
storing lexical units, that makes homonymy an
undesirable
phenomenon
for
the
language,
simultaneously limiting the scope of its distribution. In
addition, the fact that in speech homonymy can be an
obstacle to understanding and recognizing the exact
meaning of the statement is also important.
CONCLUSION
The difficulty of distinguishing between polysemy and
homonymy leads some scholars to argue that it is
advisable to consider only words that are different in
origin as homonyms. However, firstly, not in all cases
it is possible to establish the origin of the word, and
secondly,
─
and this vowel
─
following such an attitude
Volume 03 Issue 04-2023
54
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
–
2771-2141)
VOLUME
03
ISSUE
04
Pages:
50-54
SJIF
I
MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
993
)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
would move the concept of homonymy to the field of
historical lexicology, while it is for modern languages
that one has to distinguish between meanings related
to one with the other, and the meanings, which,
although expressed by the same sound form, have
nothing in common semantically. This is a question not
only of linguistic theory, but also of lexicographic
practice.
The causes and ways of the formation of polysemy and
homonymy are radically different. It is difficult to see
the direct influence of extralinguistic factors in the
appearance of homonyms, as is observed in polysemy.
The reasons underlying the origins of homonymy are
associated primarily with the historical development of
the
language
system,
with
those
phonetic,
phonological,
morphological,
semantic,
etc.
modifications that a language undergoes in the course
of its existence.
REFERENCES
1.
Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary 1990, p. 682
2.
Chupilina E.I. "Issues of English Contextology" vol.
1,
─
M., 1974.
─
p.129
3.
Karimova N.R. 1975, p. 251
4.
Katsnelson S.D. Categories of language and
thinking: From the scientific heritage / Otv. ed.
L.Yu. Sconce ude. - M.: Languages of Slavic culture,
2001
5.
Leech Geoafrey. Principles of Pragmatics. - London:
Longman, 1983
6.
Litvin F.A. Polysemy of a word in language and
speech. M., 1984.
─
C 136. Linguistic encyclopedic
dictionary. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990. - P.682
7.
Bartlett, T. 2013. I’ll manage the context: Context,
environment and the potential for institutional
change. In Systemic functional linguistics:
Exploring choice, ed. L. Fontaine, T. Bartlett, and G.
O'Grady, pp. 342364. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
