Lectures 9 -10 Ways of Grouping and Classifying

Lectures 9 -10 Ways of Grouping and Classifying Words in the English Language Outline: 1. Homonymy in the English language. Homonyms and their types 2. Synonyms and their types 3. Antonyms

e. g. A penny is one cent. The soap has a nice scent. She sent me a letter.

Homonyms are words of one and the same language which are identical phonetically or graphically in all or several grammar forms (and in all or several phonetic and graphic variants) but which have essential difference in lexical or grammatical meanings.

Fair (a market) was borrowed from Latin “feria”, and fair (light colour, not dark) was developed from “faeder”. Flue, short for influenza, is homonymous to flew, the past tense of the verb “to fly”.

perfect homonyms are phonetic-graphic homonyms which are identical in sound and in spelling §club - a heavy staff for use as a weapon; § club - an association of persons meeting periodically.

homophones are words with the same sound but different spelling and different meanings: § read (past tense) – red § pair – pear § heir – air

homographs are words accidentally identical in spelling but different in sound and in meaning: § lead/led/ - lead/li: d/ § row/rou/ - row/rau/

§ lexical (no link between their lexical meanings but belong to one and the same part of speech), e. g. fair – fare, bow – bow; § grammatical (belong to different parts of speech but of the same lexical meaning), e. g. milk – to milk, practice – to practice; § lexico–grammatical (no link between their lexical meanings and they belong to different parts of speech), e. g. tear (n) – tear (v), bear (n) – bare (a).

§ to hope, to anticipate, to expect § work, toil, labour, job, task § famous, celebrated, notorious, distinguished, eminent § fashionable, chic, dressy, elegant, modish, smart, stylish, trendy

A synonymic dominant is the most general word in a given group of synonyms, a word belonging to the basic stock of words, stylistically neutral, having high frequency of usage, lacking connotations.

Euphemism (Greek “to use words of good omen”: eu – ‘well’ + pheme – ‘speaking’) is the substitution of words of mild connotations for expressions rough, unpleasant. Euphemism is used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by a conventionally more acceptable one.

§ to die - to expire to pass away, to depart to join the majority to kick the bucket § pregnant – in a family way to expect a baby

§ root antonyms bad-good, tall-short, ancientmodern § derivational antonyms likedislike, useful-useless, logical -illogical