Polysemy and Homonymy

Lexico-grammatical. Different in both lexical and grammatical aspects. To find (found, found) and found (founded, founded).

Grammatical. Homonymy of different word-forms of one and the same word. Brought – brought; brothers – brother’s.

Sources of homonymy

1. Phonetic changes words undergo during the historical development.

knight (O.E. kniht) and night (O.E niht).

to write (O.E. writan) and right (O.E. reht, riht)

2. Borrowings (can in the final stage of its phonetic adaptation duplicate either a native word or another borrowing).

fair (a fair deal) – native (of anglo-saxon origin)

fair (a gathering of buyers and sellers) – French borrowing.

3. Word-building (conversion) – transfering from one part of the speech to another.

3. Word-building (conversion) – transfering from one part of the speech to another.

comb, n. – to comb, v.

4. Shortening.

fan from fanatic and fan – ventilator

rep – reputation or representative

For modern linguists it is hard to distinguish between polysemy and homonymy. In case of concatenation the last meaning can drop out of the polysemantic structure of a word.