So, most homonyms are monosyllabic words. The trend towards
monosyllabism, greatly increased by the loss of inflections and shortening, must have
contributed much toward increasing the number of homonyms in English . Among the
other ways of creating homonyms the following processes must be mentioned:
conversion which serves the creating of grammatical homonyms, e.g.
iron -to iron,
work - to work, etc.; polysemy - as soon as a derived meaning is no longer felt to be
connected with the primary meaning at all (as in
bar - балка;
bar - бар;
bar -
адвокатура) polysemy breaks up and separate words come into existence, quite
different in meaning from the basic word but identical in spelling.
From the viewpoint of their origin homonyms are sometimes divided into
historical and etymological.
Historical homonyms are those which result from the breaking up of polysemy;
then one polysemantic word will split up into two or more separate words, e.g. to bear
/терпеть/ - to bear /родить/ pupil /ученик/ - pupil /зрачок/ plant /растение / - plant
/завод/
Etymo1ogiсal homonyms are words of different origin which come to be alike
in sound or in spelling (and may be both written and pronounced alike).
Borrowed and native
words can coincide in form, thus producing homonyms
(as in the above given examples).
In other cases homonyms are a result of borrowing when several different
words become identical in sound or spelling. E.g. the Latin
vitim - "wrong", "an
immoral habit"
has given the English vice - "evil conduct"; the Latin
vitis -"spiral"
has given the English ''vice" - тиски "apparatus with strong jaws in which things can
be hold tightly"; the Latin
vice - "instead of", "in place of"
will be found in vice -
president.
It should be noted that the most debatable problem in homonymy is the
demarcation line between homonymy and polysemy, i.e. between different meanings
of one word and the meanings of two or more homonymous words.