Of the republic of uzbekistan tashkent state pedagogical university namedafter nizami
Quantitative characteristics of homonymous classes in English
Download 314.47 Kb.
|
MINISTRY OF PRE
|
2.3. Quantitative characteristics of homonymous classes in English
Until now, almost no one has been involved in counting the number of homonyms of different classes in the English language. Only one work is known where such calculations were made - this is the dissertation of Yu.P. Kostyuchenko, dedicated specifically to the quantitative analysis of English homonyms [11, p. 52]. Choosing digital material from different sections of the dissertation, Malakhovskiy L.V. presented the following table of the distribution of English homonyms by class
It follows from the table that purely grammatical phonetic-grammatical homonyms are most widely used in English. There are more homonyms of this class in English than there are homonyms of all other classes combined. An important place in English homonymy is occupied by phonetic-graphic classes, purely lexical and purely lexical homophones, which include about 30% of the total number of homonyms. The remaining classes of homonyms make up a minor role in English homonyms. Data on the distribution of lexical and grammatical homonyms in the sound and written versions of the language are presented separately by Malakhovskiy L.V. in another table.
The table shows that the share of lexical homonyms in the sound version of the language is somewhat higher than in the written one (40.4% in the first case and 31.0% in the second), and the share of grammatical homonyms, on the contrary, is higher in the written version of the language than in the sound one (78.6% and 69%, respectively). At the same time, purely lexical homonyms make up about one third of the total number of homonyms in the sound version and only one fifth in the written version. Thus, we can conclude that in the field of lexical homonymy, phonetic-graphic purely lexical and purely lexical homophones are most widespread, and also that the proportion of lexical homonyms in the sound version is greater than in the written one. The quantitative and qualitative characteristics of lexical homonyms are presented in the previous paragraphs, it is advisable to move on to considering the issue of translating homonyms. The English language is characterized by a fairly significant number of homonyms compared to other languages. In addition, one cannot fail to note also the large increase in the number of homonyms that took place in the course of the historical development of the English language and to a certain extent distinguishes modern English from the English of the ancient period: cf., for example, yes. sunne sun and sunu son at present. English, sun sun and son son; Yes. kniht boy, servant, young warrior and niht night at the modern. English knight knight and night night; Yes. lufu love and lufian love in modern times. English, love love and love to love and many other cases. [20, 67]. However, no matter how significant the number of homonyms may seem, even in English, in which, according to the observations of researchers, there are much more homonymous units than in Russian, 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 does not exceed 8-9% [22, 4]. However, it should be emphasized that the opinions of scientists about the usefulness - harmfulness of homonymy are very ambiguous. The fact that the emergence of homonyms reduces the number of language forms leads some authors to conclude that homonymy is a useful phenomenon. So E. Buissans believes that homonymy, like polysemy, "serves the benefit of the speakers" [12, 24]. According to Mauler, homonymy "contributes to the compactness of the language, and this is a positive phenomenon" [14, 13]. Such an approach to evaluating the role of homonymy in a language seems to be one-sided. Homonymy, of course, contributes to the “compactness of the language”, but “this compactness is achieved due to an increase in the ambiguity of the units of the expression plan, i.e., due to the deterioration of the coding properties of the language.” Therefore, it would be wrong to consider it a “positive” phenomenon [12, 24]. It is quite obvious that homonymy, while erasing formal differences between signs with different content, cannot but reduce the effectiveness of language as a means of communication. E. Eman believes that a hindrance to the language is everything that violates its clarity and unambiguity. Therefore, homonymy, which leads to confusion and misunderstandings, is also perceived as a hindrance [23, 123]. According to A. A. Reformatsky, “homonyms in all cases are an unfortunate indistinguishability of what should be different” [19, 89]. However, statements of the opposite nature are much more common. The authors of many works on homonymy and general linguistics believe that the language usually does not experience any inconvenience from the existence of homonyms and that homonymy usually does not interfere with understanding, since homonyms are delimited for the listener by context and situation [5,47]. L. A. Bulakhovsky notes that homonymy is not as dangerous as one might think, based on general considerations alone: it is usually clear from the context exactly what meaning this or that homonymous word has, and cases that seriously threaten understanding in the practice of the language arise relatively rare [6, 47]. Thus, the opinion that homonymy, although it violates the "law of the sign", does not cause difficulties in the process of communication, has become a commonplace in linguistics. However, there are facts that cast doubt on the validity of this opinion. First, all statements of this kind are purely speculative and are not supported by observational or experimental data based on an objective methodology. Secondly, these statements are in themselves contradictory. After all, if we recognize that in order to remove the ambiguity caused by homonymy, the listener needs to refer to the context, then this already means that homonymy delays the communication process, since the very appeal to the context should obviously require certain efforts from the listener and, therefore, some time costs. . The conclusion suggests itself that the opinion about the "harmlessness" of homonymy, expressed by many linguists, is explained by the fact that the number of homonyms in the languages they studied is relatively small. If a sentence containing a homonymous form has several “key” words that make it possible to unambiguously determine the content of this form, then there is almost no interference from homonymy. But if the "key" word is itself ambiguous and needs to be based on contextual data, then understanding the word becomes very difficult, if not impossible. It can be concluded that in this work, the most acceptable is the opinion that homonymy to some extent complicates the process of communication and requires additional efforts in the transmission or perception of information. And despite the fact that in English the saturation threshold of the language with homonyms has not yet been reached, their quantitative and qualitative study is important, in particular, when developing methods for their translation and studying their influence on the language system as a whole. The next paragraph presents a quantitative description of homonyms in English in order to more clearly represent their distribution by class and determine their place in the language system. Until now, almost no one has been involved in counting the number of homonyms of different classes in the English language. Only one work is known where such calculations were made - this is the dissertation of Yu.P. Kostyuchenko, dedicated specifically to the quantitative analysis of English homonyms [11, 52]. Choosing digital material from different sections of the dissertation, Malakhovskiy L.V. presented the following table of the distribution of English homonyms by class [12, 84].
It follows from the table that purely grammatical phonetic-grammatical homonyms are most widely used in English. There are more homonyms of this class in English than there are homonyms of all other classes combined. An important place in English homonymy is occupied by phonetic-graphic classes, purely lexical and purely lexical homophones, which include about 30% of the total number of homonyms. The remaining classes of homonyms make up a minor role in English homonyms. Data on the distribution of lexical and grammatical homonyms in the sound and written versions of the language are presented separately by Malakhovskiy L.V. in another table.
The table shows that the share of lexical homonyms in the sound version of the language is somewhat higher than in the written one (40.4% in the first case and 31.0% in the second), and the share of grammatical homonyms, on the contrary, is higher in the written version of the language than in the sound one (78.6% and 69%, respectively). At the same time, purely lexical homonyms make up about one third of the total number of homonyms in the sound version and only one fifth in the written one. Thus, we can conclude that in the field of lexical homonymy, phonetic-graphic purely lexical and purely lexical homophones are most widespread, and also that the proportion of lexical homonyms in the sound version is greater than in the written one. The quantitative and qualitative characteristics of lexical homonyms are presented in the previous paragraphs, it is advisable to move on to considering the issue of translating homonyms. On the basis of an integrated approach to the analysis of the features of the expression plan and the content plan, the paper presents a classification of homonymous units that fully reflects the nature of the formal semantic relations between homonyms. With a consistent comparison of the features of both plans, 9 formal-meaningful classes of homonyms are established. All these classes are represented in the vocabulary of the English language, but not in the same proportion. The study of the structural features of homonymous groups shows that in the composition of homogroups there are structural units more voluminous than a word: homosegments, combining words of the same part of speech, different in lexical meanings, and hyperlexemes, including words of different parts of speech, having a common component in lexical meanings. values. Each homogroup is characterized by a certain structural type, reflecting the lexical and grammatical structure of the homogroup. The nature of homonymous relations between members of a homogroup is revealed primarily by pairwise comparison of the units under study. Relationships between members of homonymous pairs are based on the opposition of features of the expression plane and the content plane. Comparison of homonymous units in pairs allows not only to establish the nature of the formal semantic relations between them, but also to determine the degree of interaction between members of homonymous pairs, depending on the completeness of the coincidence of their forms. In the system of English homonymy, the dominant position is occupied by the class of phonetic-graphic lexical-grammatical homonyms (27%), which indicates the widespread combination of lexical and grammatical homonymy, as well as the presence in the English language of a large number of homonyms that are not differentiated either in spelling or in sound. The sound version of the language, in which there are only homonyms that coincide in sound, is characterized by the presence of a larger number of homonyms of all three content subtypes compared to the written version, in which only homonyms are found that are identical in spelling. Homonymous units in English are characterized by a low degree of interaction, since the number of pairs of partial homonyms is 3.5 times higher than the number of pairs of full homonyms. Along with the structural characteristics of English homonyms, the quantitative characteristics of homonymous units were studied, data were obtained on the volume of homogroups, the diversity of their structural types; the relationship between homonymy and length: words, homonymic saturation of the English language, etc., which are of interest both in the fundamental and applied aspects. English homonymy is characterized by the presence of homogroups of various sizes, among which homogroups predominate; consisting of; two: hyperlexemes, two homosegments and; two or three homonyms. Analysis of distribution, hyperlexemes and homosegments, depending on the number of homonyms included in their composition, allows us to conclude about the degree of development of grammatical and lexical homonymy in the English language. A large number of hyperlexemes (36%); consisting of two or more homonyms, indicates a high degree of prevalence of grammatical homonymy in modern English; the predominance of homosegments, represented by two; and more homonyms (52%), indicates a significant degree of prevalence of lexical homonymy12. Homonymous groups and pairs of the English language are distinguished by a variety of structural types (300 and 63; respectively), most of which demonstrate a low degree of frequency, or even seem to be unique. High . recurrence characterizes the substantive-verbal structural types of homogroups and homoparas, which is explained by the predominance of homonyms-nouns (59%) and homonyms-verbs (31%) in the English language. The number of homonyms in English directly depends on the length of the word, since a significant part of homonymous words are lexical units consisting of one syllable (74%) and four to five graphemes (60%). The result obtained indicates that a high probability of coincidence in sound is observed among short words. The proportion of homonyms in relation to the total volume of vocabulary material is 6%, which may indicate both a strong and a weak degree of saturation of the English language with homonyms, which is currently not possible to accurately determine, since similar data for other languages that could be used as material for a comparative study of homonymy on the material of different languages, are absent. Modern English is characterized by highly developed homonymy, the existence of which is recorded in all periods of the historical development of the English vocabulary. As the study shows, over time, the number of homonyms in the language does not decrease, but, on the contrary, increases. Their appearance in the English vocabulary is associated with changes in the phonetic and graphic systems of the language, in its grammatical structure and vocabulary, which indicates the interconnection and interdependence of all aspects of the language. In the course of the historical and etymological analysis, it was found that the increase in the number of homonyms in the English language is significantly influenced by borrowings from different languages (31%). Due to the coincidence of the forms of the name and the verb and by conversion, 29% of homonyms appeared in the English language. phonetic processes, fixed in different periods of the history of the English language, caused the formation of 20% of homonyms. Word-formation processes (affixation, compounding, contraction) led to the appearance of 11% of homonyms. A small number of homonyms appeared as a result of the collapse of polysemy (2.8%). The revealed structural and quantitative characteristics of homonymous units of the English language seem to be significant for further study of homonymy. The prospects of the performed research are seen in conducting a comparative study in the field of homonymy of different languages, which would allow to determine the structural features of homonymous units in the compared languages, the nature of the formal semantic relations between homonyms, to identify ways and means of replenishing the composition of homonymy, to compare the quantitative characteristics of homonyms, to establish the degree of homonymic saturation in the studied languages. The question of the emergence of homonymy as a result of the collapse of polysemy deserves special attention. The number of homonyms that arose in this way is small and, according to the results of this study, is 2.8% of the total number of homonyms that were the object of analysis. Despite this circumstance, it seems appropriate to identify the causes that initiate the process of disintegration of the meanings of a polysemantic word, to establish the chronological parameters of this phenomenon in the language under study. The solution of these problems will make it possible to clarify the status of homonymous units in the language, to develop criteria for a clear distinction between homonyms and the meanings of a polysemantic word. The diachronic study of homonyms, both genetically heterogeneous and genetically related, also seems promising. In the course of such a study, the homonymous saturation of the English language in various historical periods can be determined, and the data obtained1 are compared with the results of this study. Comparative analysis data will reveal the degree of productivity of a particular source of homonymy at different stages of language development. Download 314.47 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||