robert@hpfcnml.UUCP (robert) (01/07/85)
In school sets of words such as "sent" and "scent" were called homonymns. I have been corrected and told that these are homophones. I have looked up the definition and the dictionary agrees. It still bothers me that I have old school text books that refer to it as a homonymn. Has the definition changed? Is the school book wrong? Is the common usage different from the dictionary's? What do the linguists out there have to say? thanks Robert (animal) Heckendorn hplabs!hpfcla!robert
elbaum@reed.UUCP (Daniel Elbaum) (01/13/85)
In article <11900002@hpfcnml.UUCP> robert@hpfcnml.UUCP (robert) writes: >In school sets of words such as "sent" and "scent" were called >homonymns. I have been corrected and told that these are >homophones. Homonyms are orthographically identical but lexically distinct, e.g. bay - to howl, bay - an inlet. Homonymy (what a fun word to say ;-}) is often difficult to distinguish from polysemy, the property of a word bearing several meanings, as dark - obscure, dark - evil. The safest criterion seems to be etymology, but this is a dark field. Daniel Elbaum {decvax, ucbvax, pur-ee, uw-beaver, masscomp, cbosg, mit-ems, psu-cs, uoregon, orstcs, ihnp4, uf-cgrl}!tektronix teneron----\ ogcvax------+-!reed!elbaum muddcs-----/ cadic-----/ oresoft--/ grpwre--+
gh@utai.UUCP (Graeme Hirst) (01/15/85)
> In school sets of words such as "sent" and "scent" were called > homonymns. I have been corrected and told that these are > homophones. I have looked up the definition and the dictionary > agrees. It still bothers me that I have old school text books > that refer to it as a homonymn. Has the definition changed? > Is the school book wrong? Is the common usage different from > the dictionary's? What do the linguists out there have to say? > > Robert (animal) Heckendorn ``The terminology in this area can be a little confusing. Strictly speaking, if we are interested in written language, the homonymous words we are concerned with are HOMOGRAPHS, that is words where many meanings are associated with the same lexeme, though different meanings may have different pronunciations. For example, the vowel varies in {\sl row} depending on whether it means {\bf a line of objects} or {\bf a commotion}, but this fact is of no consequence when dealing with written language. If we were concerned with speech recognition, the type of homonyms we would worry about would be HOMOPHONES -- words that are pronounced the same but possibly spelled differently, such as {\sl four} and {\sl fore}. A HETERONYM is a non-homophonic homograph (Drury, Verbatim 9(3), 1983, 10-11).'' From ``Semantic Interpretation against ambiguity'' by Graeme Hirst. [To be published by Cambridge University Press in the series Studies in Natural Language Processing, Summer or Fall 1985.] -- \\\\ Graeme Hirst University of Toronto Computer Science Department //// utcsrgv!utai!gh / gh.toronto@csnet-relay / 416-978-8747
custead@sask.UUCP (Der cuss) (01/17/85)
For everyday purposes, you can safely use 'homonym' and 'homophone' as synonyms. I do. Of course I only use these words for everyday purposes, and even then I don't use them every day. L. R. Custead Dept. of Usenet, Univ. of Saskatchewan