HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ENGLISH HOMONYMS AND SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING THEM IN VIETNAMSE HIGH SCHOOLS SUBJECT SEMANTICS (FINAL ASSIGNMENT) LECTURER Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm LEARNER Nguyễn Thị Anh Thoa GROUP K18 English C HANOI – June, 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PART I INTRODUCTION 1 1 Rationale 1 2 The Scope, Objectives, Significance, Methods and Design of the Study 2 1 The scope of the s.
HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES *** *** ENGLISH HOMONYMS AND SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING THEM IN VIETNAMSE HIGH SCHOOLS SUBJECT: SEMANTICS (FINAL ASSIGNMENT) LECTURER : Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm LEARNER : Nguyễn Thị Anh Thoa GROUP : K18 English C HANOI – June, 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PART I : INTRODUCTION Rationale The Scope, Objectives, Significance, Methods and Design of the 1 Study 2.1 The scope of the study 2.2 Objectives of the study 2.3 Significance of the study 2.4 Methods of the study 2.5 Design of the study PART II : DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER : AN OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH HOMONYMS Definition 3 Characteristics of English homonyms 3 Classification of English homonyms 3.1 Classification1 3.2 Classification 3.3 Classification3 3.4 Classification Sources of English homonyms The distinction between Homonymy and Polysemy 10 5.1 Polysemy 5.2 The distinction between Homonymy and Polysemy CHAPTER 2-Some difficulties perceived by high school students when 10 10 12 studying English homonyms and some implications for teaching and learning them PART III : CONCLUSION REFERENCES 15 PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale: English has become an international language It is of great importance to master English to be more sucessful in our jobs However, it is not easy to learn English especially English words A larger number of words, despite their sameness in spelling and pronouncing, turn out out to be distintive ones This causes obstacles to Vietnamese students of English in comprehending and using English homonyms “ Thus homonyms are a source of ambiguity” (Nguyen Hoa An Introduction to Semantics, p.31) There are some reasons for me to this study In the first place, as a teacher of English at a secondary school, I really want to understand more about English words especially English homonyms As a result, I will know more about them and I am able to explain English homonyms clearly to my students In addition, from my own experience, I have found that students find it difficult to understand English homonyms For example, some words make them confused such as found (past tense of find) and found (to establish an organization or institution) Last but not least, I would like to find some solutions to help my students learn English homonyms better The Scope, Objectives, Significance, Methods and Design of the Study: 2.1 The scope of the study This study focuses on investigating information relating to English homonyms 2.2 Objectives of the study This study is carried out with two main purposes: • To review the information relating to English homonyms • To find out some difficulties that students usually make when studying English homonyms and suggest some solutions to help them learn homonyms better 2.3 Significance of the study This study may be of great importance for many foreign language teachers as well as learners of English Its implications and suggestions help students recognize English homonyms and understand the meaning of the sentence better Teachers of Englsih can use these suggestions to make their teaching more effective 2.4 Methods of the study To complete this study, the researcher has carried out a lot of reading and consulting Firstly, information relating to English homonyms was collected from books borrowed from the university library, and from some articles available on the Internet In addition, I also asked the students where I have been working about their difficulties in learning English homonyms The combination of information obtained from reading materials and informal interview can help to draw an outline of this study 2.5 Design of the study The study is organized into three parts: Part I: Introduction: provides the rationale for the study; its scope, objectives, significance, methods and design Part II: Development consists of two chapters: Chapter 1: An overview of English homonyms Chapter 2: Some difficulties perceived by high school students when using English homonyms and some implications for teaching and learning them Part III: Conclusion: summerizes the key issues in the study, points out the limitations and offer some suggestions for further study PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: AN OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH HOMONYMS Definition: Homomyms are words identical in pronunciation and (or) spelling but different in meaning Most English homonyms are monosyllabic ( Hoang Tat Truong Basic English lexicology, p.69) E.g: * fast- fast * here- hear Afanasyeva ( 1985:128) defines homonyms as words which are edentical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in one of these aspects, but different in their meaning E.g.: * bank, n – a shore * bank, n – an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging and safeguarding money Mednikova ( 1987: 76) introduces a definition of English homonyms They are two (or more) different linguistic units within one sound and orthographic complex, i.e displaying diversity on the content plane and identity on the expression plane Characteristics of English homonyms: The first characteristic of English homonyms is the accidentality of their identical formation Despite the fact that English vocabulary is enriched with the attendance of pairs and groups of homonymous words, their identical forms are mostly accidental The majority of homonyms coincided due to phonetic changes which they suffered during their development If synonyms and antonyms can be regarded as the treasury of the language’s expressive resources, homonyms are of no interest in this respect In terms of metaphoric, groups of synonyms and pairs of antonyms are created with particular purposes whereas homonyms are purposeless because of accidental creation ( O.V Afanasyeva English Lexicology, p 128) Homonymy is a source of ambiguity This third characteristic leads to confusion and misunderstanding when learning and using English language An illustration for this is the case of full homonyms, which can cause problems for students due to the sameness in spelling and sound For instance, one may come across such a sentence as “ After a whole morning’s effort, we only found out one pen” It is doubtful whether the word “pen” refers to a writing device or an area for keeping farm animals Apart from this, homophones, such as pair and pear, can cause problems for students of English language when they are writing English as they might not know which spelling is correct In addition to the matter of confusion and misunderstanding, their characteristic of ambiguity makes them them important resources for popular humour If we take the pun ( a joke based on homonyms), it will become clearer Let us look at one example as follows: “Waiter!” “Yes, sir” “What’s this?” “It’s bean soup, sir.” “ Never mind what it has been I want to know what it is now.” The key to this joke belongs to the pairs of homophones bean ( a kind of seed growing in long pods, eaten as vegetables) and been ( past participle of to be) Classification of English homonyms: 3.1 Classification 1: According to Understanding English Semantics by Nguyen Hoa, depending on the notion, homonyms can be classified into absolute homonyms and partial homonyms 3.1.1 Absolute homonyms: Absolute homonyms should satisfy the following three conditions: (i) they will be unrelated in meaning; (ii) all their forms will be identical; (iii) the identical forms will be grammatically equilvalent E.g.: * sole (n): a kind of fish sole (n): bottom of foot or shoe • bank (n): a financial institution bank (n): the bank of the river 3.1.2 Partial homonyms: Partial homonyms are common E.g.: * rose (n): a type of flower rose (Ved): past tense form of rise *found (v): set up, establish found (Ved): past tense form of to find 3.2 Classification 2: According to Understanding English Semantics by Nguyen Hoa, depending on the samesness of sound and spelling forms, homonyms may be classified into three types as follows 3.2.1 Full homonyms: Full homonyms are words which are identical in both pronunciation and spelling E.g.: * bark: outer covering of a tree bark: noise made by a dog 3.2.2 Homophones: Homophones are words which are identical in pronunciation only: air vs heir 3.2.3 Homographs: Homographs are words which are identical in spelling only E.g.: * wind (n): a current of air wind (v): to empower a clock 3.3 Classification 3: It has been observed that paradigms of some homonyms coincide completely and of other only partially Professor A.L.Smirnitsky classified homonyms into two large classes: full homonyms and partial homonyms (O.V Afanasyeva English Lexicology, p 134-135) 3.3.1.Full lexical homonyms: Full lexical homonyms are words which represent the same category of parts of speech and have the same paradigm E.g.: * match,n.- a game, a contest match, n – a short piece of wood used for producing fire 3.3.2 Partial homonyms: Partial homonyms are subdivided into three sub-groups: 3.3.2.1 Simple lexico- grammatical partial homonyms are words which belong to the same category of parts of speech Their paradigms have one identical form, but it is not the same from E g.: * to bound (v) bound (v): past tense, past participle of to bind *to lay(v): lay (v): past tense of to lie 3.3.2.2 Complex lexico grammatical partial homonyms are words of different categories of parts of speech which have one identical form in their paradigms E g: *rose(n): a kind of flower rose (v): past tense of to rise 3.3.2.3 Partial lexical homonyms: are words of the same category of parts of speech which are identical only in their corresponding forms E.g: * to hang ( hung, hung), v to hang (hanged, hanged),v *to can (canned, cannes) can (could) 3.4 Classification 4: Homonyms can be approached from a different point of view and classified into lexical and grammatical homonyms 3.4.1 Lexical homonyms: are words of the same part of speech but of quite different meanings so that there is no semantic relation between then E.g.: * match (n) – match (n) * peace (n)- piece (n) 3.4.2 Grammatical homonyms: are words of different parts of speech E.g.: * work (n) - to work (n) * love (n) – to love (n) Each of the classification come froms a starting point of view Though they tried to arranged homonyms into specific and sufficient groups, I am of the opinion that the classifying English homonyms into such three types as homoyms proper, homophones and homographs is widely shared by scholars The classification by Professor A.I Smirnishy comes into details in accord with the paradigms of words Sources of English homonyms: The issue of the formation of the Englishhomonyms has been resolved in some ways In a quantity of larger dictionaries published both in Britain and the U S.A such as The Oxford English Dictionary ( Oxford University Press, 1933) and Webster’s Third New International Dictionary ( Merriam- Webster Inc, 1981), the matter was more or less mentioned As part of my study, I followed the standpoint as given by Afanasyeva (1985: 130-133) According to him, English homonymous words are formed from four sources: phonetic changes, borrowing, word- building and split of polysemy 4.1 Phonetic changes: This is one source of homonyms in which words undergo in the course of their historical development As a result of such changes, two or more words formerly pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms For instance, in Old English the verb to knead had the form cnedan, and the verb to need had the form neodan The noun work and the verb to work also had different forms in Old English wyrkean and weork respectively 4.2 Borrowing: A borrowed word may, in the final stage of its phonetic adaptation, duplicate in form either a native word or another borrowing Adaptation is essentially a learned or literary process; it consists in adapting a foreign word to the analogies of the language In the group of homonyms rite (n), to write (v)and right (adj), the second and third words are of native origin where as rite is borrowed from Latin ritus In the pair peace (n) and piece (n), the first originates from Old French ( from Gaulish) pettia, and the second from Old French pais 4.3 Word- building: Word- building also contributes significantly to the growth of English homonyms The most important type in this respect is conversion It consists in making a new word from existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged The new word has a meaning which differs from that of the original one despite some association with it It has also a new paradigm peculiar to its new category as a part of speech Homonyms of this type, which are the same in sound and spelling but refer to different categories of parts of speech, are termed lexico- grammatical homonyms For example, comb (n) and to comb (v), pale(adj) and pale (v), love and to love (v), etc were formed in terms of conversion Shortening is a further type of word- building which increase the number of homonyms Shortenings (or contracted or curtailed words) are produced in two different ways The first way is to make a new word from a syllable of the original word The second one is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group For instance, fan (n) in sense of “ an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc.” is shortening from fanatic Its homonym is a latin- borrowing fan (an implement for waving lightly to produce a cool current of air) Sound- imitation (onomatopocia) is the third type of word- formation in which word are made by imitating different kinds of sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and inanimate objects Word made by sound imitation can form pairs of homonyms with other words An example of this is bang(n) meaning “ a loud, sudden, explosive noise” and bang (n) meaning “ a fringe of hair combed over the forehead” 4.4 Split polysemy: The above- described sources of homonyms share one important feature in which homonyms from two or more different words and their similarity is purely accidental The fourth one differs from them Two or more homonyms can originate from diferrent meanings of the same word when, for some reasons, the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts The below group of words is taken as an example board, n.- a long and thin piece of timber board, n – daily meals, especially as provided for pay, e.g room amd board,n – an official group of persons who direct or supervise some activity, e.g a board of directors Although their meanings are not associated with one another, most larger dictionaries still enter a meaning of board ( a table) that once held them together It developed from the meaning “ a piece of timber” by transference based on contiguity ( association of an object and the material from which it is made) The meanings “meals” and ‘an official group of persons” developed from the meaning “table”, also by transference based on contiguity Meals are easily associated with a table on which they are served, and an official group of people in authority are also likely to discuss their business round a table The distinction between Homonymy and Polysemy 5.1 Polysemy 5.1.1 Definition: Polysemy refers to a word that has two or more similar or related meanings 5.1.2 Examples : Example 1: + The house is at the foot of the mountain + One of his shoes felt too tight for his foot → Here there is some kind of conceptual connection: “ foot” here refers to the bottom part of the mountains in the first sentence and the bottom part of the leg in the second Example 2: + I put the strawberry in my mouth + They sailed for weeks until they reached the mouth of the river + The mouth of the bottle was dirty Although a human mouth , the mouth of a river and the mouth of a bottle are different objects, there is a clear sense that they are somehow conceptually related: they all refer to openings from the interior of something to the outside ( and usually the opening is at the end of a long narrow channel) 5.2 The distinction between Homonymy and Polysemy Lexicographers face the problem of differentiating between senses of words when compiling dictionaries The problem of ambiguity of meaning is known as homonymy and polysemy Here are the criteria used to distinguish between polysemy and hymonymy: Criteria Relatedness Polysemes of Meanings are related meaning Entry for words in a standard dictionary Are organized under one entry E.g.: FOOT (n): lowest part of the leg, below the ankle lowest part of something: at the foot of the mountain Homonyms Meanings are unrelated Are organized under different entries E.g.: FILE: File1 n collection of papers arranged for reference File2 n instrument with sharp-edged furrows for smoothing metals CHAPTER 2: SOME DIFFICULTIES PERCEIVED BY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WHEN STUDYING ENGLISH HOMONYMS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING THEM Some difficulties perceived by high school students when learning English homonyms I have been teaching English at a upper secondary school for years From my first hand experiences, I have found that my students have a number of difficulties when they learn English vocabulary especially English homonyms The first problem is that many English words have the same spelling form, same sound but their meanings are different For example, the word “ found” is a typical example The verb “found” means to set up or establish an institution or an organization.In addition, “found” also is the past and past particple form of the verb “ find” As a result, when students meet this word, they cannot understand the meaning of it in each situation The second proplem is relating to homophones Homophones are words with identical pronunciation but with different meaning For instance, the word “ knight” and “night”, the word “ peace” and “piece” , when students hear these words, they often get confused about their spelling Consequently, in speaking and listening lessons, my students sometimes not catch the right words that the teacher or the speaker says and misunderstand the words The last problem is that many students mispronounce homographs For example, the word “lead” is pronounced /li:d/ when it is a verb, but it is pronounced /led/ when it is a noun Therefore, my sudents find it difficult to pronounce the homographs Some implications for teaching and learning English homonyms 2.1 Adding phrase to a homonyms: When we make an oral or written speech with a homonym, we should add a phrase to it A phrase can be a noun phrase, an adjective phrase, a verb phrase or an adverb phrase This phrase might help the hearer or the reader realise the correct homonyms with its meaning E.g : I go to the bank I go to the commercial bank I go to the river bank When teaching a homonym, we rely on this method to compare the word of a pair or a group of homonyms with its homonyms By adding a phrase to a homonymous word, learner can practise the use of a word and its homonyms or homonyms E.g.: I go to the bank I go to the bank to catch some fish I go to the north bank of Huong River I go to the bank to get a bucket of water I go to the bank I go to the bank to borrow some money I go to the bank for some money I go to the bank to meet the banker 2.2 Using dictionaries: When we come across a word of a homonym’s group or pair, and we cope with obstacles to realise its meaning, It is advised to look it up in the dictionary With a clear definition and proper introduction of its use, a dictionary might help us not only to gain the exact meaning of the word but also to distinguish between it and its homonyms For example, if we come upon the word bail in the sentnece “ Bail water the boat or it will sink!” we should look it up in the dictionary and fined out its meaning “to throw water out of a boat with buckets” We also discover its homonym bail ( to release somebody on bail) There are a variety of kinds of dictionaries such as explanatory dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, learner’s dictionaries and specialized dictionaries The third type among them is specially compiled for learners of English at different stages of advancement The Advanced learner’s Dictionary of Current English by AS Horn is one of this type of dictionaries which meets the needs of advanced foreign learners of English It provides meanings and uses of the words including homonyms To further acquire the English homonyms, we should also make frequent use of them 2.3 Practising the use of homonyms: When learners have known the meaning of a homonym, they should make use of it regularly to acquire its use They could make sentences with that word or add a phrase to it By practice, learners of English could master the menaing and use of a homonym in certain situations of word using Moreover, they might realise a word of the same homonymous pair or group with the learned word in a message E.g.: When learning the homonym proper tip (the pointed or thin end of something), students should make sentences with it to acquire the use of it He often walks to the northern tip of the island We painted a red dot on the tip of the parrot’s left wing It’s on the tip of your nose When coming across such a sentence as, “ Their house is an absolute tip.” , the learner will recognize tip in this message as a homonym proper of the above tip (the pointed or thin end of something) If they continue to study the menaing, ther form and the use of this new word, they will acquire it PART III: CONCLUSION In summary, this study aims at investigating the information relating to English homonyms A comprehensive understanding about the English homonyms and the origin of the homonyms were presented in the study The second target of this study is to name some difficulties that students at upper secondary schools in Viet Nam often meet when studying English homonyms Basing on these difficulties, the researcher also suggested some ways to overcome them Although the researcher has made effort to conduct this study, it exists some limitations such as imperfect organization, and perhaps deficiency in content….Readers’ comments and contributions would be highly appreciated REFERENCES Nguyen Hoa (2001) An Introduction to Semantics Ha Noi : VNU Publishing House Nguyen Hoa (2004) Understanding English Semantics Ha Noi : VNU Publishing House Hoang Tat Truong (1993) Basic English Lexicology Ha Noi Antrushina, G.B., Afanassyeva ,O.V and Morozona ,N N (1985) English lexicology Moscow: Vyssaja Skola Mednikova, E.M (1978) Seminars in English Lexicology Moscow: Vyssaja Skola Cruse, D.A (1999) Lexical Semantics Cambridge University Press Hurford, J.R & Heasley, B (1998) Semantics, a course book Cambridge University Press Keidler, C.W (1998) Introducing English Semantics Routledge London and New York Saeed, J (1997) Semantics Oxford: Blackwell ... 1: An overview of English homonyms Chapter 2: Some difficulties perceived by high school students when using English homonyms and some implications for teaching and learning them Part III: Conclusion:... smoothing metals CHAPTER 2: SOME DIFFICULTIES PERCEIVED BY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WHEN STUDYING ENGLISH HOMONYMS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING THEM Some difficulties perceived by high. .. 10 10 12 studying English homonyms and some implications for teaching and learning them PART III : CONCLUSION REFERENCES 15 PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale: English has become an international