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Homonymy: History
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Homonymy is a lexical-semantic relationship in which two or more distinct words share the same linguistic form but have unrelated meanings [1][2]. The shared form may involve identical pronunciation, identical spelling, or both, giving rise to distinctions between homophones and homographs. Homonymy is distinguished from polysemy, in which a single lexical item has multiple related senses, although the boundary between these phenomena can be difficult to establish in some cases [1][2].

  • Homonymy
  • Homophones
  • Homographs
  • Polysemy

Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation • Language and Linguistics • Arts and Humanities • Social Sciences

References

  1. Cruse, D. A. Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2011.
  2. Saeed, J. I. Semantics, 4th ed. Wiley-Blackwell: Hoboken, NJ, USA, 2016.
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