[Lexicog] English homonyms

[Thapelo Otlogetswe]

It is not clear to me how the matter of homophones is
important in learners' dictionaries. Is it a problem
that the lexicographer is anticipating or it is a real
problem that exists for learners of English? As far as
I know many learners of English will have worse cases
of homonymy, some with tonal complexities in their own
languages. Take for example Setswana where you have
such homographs with different tonal patterns like:

mosimanyana (boy) [tonal pattern: LHLHL]
mosimanyana (small hole) [tonal pattern: LLHHL]

mabele (breasts) [tonal pattern: LHL]
mabele (sorghum) [tonal pattern: LLH]

lela (cry) [tonal pattern: LH]
lela (intestine) [LL]

While it may be important to make a distinction
between homographs as distinct words with a similar
spelling, it is not clear to me why it may be
important to attempt to cross reference them in a
dictionary. What good lies in associating 'fined' and
'find' or 'dye' and 'die'? In trying to warn a
learner, wont a lexicographer end up causing
confusion, creating associations which did not exist
earlier in the mind of a learner and lead learners to
creat errors? There may be a case for including a note
on usage in the dictionary for words which have been
found to be confused by learners as in the distinction
of 'lay' and 'lie' or 'child, baby, kid, teenager,
youth' in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English (Summers 1995).

My view would be such inclusions in a dictionary would
be better informed by results of research on the
common mistakes by the target group of the dictionary.

Thapelo

=====
Thapelo Otlogetswe
University of Brighton
I T R I
Lewes Road, Brighton
BN2 4GJ, England
Tel: (+44) 1273 642912 (office)
(+44) 1273 600052 (home)
(+44) 1273 642908 (fax)
http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/~Thapelo.Otlogetswe/




	
		
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