[Lexicog] English homonyms

Wed Apr 28 00:32:49 UTC 2004

Allow me to get a bit preachy here. Our dictionaries should be 'adequately
descriptive'. The description should be adequate for the purpose and
audience of the dictionary. I don't need a dictionary to tell me how to
pronounce most words, but every once in a while I want to know how to
pronounce something like 'faux pas'. Language learners need a pronunciation
guide unless the orthography is fully phonemic (and I don't know one that
is). So a tonal language must mark tone in the dictionary. It is a cop out
to say, "Our orthography doesn't mark it, so we won't in the dictionary."
The only exception would be if tone was only grammatical and not lexical. We
might not need to indicate the minutest details of word class, but we should
at least indicate the major parts of speech and the major word class
divisions. We might not need the most precise definitions or descriptions of
usage, but the user should get a good enough idea for his purpose. So if the
orthography is inadequate and under-differentiates phonemic contrasts, we
should mark those in a pronunciation guide. The tone pattern could be
indicated in an IPA transcription, by the addition of diacritics to the
citation form, or by using letters such as LHL. The citation form does not
have to be the same as the standard orthography. The American Heritage
Dictionary puts a dot at syllable breaks in the citation form.

A pronunciation guide would also help to identify homophones in a language
like English with orthography problems.

so [so] interj. a word used to introduce a new topic.
sew [so] v. to use needle and thread to make or mend clothes...
sow [so] v. to put seeds in the ground...

If you have an electronic dictionary, you could sort on the pronunciation
field. The Shoebox program can find such things by using the 'non-unique'
filter.

Actually homophones are not much of a problem in speech. The mind handles
homophones and multiple senses quite well even when we aren't aware of them.
This discussion was started off by someone providing a list of them. Most of
us would have great difficulty in listing even a small percentage of
homophones in our language. The greater problem is with homophones that are
spelled differently. Theirs just to much chance of using the wrong won
instead of the write one. Sum show up all the time. Their/there/they're is
one of the most commonly confused in English. I've never scene won/one
confused. It wood bee an interesting study two determine witch our confused
and why.

Ron Mow
SIL International
Phoenix, Arizona

-----Original Message-----
From: Thapelo Otlogetswe [mailto:thaps at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 1:06 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Lexicog] English homonyms

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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