HOMONYMY AS AN IMPORTANT AREA OF RESEARCH ON THE PROBLEM OF CORRELATION OF FORM AND CONTENT IN LANGUAGE

A study of homonymy conducted for more than ten years based on the English Pronouncing Dictionary (EPD, 1‑18 ed., 1917‑2012) and Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (LPD, 1‑3 ed., 1990‑2008), allowed us to establish the frequency of phonetic (and graphic) variants in various groups of homonyms (homographs, homophones, phonetic-graphic homonyms, homonymic proper names, homonymic abbreviations), to determine the general and specific approaches of D. Jones and J. Wells to the problems of registering pronunciation variants and variability, and in particular, the phenomenon of homonymy. In addition to homonyms, closely related polysemantic and paronymic groups among both well-known lexical units and neologisms were considered. It was found that the lexicographic parametrization of the phenomena under consideration was imperfect. Recent studies have revealed clear inconsistency and insufficiency in registering both homographic proper names (PN) and their national and social pronunciation variants, as well as inconsistency in representing the meanings of PN and common names. Using the resources of the Oxford English Dictionary, a project-based, more complete (combined) dictionary of homographic onyms and appellatives is offered. The initial stage of compiling a digital dictionary is described and the structure of lemmata is discussed.

Key words: homonymy, polysemy, paronymy, phonetic variants, registration in dictionaries, homographic proper names, comparative analysis.

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