Homonym

“ In the study of family names we come across very much the same phenomena as in dealing with other words. They are subject to the same phonetic accidents and to the distortions of folk-etymology, being "altered strangely to significative words by the common sort, who desire to make all to be significative" (Camden, Remains concerning Britain) . Doublets and homonyms are of frequent occurrence, and the origin of some names is obscured by the well-meaning efforts of early philologists. It might be expected that a family name would by its very nature tend to preserve its original form. ”

“ Modern English contains some six or seven hundred pairs or sets of homonyms, i.e., of words identical in sound and spelling but differing in meaning and origin. The New English Dictionary recognises provisionally nine separate nouns rack. The subject is a difficult one to deal with, because one word sometimes develops such apparently different meanings that the original identity becomes obscured, and even, as we have seen in the case of flour and mettle (p. 144) , a difference of spelling may result. ”

“ With these translations, syntax and word usage suffer, because dictionary-driven databases can't decipher between homonyms — for example, 'light' (as in the sun or light bulb) and 'light' (the opposite of heavy) . ”

“ The restricted number of possible sounds has inevitably meant that there are many homonyms in the language, and countless words contain within themselves other words or parts of words of quite unrelated meanings. ”

“ Teacher’s colony [aasiriyar kudiyiruppu] is a place where others are also living. 532/49 A common name sometimes denotes its gender of species. They fought in war: here ‘they’ denotes masculine gender. 533/50 In enumerating mood, in poetry form, words belonging to human generic class and non-human generic class mingle in a line end in collective mood. 534/51 Homonyms There are two classes of homonyms: taking same predicate end in different predicates and in one and the same predicate. 535/52 The class that takes different predicate differs having different subjects on context and association. ”

“ For who of those that reduce syllogisms, and clear up ambiguities, and explain etymologies, or of those who teach homonyms and synonyms, and predicaments and axioms, and what is the subject and what the predicate, and who promise their disciples by these and such like instructions to make them happy: who of them have so purged their souls as, instead of hating their enemies, to love them ”

“ This chapter defines the lexical corpus of various kinds in Tamil.
Four kinds of words The four kinds of words in Tamil-poetry are: [iyar’ccol] (=standard words) , [thirisol] (=synonyms and homonyms) , [thisaic-col] (=dialectal words) and [vada-sol] (=borrowed words from northern language) 1 Among these four the (primary kind of) standard words are the usage in Tamil land occurring with the semantic core unaffected. 2 The next kind of words is two kinds: synonyms and homonyms. 3 The third kind of words is dialects spoken in twelve regions surrounding Tamil land. ”

“ It is convenient, for instance, to say that son and heir are both homophones, meaning that each belongs to that particular class of words which without context are of ambiguous signification: and it is convenient also to say that son and sun and heir and air are homophones without explaining that it is meant that they are mutually homophonous, which is evident. A physician congratulating a friend on the birth of his first-born might say, 'Now that you have a son and heir, see that he gets enough sun and air'. ”

“ If there is one suffix which [49] is particularly useful to philosophers, it is that which enables one to derive from an adjective the name of the corresponding abstract quality; that is the Greek suffix -otet and the Latin suffix -itat (-itud) , whence have come the French -ité, the English -ity, the Italian -ita, the Spanish -itad; and the German suffix -heit or -keit, etc. We perceive here a logical relation well known and made use of in all our languages. It must find a place in the international language, but by what suffix ought it to be represented? ”

“ I will take one more instance of a name presumed to be common to the Germans and to the Celts as an illustration of the manner in which—men's names being handed down from generation to generation without, even in ancient times, any thought of their meaning—a name may survive, while the word from which it was originally derived has perished out of the language, or is retained in a sense so changed as hardly to be recognised. ”

“ Some, it seems, pronounce it an objective. Some, like Murray, say nothing about it. Following the analogy of our own language, I refer it to the nominative absolute, because there is nothing to determine it to be otherwise. In the examples. "Heu me miserum! Ah wretch that I am!"— (Grant's Latin Gram., p. 263.) and "Miser ego homo! O wretched man that I am!"— (Rom., vii, 24,) if the word that is a relative pronoun, as I incline to think it is, the case of the nouns wretch and man does not depend on any other words, either expressed or implied. ”

“ But it does not follow, as a good number of writers on language have assumed, that because some of the classificatory suffixes are examples of composition, all of them are so, any more than in the case of flection and the flectional suffixes. Indeed, we have only to glance at the numerous suffixes employed by our own Aryan family of speech in forming or “building” words to see how impossible it would be to trace back a large proportion of them to independent words. ”

“ The following lists of suffixes (31) and prefixes (7 in number) should be carefully studied, since innumerable words of the finest shade of meaning can be formed by their aid, in fact, they are the ground-work of the language. In cases where a suffix can be used as a root, the word it helps to form is given. The hyphens are used only to show the root, suffix, and grammatical termination of the examples. The student should form other words himself, and study the works of the best authors. ”

“ A prefix is a significant syllable or word placed before and joined with a word to modify its meaning: as, unsafe = not safe; remove = move back; circumnavigate = sail around.
17. A suffix is a significant syllable or syllables placed after and joined with a word to modify its meaning: as, safely = in a safe manner; movable = that may be moved; navigation = act of sailing.
The word affix signifies either a prefix or a suffix; and the verb to affix means to join a prefix or a suffix to a root-word. ”

“ In all these inflectional forms, the antecedent combinatory stage is still more or less visible, for mi, si, ti, whatever their exact history may have been, are clearly varieties of the pronominal bases of the first, second, and third persons, ma, tva, ta.
Lastly, by raising viś to veśa, we arrive at a new nominal base, and by adding to it the stem of a demonstrative pronoun s, we form the so-called nom. sing. veśa-s, οἶκο-ς, vicu-s, from which we started, meaning originally house-here, this house, the house. ”

“ The broad rule is that in foreign names the article should be retained, and the preposition rejected; and the reason for this is that the article is permanent, while the preposition is not. A prefix which is translated into the relative term in a foreign language cannot be considered as a fixed portion of the name. Thus Alexander von Humboldt translated his name into Alexander de Humboldt when away from his native country. For the same reason prefixes are retained in English names. They have [81] no meaning in themselves, and cannot be translated. ”

“ When the prefixes “co-,” “re-,” “pre-,” are followed by the same vowel, use the diæresis marked vowel for the second one, without the hyphen; as, “coördinate,” “reëlection,” “preëminent.” If the prefix comes at the end of a line, with the hyphen, the diæresis is not to be used. The diæresis is not to be used in words beginning with “aer”; as, aeroplane, aery, aerial, etc.
Before sounded h, long u, and the word “one,” use a as the form of the indefinite article; as, a hotel, a history, a union, such a one. ”

“ Neuter diminutives in German readily become masculine or feminine when the diminutive meaning has been obscured: as, e.g., the occasional construction die Fräulein, ‘the young lady;’ cf., also, in Latin, Glycerium mea, Philematium mea (Plaut., Most., I. iii. 96) , mea Gymnasium (Plaut., Cist., I. i. 2) . In English, there are a great number of words which would, in the first instance, be thought of as masculines, as containing a suffix commonly associated with masculine words. These are, however, very frequently used as feminines ”

“ In its construction it is entirely a language of ever-varying prefixes, by which verbs, nouns, and pronouns, are conjugated, declined, and combined. Each of the twelve declensions of nouns has its own set of prefixes, which, also, by a singular and harmonious rule, govern the sound of the prefixes of the verb, or other words in the sentence connected with it, and which are thus assimilated into what is termed the euphonic concord, the third person of the pronoun, for instance, having 144 different prefixes to be used in combination with different words. ”

“ I desire, however, to put forward the above theory as to the origin of compound names rather with a view of raising the question than of expressing a definite conclusion.
The vowel ending in a, i, or o, to which I have referred as in general use in the case of simple names was not used in the case of compounds, unless indeed it happened to be an original part of the second word [Pg 40] as in Frithubodo, from bodo, messenger. Only in the case of women, to mark the sex, the ending in a was given. ”

“ These are declined like nouns, of which latter there are six forms, the masculine in â, o, and y, the feminine in a, oo, and e; the plurals being formed exactly as in the pronominal suffixes of the verb. The root-word, without inflexion, alone is used where the name is employed in no connection with a verb, where in every terrestrial language the nominative would be employed. ”

“ Instrumental.—When an instrument is the remote object of the verb, the accusative remains unchanged, but the instrumental case takes the same suffix as the nominative-agent; thus, mêndu wagan bŭrgandu bume, the man hit a crow with a boomerang. Inarru burumain kunnedu bangabe, the woman cut a dog with a yamstick.
In the above examples, as well as in the sentences illustrating the nominative-agent, it will be seen that the agent suffix has euphonic changes according to the termination of the word it is attached to. This may be said of the suffixes in all the cases of nouns and adjectives. ”

“ Whom is a pronoun, a word used instead of a noun—relative, it relates to "man" for its antecedent—mas. gend. third pers. sing. num. because the antecedent "man" is with which it agrees, according to
RULE 14. Relative pronouns agree with their antecedents in gender, person, and number. Whom is in the objective case, the object of the action expressed by the active-transitive verb "saw," and governed by it, agreeably to
RULE 16. When a nominative comes between the relative and the verb, the relative is governed by the following verb, or some other word in its own member of the sentence. ”

“ Hence the nominative or naming case may apply as correctly to the object as the agent. "John strikes Thomas, and Thomas strikes John." John and Thomas name the boys who strike, but in the first case John is the actor or agent and Thomas the object. In the latter it is changed. To use a nominative name is a redundancy which should be avoided. You will understand my meaning and see the propriety of the change proposed, as the mind of the learner should not be burthened with needless or irrelevant phrases. ”

“ In inflectional languages the root is attended by prefixes or suffixes which form inseparable modifiers. At times phonetic changes occur which render the complex unlike the simple joining of its component parts.
As Mr. Sweet says: “If we define inflection as ‘agglutination run mad’ we may regard incorporation as inflection run madder still, for it is the result of attempting to develop a verb into a complete sentence.” In some languages, such as the incorporating, a verb is sufficiently distinct in its meaning not to require an independent pronoun. ”

“ These pronouns are, however, the ordinary possessives, so that noun and verb become in a measure identical; thus, camc means both “I eat” and “my food;” cumuee, “I marry” and “my wife;” only in a few examples are the verbal pronouns distinct from the possessives.
In this case, therefore, the personal signs are independent elements, occurring elsewhere in the language, while the tense and mode signs are true affixes.
The inflection-syllables form with the stem real verbal forms, and so far the conjugation of this language belongs to the third case. ”

“ CHAPTER VI.
1ENGLISH SURNAMES.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. To review the sources of a people’s nomenclature is to review that people’s history. When we remember that there is nothing without a name, and that every name that is named, whether it be of a man, or man’s work, or man’s heritage of earth, came not by chance, or accident so called, but was given out of some nation’s spoken language to denote some characteristic that language expressed, we can readily imagine how important is the drift of each—what a record must each contain. ”

“ OBS. 8.—Any considerable error in the classing of words, does not stand alone; it naturally brings others in its train. Murray's "Adjective Pronouns," (which he now subdivides into four little classes, possessive, distributive, demonstrative, and indefinite,) being all of them misnamed and misplaced in his etymology, have led both him and many others into strange errors in syntax. The possessives only are "pronouns;" and these are pronouns of the possessive case. As such, they agree with the antecedent nouns for which they stand, in person, number, and gender ”