Homograph

In English

Examples:

• sow (verb) – to plant seed :sow (noun) – female pig where the words are heteronyms, spelt identically but pronounced differently. Here confusion is not possible in spoken language but could occur in written language.

• bear (verb) – to support or carry :bear (noun) – the animal where the words are homonyms, identical in spelling and pronunciation (), but different in meaning and grammatical function.

The above examples are of etymologically unrelated words. Some homographs are also etymological doublets, meaning they come from the same source and are spelt the same way in Modern English, but their distinct meanings are tied to their distinct pronunciations:

• Dominican – of the Dominican Order or the Dominican Republic (fully anglicized, based on the Latin pronunciation of Dominicus , named for Saint Dominic) :Dominican – of Dominica (slightly modified from the Spanish pronunciation of Dominica , named for Latin diēs Dominica meaning "the Lord's Day" or "Sunday") Both words ultimately come from Latin dominicus meaning "of the Lord."

• violist – viol player :violist – viola player Both viol and viola come from Latin vitula.

More examples

Main article: List of English homographs

In Chinese

Many Chinese varieties have homographs, called 多音字 () or 重形字 (), 破音字 ().

Old Chinese

Modern study of Old Chinese has found patterns that suggest a system of affixes. One pattern is the addition of the prefix , which turns transitive verbs into intransitive or passives in some cases:

Another pattern is the use of a suffix, which seems to create nouns from verbs or verbs from nouns:

Middle Chinese

Many homographs in Old Chinese also exist in Middle Chinese. Examples of homographs in Middle Chinese are:

Modern Chinese

Many homographs in Old Chinese and Middle Chinese also exist in modern Chinese varieties. Homographs which did not exist in Old Chinese or Middle Chinese often come into existence due to differences between literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters. Other homographs may have been created due to merging two different characters into the same glyph during script reform (See Simplified Chinese characters and Shinjitai).

Some examples of homographs in Cantonese from Middle Chinese are:

Bibliography

References

References

1. Hobbs, James. (2006-08-04). "Homophones and Homographs: An American Dictionary, 4th ed.". McFarland.
2. [[Oxford English Dictionary]]: ''homograph''.
3. Norman, Jerry. (1988). "Chinese". Cambridge University Press.
4. Baxter, William H.. (1992). "A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs)". de Gruyter Mouton.
5. The two meanings were later distinguished through the means of radicals, so that 見 ('to see', Std. Mand. jiàn) was unchanged, while 見 ('to appear', Std. Mand. xiàn) came to be written as 現.
6. This distinction was preserved in Middle Chinese using voiced and unvoiced initials. Thus, 敗 (transitive, 'to defeat') was read as 北邁切 (Baxter, paejH), while 敗 (intransitive, 'to collapse; be defeated') was read as 薄邁切 (Baxter, baejH). 《增韻》：凡物不自敗而敗之，則北邁切。物自毀壞，則薄邁切。Modern Wu dialects (e.g., Shanghainese, Suzhounese), which preserve the three-way Middle Chinese contrast between voiced/aspirated/unaspirated initials, do not appear to preserve this distinction.
7. Wang Li. (2000). "王力古漢語字典". 中華書局.