Английский язык. Homonyms

Английский язык. Текст работы с заданиями представлен в оглавлении и демоверсии.

I. Answer the following questions:

1.Which words do we call homonyms?

2. Why can't homonyms be regarded as expressive means of the language?

3. What is the traditional classification of homonyms? Illustrate your answer with examples.

4. What are the distinctive features of the classification of homonyms suggested by Professor A. I. Smirnitsky?

5. What are the main sources of homonyms? Illustrate your answer with examples.

6. In what respect does split polysemy stand apart from other sources of homonyms?

7. Prove that the language units board (“a long and thin piece of timber”) and board (“daily meals”) are two different words (homonyms) and not two different meanings of one and the same word. Write down some other similar examples.

8. What is the essential difference between homonymy and polysemy? What do they have in common? Illustrate your answer with examples.

II. Find the homonyms in the following extracts. Classify them into homonyms proper, homographs and homophones.

1. “Mine is a long and sad tale!” said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing. “It is a long tail, certainly,” said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; “but why do you call it sad?”

2. a) My seat was in the middle of a row. b) “I say, you haven’t had a row with Corky, have you?”

3. a) Our Institute football team got a challenge to a match from the University team and we accepted it. b) Somebody struck a match so that we could see each other.

4. a) It was nearly December but the California sun made a summer morning of the season. b) On the way home Crane no longer drove like a nervous old maid.

5. a) She loved to dance and had every right to expect the boy she was seeing almost every night in the week to take her dancing at least once on the weekend. b) “That’s right,” she said.

6. a) Do you always forget to wind up your watch? b) Crane had an old Ford without a tip and it rattled so much and the wind made so much noise.

7. a) In Brittany there was once a knight called Eliduc. b) She looked up through the window at the night.

8. a) He had a funny round face. b) – How does your house face? – It faces the South.

9. a) So he didn’t shake his hand because he didn’t shake cowards’ hands, see, and somebody else was elected captain. b) Mel’s plane had been shot down into the sea.

10. a) He was a lean, wiry Yankee who knew which side his experimental bread was buttered on. b) He had a wife of excellent and influential family, a finely bred as she was faithful to him.

11. a)He was growing progressively deafer in the left ear. b) I saw that I was looking down into another cove similar to the one I had left.

12. a) Iron and lead are base metals. b) Where does the road lead?

13. Kikanius invited him and a couple of the other boys to join him for a drink, and while Hugo didn’t drink, he went along for the company.

III.

a. Find the homophones to the following words, translate them into Russian or explain their meanings in English.

Heir, dye, cent, tale, sea, week, peace, sun, meat, steel, knight, sum, coarse, write, sight, hare.

b. Find the homographs to the following words and transcribe both.

1. to bow – to bend the head or body. 2. wind – air in motion. 3. to tear – to pull apart by force. 4. to desert – to go away from a person or place. 5. row – a number of persons or things in a line.

IV. Do the following italicized words represent hom­onyms or polysemantic words? Explain reasons for your answers.

1. 26 letters of the ABC; to receive letters regularly. 2. no mean scholar; to mean something. 3. to propose a toast; an underdone toast. 4. a hand of the clock; to hold a pen in one's hand. 5. to be six foot long; at the foot of the mountain. 6. the capital of a country; to have a big capital (money). 7. to date back to year 1870; to have a date with somebody. 8. to be engaged to Mr. N; to be engaged in conversation. 9. to make a fire; to sit at the fire(place). 10. to peel the bark off the branch; to bark loudly at the stranger. 11. A waiter is a person who, instead of waiting on you at once, makes you wait for him, so that you become a waiter too.