Language is the Main Source of Communication

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Language is the human main source to communicate and it is a very complex capacity that entails many different aspects, one of them is the meaning of the words we use in order to express ourselves. Meaning depends on many factors and the linguistic branch that studies it is the semantics and pragmatics. Through studies in these fields we find the terms of homonymy and polysemy to denominate different phenomena that can occur in relation to the meaning of the words we use while perform language.
Oxford English Dictionary defines homonymy as the phenomenon in which `… two or more words having the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings and origins´. The field of homonymy can be divided into different subcategories: we can talk about homographs when two or more words coincide in their spelling but differ in the sound or in the meaning; on the other hand, homophony occurs when two or more words sound the same but they are spelt differently. But we can find cases in which these two characteristics coincide at the same time, that is what we call perfect homonymy- when two or more words coincide in their spelling and in their sound but differ in the meaning. We find another phenomenon which is polysemy that according to OED, it is ` the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word…´According to Falkum in `Generativity, Relevance and the Problem of Polysemy´, `[t]here are several different ways in which a word can have more than one meaning´.
Some general distinctions tells us that homonyms have different sources and different lexemes that share the same form while polysemy words are developed from the same source and the same lexeme but have different meanings. The confusion arises in the distinction between perfect ...

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... to use these words correctly

Works Cited

1.From `Semiasology´.12 March 2014.
2.From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, `Punishment´, 4 March 2014, 13 March 2014, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment#Definitions>
Falkum, Ingrid Lossius. `Generativity, Relevance and the Problem of Polysemy´. 10 March, 2013.
Hongyong, Liu. English Lexicology, Polysemy and Homonymy . 10 March 2014
Iomdin, Boris. `Lexical Semantics. An Introduction´ (ppt)Russian Language Institute, Russian Academy of Science. 13 March 2014.
McGregor, William. Linguistics, an Introduction. London: Bloomsbury Academy, 2013.

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