VI Международный конкурс научно-исследовательских и творческих работ учащихся
Старт в науке
Фонетическая двусмысленность или омофоны в английском языке
Автор работы награжден дипломом победителя II степени
Полная версия работы доступна во вкладке "Файлы работы" в формате PDF
Introduction
At the present time, the entire political, economic, scientific, sports, cultural life of the whole world “flows” in English. Moreover, English is the language of international communication for all mankind. Therefore, the ability to communicate in English is becoming more and more popular, mastering it as a “second relative” [2,p.25]
Learning English is a long but interesting process. But how often do people learn English? It can be misleading. Since English is a language of many-valued words. In the process of learning English at school, many encounter various linguistic phenomena, like idioms and phrases that at first glance have no meaning or seem confusing. Some of them cause some difficulties for English learners, as these phenomena are not given enough time to learn. How not to confuse “dear” with “deer” or “flour” with “flower”?
The relevance of studying the topic “Phonetic ambiguity or homophones in English” is everyone will once have to come across words that sound the same but are written differently and have completely different meanings in the process of learning English. Foreigners get into stupid and ridiculous situations from time to time if they use these concepts in communication incorrectly. Cultural awareness on this topic is the key to effective communication in English. It is necessary for people who do not have this language as a mother tongue and it helps to get rid of confusion in the study of words and expand your vocabulary.
The aim of the work is study the existing and most popular homophonic words in the English language and reveal their meaning.
Object of the exploration is lexical units of English language.
Subject of exploration is homophones.
The following tasks were set:
To give the concept of homophones
To reveal the emergence of homophones
To test among students in grades 7-8, English language learners
To create a mini-dictionary of 50 popular homophones in modern English.
Methods of the research work:
information search method (analysis and generalization of literature on the research topic);
information search on the world wide web;
practical methods: observation and comparison;
Student survey.
The novelty of the work is despite the extensive study of English, many of us do not pay enough attention to the lexical similarities and differences in its learning. This topic is close to life and reality, so we decided to find out what homophones are and what kinds of them exist.
Hypothesis: Knowledge of homophones in English and their correct use will make our speech richer and more expressive, which will help to remove difficulties in understanding the speech of the English-speaking interlocutor.
Theoretical significance of the work: systematization and generalization of the material on the research topic.
The practical significance of the work determines by the possibility of creating an electronic mini-dictionary "Popular homophones in modern English" in the form of a Microsoft Power Point presentation and using it in foreign language lessons.
Chapter I. Phonetic unit
The concept of homophones
Homophones are a type of homonyms, therefore, first of all, we identified the etymology and the emergence of the concept of homonyms and homophones in the English language. Following the data of the etymological dictionary “The online Etymology Dictionary” is given the following meanings:
Homonyms are (1807) (from French homonyme and directly from Latin homonymum (Quintilian), from Greek homonymon, from homos “same”) words that are both spelled and pronounced the same, but have different meanings. Homo- + onyma are a dialect from onoma “name”, literally maen «having the same name». [6]
The dictionary wiki explains that homonyms comes from Greekὁμώνυμος«namesake, codename», further from ὁμός«same, equal» +ὄνυμα.In a number of European languages, the word is borrowed through Latin homonymus.
Homonyms are divided into two groups: homographs (written in the same way, but have different meanings) and homophones (sound the same but have different spelling). [2,p.132]
Homophones (1843) (from adjective homophone (1620), from Greek homos “same”) – words that are pronounced the same as other words but differ in meaning. The words may be spelled the same such as rose (flower) and rose (past tense of “rise”), or differently, such as carat, caret and carrot. Homo- + phone literally means «having the same sound».
Homophone (отгреч. homos – the same and ... background)
1) different words that sound the same but differ in writing (например "плод" и "плот");
2) One of two words with the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings.
The term "homophones" can be applied to both long lexical units and short. For example, homophones can be the same sounding letter combinations, words or phrases – «ph» is a homophone of «f» in English. [11]
Also in the English language when working on a computer is common phenomenon such as homophone error. This is an error that occurs when recognizing words that are close in sound but different in meaning, for example «mouth» и «mouse».
1.2. The emergence of homophones
Homophones appear as a result of phonetic language laws. According to linguists, homophones in English today make up approximately 16-18% of the total vocabulary. It is much more than in Russian. Such an intensive development of this phenomenon in the English language is due to a number of reasons. However, as it was established by scientists who study the etymology of words, borrowing from other languages influences the development of English homonymy most of all. And most of this kind of borrowing came from Greek and Latin. The phonetic structure of the foreigner word changes according to the rules of the English language. So, often as a result of phonetic changes occur coincidences. [1, p.4]
Another source of homophones in the English language is the historical change of words. In the course of historical development, some words that were originally different in their pronunciation, acquired the same phonetic pronunciation. [3, p.36]
a.
b.Conclusion to chapter I
In the course of linguo-etymological analysis, it was found that English homophones arose as a result of the historically established different designations in writing the same consonant or vowel sound, for example: whole — hole, knew — new; dear — deer, bear— bare. The increase in the number of homophones is significantly influenced by borrowings, mostly from Latin and French in the English language.
Thus, we found out that homophones have roots in Latin and Greek, and that they are a type of homonyms that arise under the constant influence of changes in the English language itself.
c.Chapter II. Practical work on the study of homophones
After studying the literature, we decided to carry out practical work in order to find out whether students in grades 7–8 heard about the concept of “homophones” and set the following tasks for ourselves:
To conduct a survey among students in grades 7-8 in order to find out whether students are aware of the concept of “homophones”, if they can give examples of homophones. The total of 52 students participated.
II.1. Surveys of students in grades 7-8
Students were asked to perform 2 tasks: to define a homophone and perform a practical task where it was necessary to translate pairs of homophones. During the course of work, the teacher read the words in English so that the students could hear the same sound of the words. (Appendix 1)
After analyzing the answers to the questions, we got the following results: 12 (23%) students gave the definition of homophone, the rest could not. (Appendix 2). But only 31 (59%) guys were able to do the practical part of the work, only 2 (3%) did the task without mistakes. (Appendix 3)
II.2. Mini-dictionary of homophones widely used in English
After analyzing the students' work, we made sure that the creation of a mini-dictionary of homophones, widely used in the English language, would be appropriate to increase the level of English-language communication among students.
The mini-dictionary includes 50 pairs of the most commonly used units with illustrations, and offers sentences with these words as examples. (Appendix 3)
Conclusions to chapter II
Thus, we conducted research to find out whether students in grades 7-8 know about homophones, and if they can give examples by preparing 15 questions. As a result of the work, we found that only 19 students (37% of students) out of 52 do not confuse homophones with other lexical units and know what it is. Following the analysis, we decided to create a mini-dictionary consisting of 50 pairs of the most commonly used units with illustrations and gave sentences with these words as examples.
Conclusion
Once a person studying English was asked: “What is considered the most difficult and incomprehensible for you in English?” And this man, without hesitation, replied: "Homophone is a real evil, in my opinion." Homophones are very often used in everyday English speaking. They cause difficulty not only for language learners, but also for children of native speakers when they become familiar with the language more deeply at school and even among educated speakers from time to time. Even they do not understand what the interlocutor means, especially if homophones are the same parts of speech. Therefore, we often make mistakes and get into trouble because we do not know English homophone.
We conducted a study where we studied and revealed what homophones are, what role they play in the language, when the first homophones began to appear. We also looked at their examples in communication, in fiction, humor and in English textbooks. The practical result of our research is a mini-dictionary with popular homophones in modern English.
Thus, the hypothesis that the knowledge of homophones in the English language and their correct use will make our speech richer and more expressive, which will help to remove difficulties in understanding the speech of the English-speaking interlocutor, was confirmed. Cultural awareness on this topic is the key to effective communication in English, which is necessary for people who do not have this language as a mother tongue, and which helps to get rid of confusion in the study of words and expand your vocabulary.
Literary
Афанасьева О.В. Английский язык: учебник для VIIIкл. шк. с углубл. изучением англ. яз., лицеев и гимназий/ О.В. Афанасьева, И.В. Михеева. – 3-е изд. – М.: Просвещение, 2006, - 303 с.
Ретунская М.С. Основы английской лексикологии: Курс лекций.- Н. Новгород, 2006.
Центр дополнительного образования Снейл. II Всероссийская олимпиада по английскому языку. Литература. 25 сентября 2013.
Michael McCarthy, Felicity O’Dell. English Vocabulary in Use. Elementary. Self-Study or Classroom use. CAMBRIDGE University Press. 2007.
Michael McCarthy, Felicity O’Dell. English Vocabulary in Use. Upper Intermediate and Advanced. Self-Study or Classroom use. CAMBRIDGE University Press. 2007.
Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners. Second Edition. International Student Edition. Macmillan. A & CB, 2008. – 1748 с.
Sarah Cunningham, Peter Moor. New Headway Pronunciation Course. Elementary. OXFORD University Press. 2006.
ABBYY Lingvo x5. Multi-lingual dictionary.
http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/homophones.htm
http://www.etymonline.com
http://www.kaplaninternational.com/rus/blog/zabavnue-omofonu/
Thesaurus
Expressiveness— inherent speech quality of a cultural person. It is achieved through the skillful use of figures of speech, figurative expressions, the use of fresh words, the creation of vivid phrases, etc.
Component(отлат. componens, родительный падеж componentis — составляющий) — a part, an element of something.
Idioms (калька с нем. Geflügelte Worte, что, в свою очередь, является калькой с греч. ἔπεαπτερόεντα — фразы, встречающейсяуГомера) — stable phraseology of figurative or aphoristic character, included in the vocabulary from historical or literary sources and widely spread due to its expressiveness.
Linguist — scientist, specialist in linguistics (linguistics).
Opposition (отлат. oppositio «противопоставление, возражение») in politics it is a party or group opposing the dominant party or opinion supported by a majority.
Phrase - these are two or more words related by meaning and grammatically. The grammatical basis (subject + predicate) is not a phrase.
Semantics(отдр.-греч.σημαντικός — обозначающий) — it is linguistics section that studies the meaning of language units.
Etymology (др.-греч.ἐτυμολογία, отдр.-греч.ἔτυμον «истина, основноезначениеслова» идр.-греч.λόγος «слово, учение, суждение») — it is a section of linguistics (comparative historical linguistics)), studying the origin of words.