Operationally Defined Homonyms of One Syllable in the English Language

Abstract

When the phonetic representations of one-syllable words in the Shorter-Oxford Dictionary were compared, some phonetic forms had more than one graphic representation. The graphic representations corresponding to a single phonetic form were operationally defined as a set of homonyms of the phonetic form. The sum of graphic words in such sets is about 1700. When plural and past forms of each word were compared with the citation forms of other Words, about 700 additional homonyms emerged, showing that, in a total population of about 5700 one-syllable words, about 2500 are ambiguous in their phonetic representation. Since the Shorter-Oxford Dictionary has relatively fine phonetic distinctions, repeating the experiments on the American College Dictionary, the Jones English Phonetic Reader, Webster's Third International Dictionary, and Pronouncing Dictionary by Kenyon and Knott yielded additional homonym forms. Thus, in distinguishing among the words of English, the orthographic form proves to be more useful than the phonetic representations. In this paper, illustrations of the homonyms, the near homonyms, and the questionable homonyms are given and discussed. [Work supported by Lockheed Independent Research.]