Navrotska I. Distinguishing between Homonymy and Polysemy in the System of English Noun

This dissertation refers to distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy in the system of English noun in two aspects: lexico-semantic and functional on the material of dictionaries and corpora. It has been assumed that homonymy and polysemy have qualitative and quantitative differences at the level of language and the level of speech represented in corpus combinability of the nouns under analysis. It has been determined that at the level of language there exist a separate category of intermediate lexico-semantic elements, that is heterosemy, which has more complex nature than homonymy itself. The investigation of heterosemy enables distinguishing between the phenomena of polysemy and homonymy. It is claimed that heterosemy is a hybrid form of polysemy which has to be reflected in dictionaries. At the level of speech the differences between polysemy, homonymy and heterosemy are revealed from the viewpoint of the frequency of their identifiers by means of distributional modelling and corresponding uniqueness or non-uniqueness of contexts and dependence of the investigated nouns on these contexts. It is important to take into account intermediateness as an important feature of some meanings of the nouns. Polysemy is a parameter of those LSE which due to their semantic flexibility can be used in different contexts but retain notional commonness. Heterosemy is an ability of LSE to combine polysemous features as well as conditional explanation which is determined by delimited context of usage. Homonymy is a universal feature of the noun to generate an independent LSE which is revealed in uncommon for polysemy and heterosemy contexts and forms a separate lexical paradigmatic system. Thus, polysemous LSE are context-flexible, heterosemous are conditionally context-dependent and homonymous are context-dependent. The results of our investigation enrich the knowledge about the nature of polysemy, heterosemy and homonymy of the English noun and are likely to be applied in other language systems. Key words: homonymy, polysemy, heterosemy, noun, lexico-semantic element, distributional modelling, context.