Homonymy in Jordanian Colloquial Arabic: A Semantic Investigation

Homonymy is a major source of ambiguity at the lexical as well as the syntactic levels. It could present a serious difficulty in communication in general as well as in translation in particular. The present paper explores some examples of homonymy in Jordanian Arabic resulting from the diglossic situation prevailing in the Arab world. The inter-relation between Modern Standard Arabic on the one hand and the colloquial dialect on the other hand is a major source of ambiguity in Jordanian Arabic, hence the significance of the present research. The researcher has chosen a set of homonymous words from Jordanian Arabic to be analyzed and the unrelated meanings of such words be pointed out. Such analysis will try to disambiguate the vagueness of meaning that arises from such homonyms while relating it to the phenomenon of diglossia whenever necessary.