Frequenza, Lunghezza e omonimia. Un'analisi degli omonimi nel vocabolario di base italiano

This paper aims to explore the relationship between wordfrequency, wordlength, and homonymy, through an anal
ysis of the about 7,000 highest frequency lexemes that constitute the basic vocabulary in Italian (Vocabolario di Base, VDB). Data confirm that the development of homonymy is
strongly related to word length:both in the overall lexicon and within VDB, wordforms that are involved in homonymy are shorter than those that are not
. At the same time, a strong correlation arises between word frequency and homonymy, since VDB lexemes are involved in homonymy to a greater extent than others
. The percentage of lexemes whose forms have homonyms is much higherfor the VDB (55%) than forless frequent lexemes (in the range of 10%-24%). Word length and word frequency seem to
behaveas two independent variables in favoring homonymy: the frequency being equal, shorter words have more homonyms; and the length being
equal, more frequent words have more homonyms. This finding seems to support the hypothesis that the richness of homonymy in high frequency lexicon is due not only to the
shortness of these words (i.e., the fact that the shorter the word, the more likely it is to find another word of accidentally the same form), but also to an organization principle of language. Given the disambiguating
power of context, language might assign a greater amount of ambiguity to words that are easiest to process, i.e. shorter and more frequent words.