ABSTRACT
In Phonetics (1973: 251), J. D. O’Connor wrote:
A language can tolerate quite a lot of homophones provided they do not get in each other’s way, that is provided that they are not likely to occur in the same contexts. This may be a grammatical matter: if the homophones are different parts of speech they are not likely to turn up in the same place in a sentence. … If they are the same part of speech, e.g. site, sight; pear, pair they can be tolerated unless they occur in the same area of meaning and in association with a similar set of other words. Site may be ambiguous in It’s a nice site, though a wider context will usually make the choice plain. … If homophones do interfere with each other the language may react either by getting rid of one and using other terms or by modifying one. 1
