The Phenomenon of Polysemy and Homonymy in English and Uzbekistan Railway Terminology

The article investigates polysemy, homonymy and antonymy in English and Uzbek railway terminology. The aim of the study is to identify the factors that motivate the emergence of polysemous and homonymous relations in railway terms, describe their structural–semantic properties and show their impact on translation and terminological standardisation. The theoretical framework is based on the works of S.Ullmann, D.S.Lotte, V.P.Danilenko, V.M.Leychik, S.V.Grinev-Grinevich, A.A.Moiseev, Z.G.Proshina and I.V.Arnold, who either recognise or problematise the possibility of polysemy in terminology. A specialised corpus of 3264 English and 2143 Uzbek railway terms was compiled. Descriptive, structural–semantic, contrastive, componential and quantitative methods were employed to single out polysemous, homonymous and antonymic units and to model their semantic relations. The findings show that polysemy is quantitatively limited in both terminological systems: 242 polysemous English terms (7.4% of the sample) and 132 Uzbek terms (5.4%). Most items display two meanings, while three-meaning terms form a marginal group. Homonymous terms account for around 1.5% of English and 1.1% of Uzbek items; terminological antonyms represent about 1.2% and 1.1% respectively. Nevertheless, even this moderate presence of polysemy and homonymy is crucial for understanding the internal organisation of the railway terminological system, its links with general vocabulary and adjacent special domains (logistics, transport, management), and for preventing ambiguity in translation and lexicographic practice. The results contribute to the theory of terminology by demonstrating how polysemy and homonymy operate within a specialised lexical field and by offering data-based parameters for their description in English and Uzbek.