Function intertextual game in a literary text by V. P. Krapivin

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Proper names are important elements of a fiction story. Unfortunately, they are not enough researched through the prism of onomastic game. In this article, we verify the hypothesis that intertextual proper names, or “gamemes”, perform important functions in a fiction text. Using them, an author creates a ludic text, which reflects a non-standard and creative approach to its consideration. This article aims to analyze the functions of “gamemes” used in a tale by Vladislav Krapivin, a Russian children’s writer. To achieve this goal, the author of this article has applied the methods of interpretation, classification, linguistic analysis, contextual and component analysis. The research novelty of this article lies in the analysis of the functions of game intertextual onomastic units in V. Krapivin’s “The Piroskaf Grandfather Mazai”. The research object is V. Krapivin’s novel “The Piroskaf Grandfather Mazai” (the version of 2018), which is interesting from the onomastic point of view. One can say that this novel is a proper names’ manifest, because there are a significant amount of onomastic units concentrated in a relatively small text. The gamemes used in the text are the units, analyzed in this article. The results allow defining three dominant functions, which create a special ludic context in perception of onomastic units. In addition, we describe linguistic mechanisms for implementing these functions. The sense-forming function plays a big part in the text formation: the intertextual onomastic “layering” effects in carnivalization, attracting the interest of the text’s core audience — children. The evaluation function shows author’s modality through the connotation loop of intertextual gamemes. The marking function is the indicator of a fictional world, or chronotope.