NOMINATIVE STATUS OF THE NAMES OF HOMEMADE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAG

Abstract

Background. A problem of linguistic and speech nomination is still rather topical being not completely solved in terms of the theory of modern linguistic. That is confirmed by numerous opinions of linguists concerning the one-word nominations that can replace a word combination. Those words form certain thematic and lexico-semantic groups which partially represent a cultural fund of native speakers of some specific language. One of such lexico-semantic groups includes the names of beverages. Analysis of each unit, belonging to the corresponding group and being the reflection of everyday life and culture of the nation, is the basis to understand peculiar national mentality represented by the speech. Those lexical elements were studied from the viewpoint of lexicology, word formation, pragmatics, and, rather rarely, from the viewpoint of modern theory of nomination and clear differentiation of lexical transformations and modifications; that defines the topicality of our research.Purpose of the research is to determine the nominative status of the lexemes denoting homemade alcoholic beverages in the Russian-language discourse.Methods. A continuous sampling method has been applied to accumulate the actual material. A methodology of distributive analysis has helped differentiate the concepts. Etymological analysis has become the key to identify real origin and genetic status of a particular univerb.Results. We consider that a univerb is a word which is identical semantically and grammatically to a certain word combination, differing stylistically from the equivalent word combination but being the modification, doublets of one nominathemes. That is why univerbation differs considerably from the word formation in its traditional sense. It is no doubt that the wordforming relations are always motivated. However, motivations can be different; consequently, not all the motivating relations can be considered as the word-forming ones. Motivation is considered as the semantic stipulation of the meaning of formative and derivative words by the meanings of their components. In terms of the word-forming act, some units are the source of motivation; others, being the results of that act, are motivated. Thus, if during the origin of a new word, its lexical meaning (taking into account its etymological cognation) differs from the formative meaning, then we observe the external motivation. If lexical meanings of the formative and derivative units are identical, then we can see the internal motivation. Though, formation of that sample involves the means being homonymic to the word-forming ones. Univerbation is opposed to quasiuniverbation, i.e. formation of univerbs by analogy. However, one should differentiate between quasiuniverbation and mechanism of analogy, accompanying the phenomenon of univerbation. Relying on the criteria of the determination of univerbation and quasiuniverbation, we propose two-component classification of the units under study.Discussion. The analyzed units are univerbs – synthetic implementation of the nominathemes like “word combination – elliptic univerb”; we attribute them to the ones belonging to the univerbs or quasiuniverbs depending on the ways and chronology of their origin in speech and language. They form the lexico-semantic field “Names of inanimate objects”, thematic group “Food”, lexico-semantic group “Beverages”, subgroup “Homemade alcoholic beverages”. That lexico-semantic group contains some more subgroups like “Alcoholic beverages”, “Refreshing beverages”, “Hot beverages” etc. Prospects for further studies of that group of words are in its analysis from the viewpoint of the derivative potential in both Russian and other Slavic languages.