STRUCTURAL TYPOLOGY OF ENGLISH BIBLIONYMS

Abstract

The article investigates biblionyms, i.e., proper names for the designation of texts and collections thereof. Biblionyms are commonly divided into five subgroups, depending on the functional style to which the text under study belongs. 100 examples from the relevant subdivision of ideonyms have been selected for each group; thus the total number of the studied ideonyms of this group comprises 500 units. The purpose of the article is to establish the structural types of biblionyms.. The object of the research is English biblionyms, the subject being their structural organization. The study material (500 English biblionyms) was selected using a representative sample method from English media, including electronic newspapers, magazines, and commercial sites. The analysis made it possible to distinguish structural types within each of the groups: proper names of literary works and their collections, which were selected using the world's largest reader site – Goodreads’ rating; proper names of non-fiction works, namely essays and speeches, as well as their collections (data from the ThoughtCo educational site were mainly the source of the material studied); proper names of informational newspaper material collected from leading English newspapers; proper names of scientific works and their collections; proper names of official documents and their collections. According to the structural organization, the biblionyms have been divided into one-component, two-component and multicomponent and further into simple, complex and composite ones. One-component biblionyms include words, which are expressed by nonderivative and simple derivative (suffix and prefix) words. Complex biblionyms have been divided into simple composites, affixed composites and abbreviations. Composite two-component and multi-component biblionyms are represented by phrases, word combinations, juxtapositions and phrases. Conclusions: The structural organization of the five groups of biblionyms has been investigated in the course of the analysis; this revealed that multiple component proper names, namely, word combinations and phrases prevailed, which is mainly due to the proper names for the designation of informational newspaper material as well as scientific and official texts. This can be explained by the need to disclose the nature of the nominated object and the pragmatic factors of the biblionyms’ proper functioning