LEXICAL PROCESSES OF BIRD NAMES REMOTIVATION AND DEMOTIVATION IN RUSSIAN, ENGLISH AND CZECH
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2019-4-14-20
Introduction. Functional approach in linguistics of 21 century conditions scientists’ attention to a problem of internal form of a word detection in synchrony and diachrony. The opportunity to study the vocabulary of different languages in the dynamic aspect, with the attraction of a new source – the testimony of the metalinguistic consciousness of the speakers – fits into the range of problems of modern linguistics and comparativistics. The aim of the article is to define the group of remotivated and demotivated bird names in Russian, English and Czech, to find out the reasons of remotivation and demotivation, as well as the extent and boundaries of these lexical processes. Research methodology involves the use of a psycholinguistic experiment with carriers of delivered languages, motivational-comparative and synchronic-diachronic analysis. Results and discussion. It has been established that the ornithological vocabulary of the languages being compared is equally exposed to the remotivation process. We detected that remotivated lexical units are such as have the motivating attribute, which is represented by a proper name and the connection with them was lost with time and is not recognized by modern native speakers. That is the reason for ornithonym’s motivation by another sign, which is connected with bird’s appearance in Russian, bird’s color and behavior in English (no similar ornithonyms were found on the material of the Czech language). Demotivation concerns lexical units with reasoning sign related to way of life and bird’s behavior in all the languages being compared. This is due to medium degree of demotivation in Russian birds’ names and to borrowing major part of English words from Latin, Greek and other languages. Demotivated Russian ornithonims lose their connection with reasoning sign related to bird’s voice. Herewith informants do not realize onomatopoeic character of a word. Demotivation concerns lexical units with reasoning sign related to way of life and bird’s behavior in all comparative languages. Conclusion. The results of analysis of remotivated and demotivated bird names in Russian, English and Czech indicate 1) complication of demotivation and its connection with borderline processes of internal word form’s remotivation and lexicalization; 2) vitality of these processes and their dynamic characteristics; 3) openness of its behavior, because in most cases the examined words have passed an intermediate stage of demotivation and remotivation and are passing the stage of polymotivation now.
Keywords: remotivation, demotivation, internal form of a word, motivation of a language sign, psycholinguistic experiment, metatextual statements
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Issue: 4, 2019
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: CURRENT PROBLEMS OF RUSSIAN SUDIES AND COMMUNICATIVE STYLISTICS OF THE TEXT
Pages: 14 — 20
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