Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки (Oct 2017)

On the Role of Creativity in Nomination Acts (with Reference to Designations of Birds in Different Languages)

  • Nikolay Danilovich Golev,
  • Olga Pavlovna Sologub

DOI
https://doi.org/10.15826/izv2.2017.19.3.053
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 3(166)
pp. 215 – 227

Abstract

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This article continues the research of nominative mechanisms in different languages from the antinomic perspective in the conditions of natural nomination. As previously, the subject-matter of the analysis is the antinomy “national-specific — universal” in its relationship with the categories “personal — impersonal”, “creative — uncreative”, etc. The work aims to identify the relationship of the above categories, estimating their share in acts of nomination, and provide a more complete, and more objective description of the nominative process. The said aspects of spontaneous nominative activity manifesting themselves in the resulting products created by native speakers of different languages (Russian, German, Chinese) are considered in the work from the perspective of non-creative trends of such activity. It should be noted that emphasis is made on the analysis of various occurrences of deviation from strong forms of fixation of the specific character of the designated object by the subjects of nomination. The linguistic analysis is largely based on common ornithonyms that are part of nominative systems of the Russian and German languages, occasional names obtained in the course of experimental research in multilingual audiences; associative experimental data represented in the “Dictionary of Non-scholarly Interpretations of Russian Words” are also referred to for the analysis. The authors conclude that universal trends dominate in the nominative activity of the average native speakers of different languages.

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