Іноземна філологія (Jan 2024)
NOMINATION OF WILD ANIMALS IN GERMAN PAREMIAS
Abstract
The present article discusses the ways of nomination of wild animals in German paremias. Wild animals are free beings living in the natural environment and representing three parts of the World Tree: upper, middle and lower. The upper part is associated with birds, the middle – with animals, the lower – with insects, fi sh, amphibians, arthropods, reptiles, and molluscs. Indeterminate creatures are also associated with the lower tier. Paremia is defi ned through the prism of a small form of folk poetic creativity – a proverb and a saying that summarizes the history, culture, experience, and wisdom of the Germanic-German ethnos about the animal world. This testifi es to the fact that paremias belong to ancient written records. A feature of Germanic paremias is their use of the so-called initial rhyme, with the help of which alliteration is created. The remains of the initial rhyme are recorded, for example, at the beginning of words with the sound b (Bär bleibt Bar ), f (Den Fuchs muss man mit Füchsen fangen) or with the phoneme ʃ (In der schönsten Haut steckt die gefährlichste Schlange), etc. M.D. Stepanovaʼs theory of word formation was chosen to study the ways of naming wild animals in German paremias. This theory makes it possible to diff erentiate the ways of word formation, systematize their means, reconstruct models, outline the paradigm of grammatical suffi xes and infl ections, word forms, trace the word-forming rules or laws of language that regulate the use of methods of forming the names of wild animals. The methodological base of the proposed study combines general scientifi c and special scientifi c methods. It was found that the conceptual and terminological apparatus correlates with the dominant linguistic paradigm, national scientifi c traditions and the subject of the study. It was established that the register of wild animals is more diverse than that of domestic animals, and it was found that the method of nomination of wild animals is infl uenced by non-linguistic and linguistic factors. The role of language factors in the creation of the phenomenon was assessed to a greater extent. According to the type of word-forming form, the names of wild animals in German paremias are conventionally classifi ed into four varieties: 1) root, 2) derived, 3) complex, 4) compound, 5) sentence. The root method of word formation dominates; word formation resonates with syntactic constructions, i.e. it is subject to grammatical laws that generalize from the individual and specific.
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