APPEARANCE AS ONE OF THE MAIN MOTIVATORS OF PLANT NOMINATION IN GERMAN AND UKRAINIAN LANGUAGES

Abstract

The article deals with the classification and description of motivators of plants in German and Ukrainian languages on the basis of appearance. The research was conducted taking into account the psychomental peculiarities of naming and the ethnic collective consciousness of both peoples. All the distinguished motivators are conditionally divided into two groups: objective factors – the shape of individual plant parts and evaluative factors, i.e. subjective judgments about the appearance of plants. The main differentiating sign in defining the appearance is the shape of a flower, leaf, fruit, stem, root, etc. Comparison and metaphor are the basis of motivation in this group of plants. The object of metaphorization is zooonyms and ornithonyms, various artifacts of inanimate nature, people, when using the names of which we observe a social factor such as rich-poor, etc. Among zoonyms, the most commonly used names are cat, hare, bear, horse, goat, hedgehog, goat, ram, as well as names of reptiles and insects. Ornithonyms are used to compare certain parts of their bodies with parts of plants, the names of chicken and rooster are the most often compared. An important component of the nomination is somatisms, these can be the names of both human and animal body parts that become the basis of comparison for roots, flowers, stems, inflorescences, leaves, fruits or buds. The most commonly used somatisms are head, leg and eye as parts of an animal or human body. We consider the involvement of color names in the naming process to be a significant factor in the nomination, light colors and shades are most often used to characterize flowers, less often dark colors are used to denote roots or stems. Despite the universality of phytonyms and the presence of the same plants in both German and Ukrainian nomenclature folk names are created in both languages on different motivational bases. A minor part of the researched material is combined by a common component, we assume its common origin from the original Latin source, although etymological dictionaries record them as separate untranslatable folk names.