Modern linguistic research represents language not just as a system, but as a versatile phenomenon in which the decisive role belongs to human. Anthropocentrism is one of the most prominent characteristics of the human state of mind and social consciousness. Permeating all spheres of human spiritual life, anthropocentrism reflects the process of human awareness of their status in nature and society. Principles of anthropocentrism in its evolution are expressed in the philosophical views, moral values and linguistic concepts of such scientists as Humboldt (1984), Benvenist (1974), Motoki (1983), and others.
Along with the modern cognitive-discursive paradigm, one of the characteristic features of which is the strengthening of the anthropocentrism of linguistic explorations, the human factor acquires special significance for linguistics (Langacker, 1987). For this reason, this paradigm focuses on the nominations of various spheres of human life, especially humans' proper names. Such vocabulary is a subject of a multifaceted analysis. One of the most elaborated parts of the English lexicon is the subsystem of names of persons, which reflects the diverse understanding of humans in their relations with the physical and social world (Turner, 1991; Andrusyak, 2003, p. 206). Names of persons in the lexical-semantic system of modern English form a specific class of lexemes called substantival composites-bahuvrihi, most popular of which are anthroposemic bahuvrihi as such that characterize a human (Chuban, 2017; Vasylyeva, 2006). However, in Old English and in Middle English proper names in the form of bahuvrihi were widely used, mostly surnames and nicknames, which were interpreted according to the formula "one who has…" (Gibbs, 1999, р. 387): Fairlok (OE fæger "bright", OE locc ("hair curl") "blond man" (Gibbs, 1999, р. 22); Brightwyt (OE berth "bright", OE witt "mind") "intelligent man" (Gibbs, 1999, p. 15) and so on. And as common nouns, anthroposemic noun composites-bahuvrihi practically did not function in the English language until the 16th century. Such tokens began to appear in the American area in the eighteenth century (Gibbs, 1999).
Initiated by H. Marchand in 1969, a worldwide interest to the study of bahuvrivi prompted many linguists from different countries, including Ukraine, to analyze this phenomenon in more details. The contribution of Ukrainian scholars, both Soviet and post-Soviet, can be viewed from two perspectives, mostly within prof. L. Omelchenko's linguistic school: (i) those for whom the study of bahuvrihi happened to be only a constituent part of their research in, for instance, word-formation [compounding] (Kveselevych, 1983; Polyuzhyn, 1999; Levytskyy & Sheludko, 2009; Omelchenko, 1989; Onyshchenko & Yanovets 2020; Kraynyak 2001 and others), lexical vocabulary (Andrusyak, 2003; Gonta, 2000; Omelchenko et al., 2010) or nomination (Dembovska, 2012; Omelchenko at al., 2010), and (ii) those who focused exceptionally on the study of bahuvrihi either making a brief overview of these composites (Chuban, 2017; Omelchenko, 1985; Talko, 2020), their classification (e.g. Silin 1996; Vasylyeva, 2006 and others), or their semantic, stylistic, functional/pragmatic and cognitive specifics (e.g. Talko, 2020; Vasylyeva, 2006).
Based on the tendency to anthropocentrism, the units we study cover only a small link in the branched chain of variability of values. The choice of bahuvrihi with the zoonym component is justified by the fact that the semantic value of zoonyms is the ground for conceptualization within traditions in a particular cultural environment and includes a depiction of human appearance and characteristics of moral qualities, social behavior, and the expression of a positive, negative or neutral attitude towards a particular person. Zoometaphors and comparisons, in which a person is assessed by the appearance, character or behavior of an animal in modern English, are aftermaths of mythical thinking and ancient mythical ideas, as noted in the works of Geertz (2004), Levi-Stross (1985), and Turner (1991). Fauna has accompanied humanity since the beginning of its existence on our planet and is in close contact with it.
Anthroposemic substantival bahuvrihi with a zoonym component (ASBZC), in particular, received only partial theoretical coverage in the works of different linguists (Marchand, 1969; Carr, 2000; Vasylyeva, 2006, etc.), but even in this case these linguistic units were mostly subject to the analysis in terms of lexical semantics, but for Vasylyeva (2006) who made a cognitive analysis of bahuvrihi lexemes. Yet, focusing on classifying LSG subgroups, bahuvrihi with a zoonym component were left beyond the scope of her study, excluding a few mentions of (i) such an LSG that includes 'the names of objects of the animal world' (Vasylyeva, 2006, p. 135) and (ii) a conceptual metaphor HUMAL IS AN ANIMAL (p. 186–187). So, it seems motivating to find out how a nominative space (cf. Yastremska, 2021) of anthroposemic substantival bahuvrihi with a zoonym component appears as a complex structure of representation of knowledge about human being in biological, mental and social dimensions, on the one hand; and how it explains the topicality of this study within conceptual analysis and semantic modelling, which may be relevant in the areas of conceptual semantics, lexicology and translation studies, on the other.
Therefore, the aim of this research, based on the assumption of anthropocentrism, is to analyze the anthroposemic substantival bahuvrihi with a zoonym component to specify the mental basis for recognition of the "objective" characteristics of referents. The task of this study is to show the versatility in perception of a person's appearance and traits of character through the space of bahuvrihi with a zoonym component according to conceptual pattern OBJECT (ZOONYM) → HUMAN / PART OF THE HUMAN BODY. Due to this task, the following section of the paper identifies the domain and target concepts related to the topic of investigation in cognitive and linguocultural perspectives. The subject of our research is semantic and cognitive (conceptual) perspectives of anthroposemic substantival bahuvrihi with a zoonym component (further referred to as ASBZC); while its object is ASBZCs.
Methodology
As has been mentioned above, the aim of this study is to show the versatility of the perception and evaluation of physical appearance and character traits as reflected in the bahuvrihi zoonymic components, to find cognitive basis of expressing meaning through metonyms formed according to the schema 'X FOR Y': OBJECT (ZOONYM) → HUMAN / PART OF THE HUMAN BODY, where ZOONYM acts as a conception referred to by a word, and HUMAN / PART OF THE HUMAN BODY – a conception recognized as a target. These include common names like lion-heart, which are exocentric complex nouns with a complex onomasiological feature and explicitly expressed onomasiological basis, which call a person by a dominant feature and have a possessive character.
ASBZCs form in modern English an extensive system of personal names on physical, physiological and social grounds. Determining the reference of a particular compound means modifying and importing most of specific information [expressed by a compound], which may metonymically or symbolically refer to certain phenomena categorized in the human model of the world on the basis of their prominent, relevant features (cf. Langacker, 1987, р. 15). In addition to knowledge related to human existence, the creation of ASBZC involves a wide range of experiential knowledge concerning highly disputable objective external and internal properties of fragments of the surroundings and the relationship between them.
To conduct the research, we used the following methods: the descriptive method made it possible to identify the studied units and carry out their classification and interpretation, the method of semantic analysis made it possible to determine the lexical and semantic features of the considered units. The semantic features of the components determine the type of internal valence bonds that are established between them in the structure of components. These connections form partial semantic models within the established structural-semantic models, according to which ASBZC are formed in modern English. So, the method of componential analysis made it possible to recognize "objective" characteristics of referents, which, by means of qualitative evaluation method, were analyzed by the type of evaluation marking (positive, negative or neutral) in the semantic structure of the analyzed units. The method of linguistic modelling is used to classify anthroposemic substantival bahuvrihi with a zoonym component according to the motivational semantic model OBJECT (ZOONYM) → HUMAN / PART OF THE HUMAN BODY. Quantitative analysis allowed to establish the productivity of the creation of ASBZCs.
The source base of the research is the materials of explanatory, etymological dictionaries of the English language: The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (Barnhart, 1998); Thesaurus of Traditional English Metaphors (Wilkson, 1993); electronic resources: (ABBYY Lingvo, X.3). The research corpus is comprised, by sampling (probability sampling method), of aforementioned dictionaries, totaling 240 lexical zoonymic items, irrespective of the type of their graphic representation, with 30 ones analyzed in the text of this article.
Results and Discussion
Anthroposemic bahuvrihi in English consists of several components, characterized by stability and idiomaticity, because their meaning is not recognizable as the sum of conventional meanings of their component words. It should also be noted that such idiomatic formations have a peculiar semantic value as they mostly arise on the basis of METAPHORIC thinking.
Bahuvrihi as a term is borrowed from ancient Indian linguistics and poetics. The word bahuvrihi is a composite noun which consists of two parts: bahu (abundant) and vrihi (rice), and literally means 'rich in rice' (an ancient Indian word referring to a rich man). Consequently, this term relates to the names of people formed on the basic associations inspired by observations of certain aspects of a referent, such as physical appearance, dressing style, etc., and highlighting their most prominent characteristics. In the twentieth century, it was actively used by scholars in Western countries, and bahuvrihi were proved to function in many modern languages, including Ukrainian, English, and German.
Anthroposemic substantival bahuvrihi with a zoonym component or ASBZC is represented by a compound word formed by a combination of mostly two components, the first of which is a zoonym, and the second is the name of a human body part, organ or quasi-organ (e.g.: birdbrain, lion-heart). For sure, the definition above describes ASBZC in terms of zoosemiotics (see J. Deely's Umwelt phenomenon (Deely, 2021)). Yet, if one takes into account that function of the the second component is to metonymically indicate the implicit onomasiological basis, where the object of the nomination is a person, then it allows us to assume that metonymic relations are based on reflection, so a sign here is viewed as a tool of reflection, which marks its anthroposemic nature (cf. Deely, 2021). Within the model of cognitive grammar presented by Langacker (1987), the metonymic technique of reference of the PART FOR WHOLE type (synecdoche) can be explained in terms of cognitive focus shifts, when, illuminating the PART, it is perceived as the WHOLE.
Due to the fact that bahuvrihi concisely and economically convey meaning, they serve as an expressive means of expression of an object, phenomenon, reference to an object, animal, person, etc. In view of the above-mentioned facts, it is necessary to take into account the "objective" characteristics of referents when translating. The greatest variability in the use of translation transformations is typical of the translations of English ASBZC via different translation techneques, such as transcoding, tracing, generalization, concretization, modulation, and descriptive translation, applied to render the initial meaning of the lexical item of the herein discussed category. The lexical meaning of ASBZC involves heterogeneous conceptions from many fields, so it is necessary to recognize in each case the cognitive context when interpreting the meaning of linguistic units. In most cases, cognitive contexts of ASBZC's involve notions of common phenomena in the world at large. However, a number of composites require encyclopedic [multidimensional and comprehensive] knowledge for interpretation.
The conceptual content involved in the English ASBZC, is reflected in the conceptual background of the lexeme human, which involves knowledge about human beings, including their multifaceted relations with the natural and social environment. The characteristics of a person can be represented in the following aspects: a) biological-physiological and anthropological, i.e., natural properties (sex, age, nationality, physical characteristics – height, weight, appearance); b) social and labor, family relations (human-to-human relations / relations of a person to other persons, labor, property, social, political, religious and other institutions and organizations, the place of residence, etc.); c) the sphere of mental activity and emotional evaluations (ability to think, as well as having free will, imagination, emotions, attitudes, morality, etc.) is part of the conceptions represented by the terms for both innate and acquired mental properties and characteristics. At the level of language, these types are codified by corresponding lexical and semantic groups (further referred to as LSG), such as, LSG "human as a biological being", LSG "human as a mental being" and LSG "human as a social being" (cf. Vasylyeva, 2006). Let us analyze these three types of LSGs in more detail (see also Table 1 below).
| Lexical and Semantic Field | Zoonyms | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Semantic Value | + positive | - negative | 0 neutral |
| LSG "human as a biological being" | 2 | 13 | - |
| LSG "human as a mental being" | 0 | 9 | - |
| LSG "human as a social being" | - | - | 6 |
LSG "human [man] as a biological being": in this group, most of ASBZCs characterize the physical appearance of a human because it is one of the capacious and complex sources of information on which people base their judgments about each other. In language, it is reflected in the semantics of a wide range of units that interpret information coming through the visual channel (Gibbs, 1993, p. 165). This includes such a subgroup as the general aesthetic assessment of appearance: weasel-faced "a face of grace (a person resembling the elongation of certain facial features to grace)"; beetle-browed – a person with "eyebrows of a beetle (about a man with thick, drooping eyebrows)"; hawk-nosed "eagle nose". Quite original is the English metaphor for a man whose face is framed by hair or sideburns: frilled-lizard man "lizard with frills". ASBZC specifying the general aesthetic estimation by means of a zoonym component are not frequent.
Much more often, certain details of human appearance come to the fore, such as: figure, e.g., duck-butt "short man, especially with large buttocks"; neck size and shape, e.g., bull-necked "man with a thick, short neck". These metaphors can be both positive and negative. Positively colored are those which describe "human neck", e.g., the English metaphor pigeon-necked "pigeon's neck" which refers to men who have a neck with a pronounced physiological thickening in the middle; or swan-neck "about beautiful and thin neck"; as well as "human waist" because a thin waist is one of the standards of English beauty, e.g., wasp-waist – an extremely slender waist, "aspen waist (about a very thin waist)". Whereas negatively colored are often those which refer to "human feet" in English, e.g., duck-legged, duck-footed; harefoot "long-legged pearson"; cow-footed; cock-footed "rooster feet"; pigeon-toed "with very thin legs".
LSG "human [man] as a mental being [reasonable creature]" is mostly marked by negative connotations, and in the majority of cases it is represented by (i) 'memory and attention' subgroups with such lexical items as birdbrain "a person who constantly forgets something", "one who cannot keep their attention on anything for long"; cook-brained (rooster's brain), sparrow-brain "about a silly person", hare-brained "reckless, careless"; pigeon-headed "about a silly person", cat-eyed "attentive"; (ii) 'tendency to reinsure' subgroups: cat-footed "quiet, cautious person", pussyfoot "careful person"; and (iii) 'pride, arrogance' subgroups: pigeon-chested "pigeon's breast (about an arrogant man)"; cook-chested "the chest of a rooster (about an arrogant man)". The motivational trait 'timid' is represented by English metonymical constructions – rabbit-hearted "about timid person"; pigeon-hearted "timid person".
LSG "human [man] as a social being" reflects social parameters with a neutral assessment in various areas of professional activity, in other words, being part of society, a person is involved in various relationships with other members. Here belong such ASBZCs as cat-skinner "tractor driver", frogman "diver", bullneck "engineer, soldier digging trench"; horseman / horsewoman "rider"; dogface "infantryman, recruit, private" and others.
A study of the research corpus proves that metonymy is widely used in ASBZCs to put across negative meaning (see Table 1 above). Thus, the conceptual structure of ASBZCs can be reduced to a configuration that forms a frame network – as understood in the theory of frame semantics (Zhabotinskaya, 1999; Andreou & Ralli, 2015; etc.) – the part of which is the conception of a possessive frame (Andreou & Ralli, 2015, p. 163-185). In this study, we consider compounds whose lexical design involves synecdoche.
Semantic processes in ASBZCs are based on two assumptions: a) partitive (synecdochal) tokens include only those that are conceptually represented by partonymic frames (conceptual structures in which two or more entities are connected by the predicate have and realize the relation 'from WHOLE to PART'), and b) metonymic units verbalize other types of possessive structures (see Figure 1).
Metonymy is defined as a universally shared cognitive strategy allowing for expression and comprehension of extensive meaning via compact form (Khishigsuren & Bella, 2022), as "a deeply organic turn of the same content in a slightly different plane" (Taylor, 1995). All relations of conceptual contiguity, which provide the basis for metonymic transferences, are either relations of coexistence based on the synchronous existence of their components, or sequence relations based on spatial, temporal or logical concordances (Struhanets, 2018). In this case, the metonymy conceptions do not necessarily have to be adjacent in the spatial sense.
Metonymic reference presupposes a relevant aspect of an entity named so as to represent the whole entity (Radden & Kovecses, 2007, p. 335-359). Thus, the metonymic process depends on the individual's knowledge of the world and various associations. It should be noted that linguistic meaning is expressed and understood against the discourse participants' background of mental context or, in other terms, metapragmatic awareness or the so-called life philosophy of common sense.
The recognition of constituent aspects [that can be actually or mentally "disassembled and assembled"(Lakoff & Johnson, 1999)] of a conception primarily construed as a gestalt seems to be at issue. Such an "embodied" understanding of the environment is realized in a relatively small set of basic image-schemas; the recognition of schemas in the structure of the world at large is part and parcel of human cognition and orientation in the reality (Geeraets & Cuychens, 2010). Image-schemas are interpreted as skeletal gestalt structures of human experience (Garcia-Valero, 2019). They are mental images, simpler than conceptions of specific categories (Turner, 1991). Each of them applies the schemas of kinetic capacities of a human, which are familiar and understandable to the humans and which they thus easily transfer to the surrounding reality (Fillmore, 2003).
Among the images-schemas, it is the image-schema PART – WHOLE that stands out, while the construction of the WHOLE from PARTS in a certain configuration and the integrity of the parts manifests the fact that the separation or permutation of PARTS leads to the "destruction" of the WHOLE.
The image of the human body as a set of interconnected "details" allows the use of the name of a PART to denote the WHOLE, i.e., the reference to a person, realized in partitive (synecdochal) ASBZC via the name of their organ or body part. The possessive (actually metonymic) ASBZC can be interpreted as an extension of the application of this image-schema not only to a human as an individual, an entity construed on an individual basis, but to a human in relation to the surrounding reality. A human, like all living beings, is not a self-sufficient, environmentally independent natural entity. They function as part and parcel of the reality that surrounds them in everyday life. The concept of human being is associated with concepts that relate to the physicality and physiology of a human, as well as their abilities, their movements and actions, and finally, objects (artifacts) that they create (Fei, 2020), such as clothing, household items for everyday use, tools and implements that become an integral part of human life, acquiring figurative and symbolic meaning, often associated with certain characteristics.
Conclusions
Thus, metonymy acts as a regular factor in creating the meaning of the considered type of compounds, which determines the core of the constructional pattern, which structures the conceptualizations represented by ASBZC's, i.e., their semantic perspective. In the formal aspect, the core of the constructional pattern is marked by the second component of the compound, which provides access to the implicit onomasiological base. The action of metonymy may be accompanied by the action of metaphor. Both cognitive strategies are decisive for the formation of the conceptual-semantic structure of ASBZC, and also serve as a basis for the interpretation of the analyzed lexical units, outlining the to the cognitive context necessary for understanding the linguistic meaning.
We can conclude that the nominative space of ASBZC appears to be a complex structure of representation of casual knowledge about a human being in biological, mental and social dimensions, the model of which is presented as a composition of LSG groups of different degrees of generalization. Therefore, we consider it expedient to continue the analysis of the conceptual representation of ASBZC, determining in what ways metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche are involved in their creation and interpretation. Also, the ASBZC further research seems to be relevant to typological and comparative investigations, which can be of particular practical value for translation studies. Moreover, the subsequent findings can be applied in teaching as the focus on "bahuvrihi" approach in understanding a foreign language may foster the development of students' linguistic skills as well as their creativity.