Onomastic, lexico-semantic and linguocultural foundations for the study of celestial body names

Abstract

The article outlines the theoretical foundations for a contrastive study of celestial body names in English and Uzbek. Celestial body names are treated as an independent class of the onomastic system, and the denotative, semantic, functional and cultural criteria that separate this class from toponyms and anthroponyms are substantiated. The scope of the term “celestial body name” is defined, its relation to the terms “cosmonym” and “astronym” is clarified, and a folk layer and an official nomenclature layer are distinguished within the class. The lexico-semantic analysis rests on the theory of nomination, componential analysis and semantic field theory; four semes are identified in the meaning of a name: categorial, denotative, motivational and connotative. For the linguocultural analysis, the notions of cultural connotation, concept, linguistic picture of the world, cultural code, equivalence and lacunarity are systematised. The ratio of a universal basis to national expression is shown on the names of the Great Bear constellation. The theoretical claims are illustrated with a corpus of 500 units, and a three-stage contrastive procedure is proposed.