THE ROLE OF PERCEPTIVE CHARACTERISTICS IN IDENTIFYING INTERPRETATION (basing on the material of lexical categories, objectifying the sphere “animal world” in German language)

The role of perceptual characteristics in the process of interpretive meanings of lexical units formation as the result of secondary nomination that is based on the interpretation of certain properties of the source concept represented by lexical units is studied. The formation of interpretive meanings is based on conceptual derivation enabled by the cognitive mechanisms of metaphor, metonymy and metaphtonymy. It is noted that metaphor has the leading role. The research is made on the material of lexical categories representing the domain “animal world” and developing the secondary meanings in the process of interpretation. These meanings fix the knowledge about objects in the domain “plant world” in modern German. Therefore, the source domain of interpretation is animals and the target domain is plants. In this research certain structural-semantic models are shown, which include fitonyms with a zoonym component. In this respect the lexical units under study are classed into three basic structural-semantic groups. An analysis of interpretive properties, which enable inter-conceptual projections is given. The urgency of this research is determined by its theoretical prerequisites based on the principles of cognitive approach. This fact allows dealing with specificity of interpretive activity of human’s mind in the view of mental and language structures relation. The research made on German contributes to our understanding of the universal character of the basic principles, cognitive mechanisms and interpretive formats of knowledge of lexical categories determining the processes of interpretive conceptualization and categorization.

language interpretation, conceptual derivation, metaphor, representation of world, secondary nomination, perceptual format of properties