Древнегерманские двучленные имена

The main aim of the monography consists in an exaustive description of the Old Germanic onomastic compounds, their dialectal differentiation, i.e. their stratification into the Common Germanic and various areas (i.e. East Germanic, West Germanic and North Germanic), the study of their mythopoeic status, syntactic combination of the elements constituting the onomastic compounds, their morphology, semantics, poetics, the analysis of the most archaic proper names fixed in the Older Runic inscriptions and the epic onomastics represented in the Older Edda, the comparison of the Old Germanic onomastic compounds with the proper names going back to the same I.-E. root in other languages (Indo-Aryan, Greek, Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, Thracian and Illyric).

Such an approach determines the structure of the monography including 11 chapters and conclusions: Ch. 1: The proper name in the mythopoeic tradition; ch. 2: The Common Germanic onomastic compounds; ch. 3: The East

Germanic and West Germanic proper names; ch. 4: The North Germanic and West Germanic proper names; ch. 5: The onomastic compounds in the Older Runic inscriptions; ch. 6: The Old Germanic epical onomastics (on the material of the Older Edda); ch. 7: The combination of the elements in the Old Germanic onomastic compounds; ch. 8: The morphology of the Old Germanic onomastic compounds; ch. 9: The semantics of the Old Germanic onomastic compounds; ch. 10: The poetic organization of the Old Germanic onomastic compounds; ch. 11: The Indo-European correlations to the Old Germanic onomastic compounds.

1. The mythopoeic status of the proper name. The proper name in the modern society is regarded as a member of the classified system of nomination. Its function is that of designation, which realizes in two aspects: it distinguishes an individual from the collective, and it integrates the bearers of the same name to the common group. In contradistinction to an appellative, a proper name has no connotations, it is unable to express any characteristics of the object, it has no sence in itself without appeal to its denotatum, and we are dealing with a situation ‘code referring to code’ in the terminology of R.O. Jacobson. In the mythopoeic tradition the situation is quite different. According to the theory of needs (B. Malinowski) all the elements constituting the culture of an archaic tribe (from the name to the myth) appear as an answer provoked by an urgent request. Proceeding from this conception, the proper name is treated not as a label, but as a symbol reflecting the essence of the individual. The identification of the name and the nature of the individual realizes in the creative function of nomination, postulating primacy of the name determining the destiny of the individual with respect to its bearers,' the pluralism of the names, connected not only with an attempt to reflect the various aspects of the denotatum, but also with the metaphoric basis of nomination, and in the mobile borders between the proper name and the appellative.

2. The combination of the elements of the onomastic compounds presupposes an analysis of their valency - the ability to join components to the right and to the left. In this chapter is a description of the elements represented only in the first position of the onomastic compound, only in the second one and those that are met both in the first and in the second position, as well as an investigation of the mechanism of combining the elements within a compound. One can take for specific features of the syntactic combination of the elements in the onomastic compounds 1) the selection of the elements participating in the formation of names (e. g. the impossibility of tautological compounds, the use of the adverbs and prepositions only in the first place, the preposition of the substantive to the verb under the influence of the dominating syntactic type SOV); 2) the original differentiation of the masculina and feminine registered in the male and female names; 3) the restiction in the set of the second elements, which are the kernel of the onomastic compounds distributed among the three lexical groups, designating the appurtenance to a certain class (e. g. *gastiz ‘a guest’, *mannz ‘a man’, *pegwaz ‘a servant’, *weniz ‘a friend’), their verbal equivalents (*waldaz ‘ruling’, *warjaz ‘protecting’) and to the attributes of the heroic model of the universe (*rlkaz ‘mighty’, *meriz ‘famous’, *harduz ‘firm’), as well as a considerable prevalence (more than twice) of the first elements (160), modifying the semantics of the second ones (67); 4) the heterogency of the onomastic space including the central and the marginal zones.