Propositionally motivated ichthyonyms in the German language

Abstract

This article deals with the cognitive-onomasiological analysis of the propositionally motivated  names of fishes in the German language. Such ichthyonyms are subdivided into families, genera and species, as well as classified according to the components of certain situations associated with fish’s vital functions, their colouring and the structure of their bodies. This motivation has hyponymic, equonymic 
and predicative-argumental types. The hyponymic type presupposes the usage of signs of the higher  classification level of nomenclature to name fish species. In the equonymically motivated names of fishes the motivator is chosen from any classification level of the same class. The predicative -argumental type 
helps to reconstruct the basic situations of fishes’ behavior and vital activity, analogized with predicative argumental structures. The motivators of the German ichthyonyms are predicates (of movement, food, reproduction, specific actions and way of life) and terms (object s of feeding; locatives of expansion, nutrition or origin; temporatives connected with the vital activity periods; instrumentives as the means of 
fishes protection; correlatives as the indicators of fishes’ interexistence and interdependence), as well as the components of quality and quantity levels and partitives that set the peculiarities of fish’s bodies or their parts colouring and configuration