NOMINAL METAPHORICAL COMPOUNDS AS A PARTICULAR TYPE OF COMPOUND WORD NOMINATION

Abstract

This article presents a discussion of a type of nominal composition in modern German which has received very little investigative attention – nominal metaphorical compounds which are formed by the interaction of compounding processes and metaphorical transfer. In this paper metaphorical compounds are defined with precision and are distinguished from other types of nominal compositions. Their varieties are identified on the basis of the metaphorical use of the first or second constituent or of the noun compound as a whole. The relationship between the immediate constituents of nominal metaphorical compounds and the denominated items are analyzed, as well as ways of verbalizing the associative connection between the object which is denoted and that which is used for comparison, in the nominative structure of nominal metaphorical compounds. A description is given of the basic morphological word formation models of nominal metaphorical compounds in modern German and their semantic features, and the implementation of the nominative, cognitive and pragmatic functions of metaphorical compounds is reviewed. The type of noun compounds which were analysed provides evidence that the described compounding models are productive word formation processes in the modern German language.