IZ ZOONIMIJE ALEKSANDROVAČKE ŽUPE: ZOONIMI MOTIVISANI BELEGOM I DRUGIM SPECIFIČNIM TELESNIM OZNAKAMA ŽIVOTINJA

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the structural and semantic analysis of two types of immediately motivated zoonyms that have been collected on the territory of the Aleksandrovac municipality. The primary goals of this research are: (1) analysis of the collected zoonyms from the semantic and morphological points of view, and (2) forming a register for the collected zoonyms. The corpus for this research has been collected through fieldwork. All of the noted zoonyms will be divided into two semantic groups through classification. The first group will analyse names motivated by a birthmark or any similar marking on an animal’s body. The second group will be comprised of names based on the size or form of a particular body part of an animal (mainly ears, horns and tails, as well as the thickness of features or hair), given that inside this group we find zoonyms that contain some element of distinction. The second half of this paper will observe zoonyms from the structural point of view, also using the primary method of corpus analysis. Given that a marking in the form of a flower, spot, blot, stripe, seal or stamp could be the characteristic differentiating feature of domesticated animals and that it could be found on different parts of the body (on the head or legs, around the eyes or the mouth, all over the body), the conducted semantic analysis has shown that such motivated names are given to different kinds of animals (cows, bulls, horses, mares, sheep, rams, goats, chichens, roosters and pets). The morphological analysis has shown that the greatest number of zoonyms encompassed by this research has been formed through suffixation, where the suffixes -a (-ja), -ka, -ko and -onja stand out as the most frequent. Considering that zoonyms are in the process of disappearing, it seems crucial to continue similar research in this field.