Manifestation of Physis in Vilnius County Drymonymy
Manifestation of Physis in Vilnius County Drymonymy

Summary/Abstract: The current research aims to shed some light on the conceptualization of physis1 in the drymonyms from present-day Vilnius County. The research is limited to the analysis of 65 names selected from the corpus of 787 drymonyms currently officially functioning in the territory of Vilnius County. Data were collected from printed (Onomasticon of Lithuania’s Forests (Part I, 1994)), electronic (Electronic Nature Catalogue (www.ezerai21.lt)) sources, and interactive maps (Portal of Spacial Information of Lithuania (www.geoporta.lt)). The study reveals that the domain of physis, in a broad sense, is an abundant motivation source. The drymonyms were divided into two groups, those of clear semantics and motivation and those of obscure semantics and motivation. The drymonyms of clear semantics and motivation conceptualize dominant vegetation species (21), fauna (9), forest type (15), and the peculiarities of the landscape (17). The group of obscure semantics and motivation presents an overview of names, the conceptualization of which is ambiguous due to the polysemy of the motivating appellative (1), the appellative or nominal nature of themotivating concept (5), or even both (3).

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