Us Y. The Development of the System of Colour and Light Names in the German Language of the XVI-XIX Centuries

The thesis focuses on the diachronical study of the development and enrichment of the system of colour and light designations in the German language of the XVI-XIX centuries. It has been established that colour and light meanings are conveyed not only by adjectives, but also by nouns and verbs. The so-called system of ranks allowing to trace the dynamics and productivity of their use has been suggested.The analisys of the word-building peculiarities of the units under study has shown that affixation and composition greatly contribute to the growth of colour and light names. It has also been observed that the diapason of colour and light names broadens due to borrowings from other languages. The replenishment of the units in question also results from the extension of their semantic structure, namely, the appearance of new lexical-semantic variants. The development of seafaring and the progress of science and technology conducive to the increase of colour and light designations.