Maliuga A. Names of Natural Phenomena in a Comparative Aspect

The paper focuses on the semantics of names of natural phenomena (NNPh) in the stylistically neutral vocabulary of the English, German, Spanish, Ukrainian and Russian languages. The study is aimed at determining similar and different features of NNPh in the compared languages. NNPh belong to the basic lexical layer in all the languages under consideration taking an important place in people's everyday life. A study of the origin of NNPh has yielded a genetic classification, according to which two main genetic layers involving the native and borrowed lexical units have been distinguished. A comprehensive analysis of the semantics of NNPh permitted to point out 3 thematic groups, i.e. "Names of atmospheric natural phenomena", "Names of hydrological natural phenomena" and "Names of geological natural phenomena". The most numerous group is "Names of atmospheric natural phenomena". This group consists of seven subgroups. The qualitative and quantitative contrasting of NNPh has resulted in identification of the common and peculiar features in the world mapping of the languages under investigation. The nature of systemic relations between NNPh has been analyzed. They are characterized by hyponymy, synonymic and antonymic relations. The index and level of polysemy of NNPh have been determined; the major types of semantic transfer of NNPh have been singled out. It has been found that the metaphoric transfer is the principal means of developing new meanings, whereas the metonymic transfer is not so widespread. The semantics of NNPh has also been considered on the level of phraseological units. The structural peculiarities of the phraseological units containing NNPh have been established, their thematic and semantic classifications have been made.