Materynska O. The System of Meronyms in German and English.

The thesis is devoted to a systemic study of the meronymic relations in German and English. Meronyms, i.e. the lexical units denoting part-whole relations, belong to the basic vocabulary and play an important part in the world categorization by the native speakers of the languages under consideration. On the basis of the results obtained the regularities of structural and semantic development of meronyms have been determined and described. For the first time the system of nouns denoting the part-whole relations has been highlighted, the explicit and implicit ways of expressing the whole in the name of its part have been pointed out and correlations between their semantics and structure have been defined. In the course of the research the endocentric and exocentric meronymic compounds were traced, which permitted a more accurate and in-depth analysis of their semantic potential. The regularities of the semantic development of meronyms have been revealed, the relationship between their structural and semantic types has been established, a model for a holistic description of this part of the lexical system, which is viewed upon as its integrating and fundamental element, has been worked out.