Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation

GALYNA ZYMOVETS O. O. Potebnya Institute of Linguistics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ORCID id: orcid.org/0000-0002-6232-7469 Fields of research: Onomastics, Linguosemiotics, Language Contacts, Cognitive Linguistics. DOI: doi.org/10.35321/all85-13 FRAME SEMANTICS AS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL FOR COMMERCIAL NAMES FORMATION Freimų semantika, kaip aiškinamasis komercinių pavadinimų formavimo modelis ANNOTATION The article deals with the semantics of proper names. The author suggests describing the meaning of proper names from cognitive linguistics perspective, i.e. in terms of the frame theory. Naming strategies of the relatively new onomastic category of commercial names constitute the subject of research, more specifically their correspondence to elements of the business frame. Analysis of motivators of company and organization names has revealed five main elements that form the respective business frame: field of activity (product or service), place of activity, type of business or organization, agent (addresser), and recipient (addressee), with the dominance of the first three. They reflect the most important factors of business interaction. As a rule, commercial and organizational names contain more than one motivator, the most frequent combination being field and place of activity. They serve as tools of either informative or persuasive strategy determined by the communicative goals of a nominator. Axiological motivation is also salient among commercial names either as a part of the above-mentioned slots or separately. Thus, interpretation of the motivation of company and organization names requires taking into consideration extralinguistic experience and knowledge. KEYWORDS: company names, semantics, motivation, frame, communication strategy. 244 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation ANOTACIJA Straipsnyje nagrinėjama tikrinių vardų semantika. Autorius siūlo aprašyti tikrinių vardų reikšmę iš kognityvinės lingvistikos perspektyvos, t. y. freimų teorijos kontekste. Tyrimo objektas – santykinai naujos onomastinės komercinių pavadinimų kategorijos įvardijimo strategijos, tiksliau, jų ir verslo struktūros elementų atitikmenys. Išanalizavus įmonių ir organizacijų pavadinimus motyvuojančius veiksnius, paaiškėjo penki pagrindiniai elementai, kurie sudaro atitinkamą verslo struktūrą: veiklos sritis (produktas ar paslauga), veiklos vieta, verslo ar organizacijos tipas, agentas ir gavėjas (adresatas), dominuojant trims pirmiesiems. Jie atspindi svarbiausius verslo sąveikos veiksnius. Paprastai komerciniuose ir organizaciniuose pavadinimuose yra daugiau nei vienas motyvuojantis veiksnys, dažniausiai derinama veiklos sritis ir vieta. Jie atlieka informatyviosios arba įtikinamosios strategijos funkciją, nustatomą nominanto komunikacinių tikslų. Viena iš anksčiau minėtų arba savarankiška aksiologinė motyvacija taip pat yra svarbi komercinių pavadinimų sudarymo dalis. Taigi, aiškinant įmonės ir organizacijos pavadinimų motyvaciją, reikia atsižvelgti į ekstralingvistinę patirtį ir žinias. ESMINIAI ŽODŽIAI: įmonių pavadinimai, semantika, motyvacija, freimai, komunikacijos strategija. 0. INTRODUCTION Classification of all nouns into two distinct categories of nomina propria and appellativa has a long history. The problem had already been discussed in Old Greek tradition where Aristoteles distinguished universal and individual names by the criteria of their ability to predicate one subject or more, his examples of proper and common names being: ‘man’ is a universal, ‘Callias’ being an individual (Aristoteles 1963: 47). In modern times, John Stuart Mill shared Aristoteles’s idea of the functional distinction between these two classes: “A general name is familiarly defined, a name which is capable of being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of each of an indefinite number of things. An individual or singular name is a name which is only capable of being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of one thing” (Mill 1882: 34). Thus, there is a consensus that proper names are linguistic units ascribed to individual entities. The dispute arises with an attempt to define the nature of the meaning of these classes in a clear and noncontroversial way. The most polemical issue is whether proper names have both identifying and categorizing components in their semantics. J. S. Mill considered only common names to be fully-fledged names as they can denote certain attributes of a subject, whereas proper names “do not indicate or imply any attributes as belonging to those individuals” (Mill 1882: 40). According Straipsniai / Articles 245 GALYNA ZYMOVETS to him, proper names are just useful tools of individualization. J. S. Mill denies their potential for categorization because they do not have connotative meaning, i.e., it is impossible to conclude about the subject’s attributes from them. Alan Gardiner also shares this point of view by emphasizing that proper names have predominantly identifying and distinguishing power. “In the first place, the things called by proper names are mostly members of a set in which the resemblances considerably outweigh the differences, so that special labels, as it were, are required to mark the distinction” (Gardiner 1954: 38). Hence, proper names serve in utterances as means of distinguishing between items that belong to the same subcategory. Understanding of proper nouns as a class without denotation prevails among modern researchers. Richard Coates argues that proper nouns are senselessly referring expressions deprived of denotative meaning (Coates 2017). Fran Colman considers them to be nominals that do not have range of denotation (Colman 2008: 40). Willy Van Langendonck and Mark Van de Velde also argue for ascribing the senseless status to proper nouns at language level, pointing out that “neither names nor pronouns appear to have sense, that is, definitional lexical meaning” (Van Langendonck, Van de Velde 2016: 27). On the contrary, Otto Jespersen supported the opposite approach to the semantics of proper names as they invoke more content than common names: “[…] I should venture to say that proper names (as actually used) “connote” the greatest number of attributes” (Jespersen 1924: 66). From his point of view, “no sharp line can be drawn between proper and common names, the difference being one of degree rather than of kind” (Jespersen 1924: 70–71). Accordingly, there are shifts from one category to another (known as onimization and deonimisation), which are quite numerous in languages of the world. The idea of existence of different types of meaning, including the lexical one, in proper nouns is supported by Staffan Nyström who states that “apart from the lexical meaning and the proprial meaning (as used above), every proper name in a given situation gives rise to one or more presuppositional meanings” (Nyström 2016: 47). Among presuppositional meaning the researcher differentiates categorical meaning, associative meaning, and emotive meaning. Upon closer consideration of these polar positions, it becomes clear that the real discrepancy between them could be traced down to the underlying theory of language. O. Jespersen emphasized the importance of context, i.e., semantics is not restricted exclusively to the structural aspect of language, and, consequently, meaning heavily depends on speech act circumstances. The Ukrainian linguist of 19th century Oleksandr Potebnya also supported a similar position in semantics arguing that the meaning of a word could be established only in a specific context. However, if a researcher draws a clear distinction between language system, on 246 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation the one hand, and speech, on the other, which is typical for structuralism, then it is to conclude that proper names are meaningless because they lack clear definitions within the language system itself. Nevertheless, even in this case, some proper names can show certain categorizing power. A. Gardiner pointed out that particular cultures have a catalogue of common personal names, and he regarded them as disembodied proper names versus monoreferential embodied ones (Gardiner 1954: 8–10). These names (proper lemmas in terms of W. Van Langendonk) do have a classifying meaning since they belong to an established onomastic class within the language system. Jespersen’s position on that issue seems to be more justified since only speech has an ontological dimension whereas the notion of the language system is a theoretical approximation based on the research of real language usage. Moreover, it is important to bear in mind that even analysis of proper names from the semasiological perspective shows that they do not differ from common names in many respects. First, both classes have general categorical meaning, i.e. they belong to the class of nouns (denoting substances vs actions or attributes) and partake in respective hypernym/hyponym taxonomies (city/mountain/person, etc.). Second, they form derivatives, which means they enter into paradigmatic relations within the language system. Third, their meaning is subject to generalization due to deonomization processes (boycott, panama, balaclava, sandwich). Thus, proper names semantics shares many features with common nouns, with the crucial distinction of the first being designations of unique entities. 1. MEANING OF PROPER NOUNS AND FRAME SEMANTICS The idea of the contextual meaning of proper names is close to cognitive semantics, according to which verbal conceptualization is based on the human experience. Consequently, linguistic meaning is of embodied nature and requires taking into account the features and settings of real communication. Cognitive linguistics has developed numerous approaches to semantics interpretation so far, e.g., scripts, image schemata, cognitive metaphor, etc. Marvin Minsky formulated the theory of frames of knowledge and defined a frame as “a data-structure for representing a stereotyped situation” (Minsky 1974: 2). Charles J. Fillmore elaborated his version of frame semantics according to which categorization of experience is based on “a motivating situation occurring against a background of knowledge and experience” (Fillmore 1982: 112). Thus, meaning is encyclopedic by nature and its analysis requires Straipsniai / Articles 247 GALYNA ZYMOVETS extra-linguistic data. Frame semantics seems to be the most suitable theoretical background for interpretation of the meaning of proper names as it enables a description of main constituents of a name-giving situation and allows structural representation of the context. From the frame semantics perspective, the name-giving process is related to a frame of knowledge and proper names ascribe certain attributes to a particular entity. Naming of new units (referents) is based on existing frames (visual, semantic and scripts); therefore, the motivation of new names can be traced to main elements of the respective frame, i.e., within cognitive semantics, such change of meaning is described as metonymy. Research of motivation patterns of proper names can reveal whether the frame structure underlines their semantics. An onomastic class of business and organization names (described as ergonyms in Podolskaya 1988: 151) constitutes the best foundation for such research because 1) it is a new class that can be observed still in statu nascendi, 2) it is a very dynamic class with numerous changes and adaptations to existing social and political circumstances, 3) name-giving process is institutionalized, which enables quite drastic and rapid changes in this area. The data come from the business reference “Yellow pages of Ukraine 2006”. All names are given in a transliterated from Ukrainian form, with provided translations, if necessary. The objective of this paper is to trace possible correlations between the ergonyms main motivation patterns and the respective business frame. The choice of motivation patterns is determined by the prevailing communicative strategy – informative or persuasive. The informative strategy aims at sharing essential information about a company and its products, whereas the persuasive strategy is based on rhetoric means and exerts influence over the emotional sphere of potential customers. Frame semantics underlines both these strategies because customers constitute a part of the business frame. Names of informative nature are ideal designations from the perspective of P. Grice’s communication maxims, i.e., of relevancy and clearness. However, their disadvantage is law emotion involvement and persuasive power; hence, they are less memorable and expressive. The frame of business activity represents a stereotyped situation of interaction between two participants (a company/organization vs potential client) regarding a certain business transaction or activity. The research has revealed five prevailing elements of this frame (slots) used as a source of motivators for business and organization naming: 1) field of activity (product or service), 2) place, 3) type of business or organization, 4) agent (addresser, nominator), 5) recipient (addressee). Since business names tend to contain more than one lexical root, they typically have several motivators, the most common pattern being a combination of field and place. Multiple motivation is also a result 248 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation of polysemy and ongoing process of new connotations emerging in the usage. The significance of these motivators is shown in Figure 1. Moreover, there are several other classes of motivators of predominantly cultural and ideological value, which confirms Jespersen’s statement that “the number of characteristic traits is greater in the case of a proper noun than in the case of a common noun” (Jespersen 1924: 66). Figure 1. Ratio of different types of motivators 2. ANALYSIS OF MAJOR SLOTS OF THE BUSINESS FRAME AND THEIR MOTIVATORS 2.1. Field of Activity The frame slot of field of activity is of the utmost importance, as it constitutes a core of business transaction (exchange of goods). The scope of meaning of appellatives used as motivators can vary significantly from rather abstract to particular semantics. Functionally, such names meet P. Grice’s requirement of relevancy as they provide important and useful information, with emphasis Straipsniai / Articles 249 GALYNA ZYMOVETS on the referential function of language. Nevertheless, criteria of clarity and relevance significantly differ within the group because the relation between motivators of business names and their referents can be of more precise or vague nature, starting from a general description of business field to a specific designation of products or their parts, depending on the chosen name-giving strategy. There are four main motivation patterns. 1) A broad outline of field of activity: Avia, Ahro, Inzhener-Service ‘engineer service’, Promyslovi tekhnolohii ‘industrial technology’. Such names are informative; however, their distinctive power is very low since they can designate a wide range of businesses in closely related business branches. 2) Specification of a product or service: Keramika ‘ceramics’, Vyna Ukrainy ‘wines of Ukraine’, Budivelni rishennia ‘construction solutions’, Domashniy tekstyl ‘home textile’, Systemy bezpeky ‘safety systems’, Tepla pidloha ‘warm floor’, Avtozbirne vyrobnytstvo ‘car assembling production’, Dekoratyvne sadivnytstvo ‘decorative gardening’. This motivation pattern is also informative as it was the case in the previous group and, hence, the semantic shift is based on the denotative meaning of the motivator. From the perspective of pragmalinguistics, such ergonyms are efficient names since they meet P. Grice’s maxima of quantity, quality, and relevancy. 3) Motivators that describe purpose of activity contain axiological constituent, besides informative, which enhances business names persuasive power: Siaivo ‘shine’ (electrical goods and lighting appliances), Aromat udachi ‘scent of luck’ (perfumery), Vysokyi vrozhai ‘high harvest’ (plants protection products), credit union Turbota ‘care’. 4) Lexical units from the relevant production frame, i.e., onimization takes place through semantic shift of synecdoche: Palitra ‘palette’ (a company in printing services), investment fund Testament, chemical company Syntez ‘synthesis’, insurance company Veksel ‘letter of exchange’, Podil’s’kyi xolod ‘Podillya coldness’ (meat products), Mor’ska xvyliа ‘sea wave’ (resort place). Names from this subcategory can have immense cultural implications; they are more emotional and therefore have higher persuasive power. However, several problems arise with the relevance of business names derived from nouns or noun phrases that designate the field of action due to their high level of ambiguity. Evidently, three semantic groups of motivators do not efficiently define a particular field of activity. 1) Several nouns from the general vocabulary have an excessively broad meaning and consequently have the potential for designation of a vast range of companies, e.g., an appellative service: Rytm servis ‘rhythm service’ (construction works), Sprava-servis ‘business service’ (wood processing). 2) Some technical terms come from different spheres and can serve as names of companies with various profiles of activity: Indeks (businesses in securities, production of electronics, clothes, doors); Kvant (medical goods, agricultural machinery, goods transportation, soft beverages). 250 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation 3) General business terms that can refer to a wide range of companies: Netto-balans (alcohol beverages), Huduil ‘goodwill’ (domestic chemistry), KSK-Invest (metallurgy). 2.2. Location Location is the second most important motivator of business and organization names, the significance of which is to be explained by several reasons. First, it shows the spatial proximity of a company to a customer, which is an important information for logistics decisions. Second, some places are associated with certain advantages related to both their natural features and developed tradition or skills in specific areas of production. As a result, an evaluative component is formed within meaning of some toponyms. That type of motivation is quite common in deonyms that belong to the semantic group of food items, some of them being under legal protection, like champagne, camembert, cognac, etc. Thus, the geographical origin is an important factor for some businesses and it invokes many legal disputes and restrictions related to the usage of toponyms in product names. In such cases, place names play the role of persuasive tools. Third, toponyms and their derivatives reflect the national identity of nominators and, consequently, show their system of values and cultural senses. Several subcategories of place names designate the location of a business or an organization. The most common are oikonyms (names of cities and villages) or adjectives built from them: agrarian company Brusyliv, Vasylkivnafta ‘Vasylkiv oil’. Two other productive subcategories are mountain names and river names (hydronyms), however, their potential for highlighting the specific place of activity is restricted since they refer to a rather broad area and actually can be used as names of companies in quite remote places. In the case of hydronyms, it depends on the length of a river – the bigger the river, the more ambiguous area it defines. For example, names of smaller rivers, e.g., Vorskla (Poltava) and Zbruch (Ternopil) constitute quite a distinctive description of the place of action, whereas the name of the biggest river in Ukraine – Dnipro and its historic names Borysfen and Slavutych are too vague. Nevertheless, they are rather common in commercial onomastics in Ukraine. Thus, here we face the same issue of an excessively general referential zone, as it was the case with some types of fields of activity descriptions. The most popular oronym (mountain name) is the Ukrainian name for the Carpathian Mountain ridge: bank Prykarpattya, resort place Karpaty, furniture factory Karpaty. In two last examples, the place is an important factor of business and, therefore, toponyms describe both the location Straipsniai / Articles 251 GALYNA ZYMOVETS and specialization of the companies. Other oronyms are scarce and they refer to smaller areas: credit union Beskyd, resort place Sviati hory (Slovianohirsk). Toponym Ukraine and an adjective derived from it are common motivators of business and organization names: agency Ukraina, Ukrains’ka aviacijna lizynhova kompaniya ‘Ukrainian aviation leasing company’, Ukrains’kyj centr menedzhmentu zemli ta resursiv ‘Ukrainian center for land management and resources’. Locative semantics does not prevail in such names because the referential zone is too broad and they cannot inform about the company’s location. It is possible to presume that there are two main reasons for them to be used as names for businesses and organizations 1) stretching out the company’s scope of activity, 2) expressing the national identity of nominators. Thus, some toponyms not just describe the location of companies but also serve as ideological markers. Besides toponym Ukraine, symbolic value is inherent for historical toponyms, i.e., Sich, which is a name of the base of Ukrainian Cossacks near the modern city of Zaporizhzhya; Tavryda, Tavrida, Tavrika, Tavriia – historical names for Crimea and Southern Ukraine, Luchesk – historical name of the city of Lutsk, Sichесlav – historical name of the city Dnipro, Kafa – historical name of the city of Feodosia, Olviia – historical name of an ancient Greek colony on the Black Sea. It is noteworthy that these proper nouns sometimes form designations of companies outside the area they belong to. In this case, their informative value is next to null, and they rather reflect certain personal preferences of a nominator. However, place names predominantly designate a place of the real location or activity. Similarly, common nouns with the meaning of parts of the world also describe a place of action. They localize companies on the map of Ukraine. Both Ukrainian and Russian nouns are used which reflects the intensity of mass Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in Ukraine: Vostok (companies in Kharkiv and Sumy) from Russian ‘east’, Pivden’ (Mykolayiv) from Ukrainian ‘south’, Zaxid (Ternopil) from Ukrainian ‘west’. Derived adjectives are predominantly of Ukrainian origin: Pivdenna-Xoldynh ‘southern-holding’ (Crimea), resort place Pivdennyj ‘southern’ (Foros), Zaxidnoukraïn’ske straxove ahenstvo ‘Western Ukrainian insurance company’, Sxidnoukrains’ka promyslova kompaniia “Eastern Ukrainian industrial company”. Several other groups of nouns with spatial semantics are also productive in business naming. It is worth mentioning that there is a correlation between elements of locative spatial semantics in the names, on the one hand, and a branch of business, on the other. In particular, these components are typical motivators for recreation business. The underlying rationale of this naming strategy is the persuasive power of names with spatial semantics that highlight the important pragmatic value of resort places: Holubaya lahuna ‘blue lagoon’, 252 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation camp Prybrezhnyi ‘coastal’, resort center Prymorie ‘seaside’. Hotel names also derive from Ukrainian or foreign toponyms transposed to the realm of commercial names: Kyiv, Bristol, Veneciia, Moskva, Karzas, Leґvant, Manхetten, Saksoniya. In the first line, foreign names indirectly refer to business activity (accommodation) due to association with the semantic field of travelling. On the contrary, local toponyms in hotel names describe real placement through metonymy shift. Foreign place names tend to be persuasive and serve as a means of evaluation and expression of preferences. The most common among them is Europe and its derivatives: Yevropa ‘Europe’, Yevropeis’ki gardyny ‘European curtains’. There are some other adjectives with similar mixture of locative and evaluative semantics: Amerykanśka ximchystka ‘American dry-cleaning’, Anhliis’kyj zvuk ‘English sound’, Videns’ka kava ‘Wien coffee’. They reveal stereotyped beliefs about the advantages of certain nations in respective fields and therefore convey the additional meaning of high-quality value. Similar axiological semantics could be traced in business names formed from the name of the highest mountain: Everest, Everest–L, Everest–M.S. As it was pointed out above, several place names inform about the field of activity rather than about its place. It is also the case when there are various connections between business frames and specific locations. For instance, fish companies names Antarktyka ‘the Antarctic’, Baltyka ‘Baltic Sea’, S. O. V. Havan ‘S. O. V. [Soviet] harbour’ describe a possible place where they operate. Moreover, toponyms build travel agencies’ names (Palmira, Napoli) through the metonymic shift. There are a few other branches where company name motivation is based on certain features of specific areas, i.e. Arktyka (ventilation equipment), Arktik (ice cream), Holfstrim (heating). 2.3. Type of Business Nouns designating the type of business or organization are salient motivators among business names and are attested either in onimized attributive noun phrases of descriptive semantics or as a part of compound words: Prykarpatska universalna tovarna birzha ‘Carpathian universal commodities exchange’, Pivdennyi zavod hidraulichnykh mashyn ‘south factory of flow machinery’, Ukrzernoholdynh ‘Ukrainian grain holding’. Information conveyed by such nouns constitutes an integral part of the meaning in the category of company names and therefore it is trivial and subject to an omission in compounds that reflects an existing trend to the linguistic economy. This element is a mandatory Straipsniai / Articles 253 GALYNA ZYMOVETS part of the names of public agencies and institutions; it was an essential motivator of big factories and enterprises names in the past. 2.4. Agent of Activity Another important component of the business frame is an agent of activity. Company names with such motivation highlight several agents’ features, e.g., their profession, place of residence, professional level and experience, as well as occasionally gender and social roles. This element of the business frame designates collective nominator and is closely related to the slot of field of activity because profession represents the most frequent agents’ traits used as a motivator for business names formation: Nash doktor ‘our doctor’, Montazhnyk ‘installer’, Kotelnyk ‘boilermaker’, Avtotexnik ‘car technician’, Advokat ‘lawyer’, Brovar ‘beer maker’. It is typically accompanied by a description of the place of action in Ukraine or location abroad: Vynodel Moldovoy kompanii ‘winemaker of Moldova company’, Horlivs’kyj mashynobudiunyk ‘Horlivka machine builder’, L’vivometalist ‘Lviv metallworker’, Dantyst na Podoli ‘dentist at Podil’. There is one not standard group of business names where agent and recipient of the frame coincide, i.e. names of hotel and recreation centers that belonged to certain enterprises and unions in Soviet time. Thus, motivators of such recreation centers designate both profession of employees of enterprises and profession of guests of hotels: Sudostroitel’ ‘Ship builder’, Heoloh ‘geologist’, Hirnyk ‘miner’. This strategy constitutes a part of Soviet heritage that is still visible and salient among business and organization names in Ukraine. It is noteworthy that business names are formed not only from well-established professions designations but also from new loan words of this semantics, predominantly English, which confirms dynamic and flexible character of the business names class. Borrowing of these lexical items to Ukrainian reflects current changes in society and economy: Attorney, Barrister, Broker, Dajver LTD, Motor-diler, Stok trejder. However, it is important to keep in mind the dialectical nature of language as a phenomenon that both constantly evolves to ensure communication in a new environment and preserves the stability of societal interaction. Thus, the vocabulary of any language is comprised of old and new items. Therefore, it makes absolute sense that both archaism and innovations co-occur as business name motivators. Presumably, the employment of archaic words aims at emphasizing tradition, which is an important characteristic for well-established businesses. This strategy is common among the names of security agencies where both loan and native stems are used: Viking, Vitiaz’ ‘knight’, Voievoda-2000 ‘governor-2000’, Hladiator ‘gladiator’. Moreover, there 254 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation are several examples of such names from the construction and real estate industry: real estate company Hazda ‘owner, landlord’, Zodchyj ‘architect’, Sozydatel ‘creator’. Presumably, archaic names convey the idea of reliability and adherence to tradition, they appeal to heroic epos, customs etc. Thus, they have numerous cultural inferences and symbolic value. Another similar naming strategy is the use of mythonyms as indirect profession description, the scope of the symbolic meaning of which is even bigger than in the previous group: Hippokrat (medical care), Femida (law), Demetra (agriculture). Thus, designation of profession is the most important feature in the agent’s slot of the frame, being of both informative and persuasive nature. Company names derived from profession descriptions reveal the same problems as the ones discussed above. Identic names are used for different companies from the same branch of business: Ahrarnyk (‘agrarian’, 3 items in the corpora), Budivel’nyk (‘construction worker’, 12 items), Texnolog (‘technologist’ 7 items). Such ambiguity results in the reduction of distinctiveness and persuasive power of respective names. Moreover, there are cases when a name of the profession is misleading because it does not correspond to the field of activity: Texnik ‘technician’ (pasta production), Aktor ‘actor’ (trade equipment), Broker (cement). They can be even of manipulative nature as it is the case with the name Ekoloh ‘ecologist’ for a company engaged in wood processing. Most probably, there are two main reasons involved in the creation of such confusion: 1) change of industry branch by a company, 2) personal grounds for motivation. Such examples reveal drawbacks of informative strategy in naming because a change of the business direction makes the underlying frame semantics inappropriate and misleading. Nevertheless, in the case of stable businesses informative names are quite balanced and transparent. Besides professions, there are other agent’s features recurrently used as motivators for business names formation, however, they do not prevail: 1) general business roles, 2) place of residency (katoikonyms), 3) legal status, and 4) personal names of owners. Common nouns like partner, companion describe different general business roles and have very broad scope of extension and therefore are applicable to any enterprise by definition: Kompanion ‘companion’, Koordynator ‘coordinator’, Partnery ‘partners’, Pomichnyk ‘assistant’, Kurator ‘curator’, Biznes-kompanion ‘business companion’, IT-partner, Yevropartner ‘European partner’. The most common of them is a partner – quite a frequent motivator among company names attested in 69 items in the analyzed data. Semantics of the above-mentioned motivators is focused on mutual actions, so they emphasize benefits a recipient obtains from cooperation and, therefore, naming, in this case, is of manipulative nature. Distinctive power of such names is rather low because they cannot be efficient tools of individualization due to Straipsniai / Articles 255 GALYNA ZYMOVETS their very general meaning. Similarly, lexical units with axiological meaning have a broad extension and explicit persuasive intention. They describe an agent as superior in its class. The semantics of domination, the top level of performance, and supremacy is salient in such names as Lider klas ‘leader class’, Budalider ‘construction leader’, Majster-etalон ‘master etalon’, Majster-Top ‘master-top’, Avto-bogatyr ‘autogiant’. Moreover, company names highlight axiological semantics of expertize and professionalism: Biznes-ekspert ‘business expert’, Media-ekspert ‘media-expert’, Ukrpromekspert ‘Ukrainian industrial expert’, KF Avtorytet ‘KF authority’, Professional, Specialist, Umilets ‘handyman’, and the related features of reliability: Harant ‘warrantor’, Harant avtomarket ‘warrantor car market’; and universality: Praktyk-universal, Universal-ekspert. Thus, the representation of an agent is based mainly on pragmatic values that are important for a successful business. The semantic category of katoikonyms (names by place of inhabitance) shares features of proper and common nouns and involves both locative and agentive components of meaning. They always have informative value in business naming. Interestingly, there is a gender imbalance with prevailing female designations. Presumably, it reflects real gender disproportion of workforce in the industry where they are used, e.g., names of textile and clothes factories are derived from female nouns: Halychanka (Chervonohrad, the historical area Halychyna), Luchanka (the city of Lutsk), Pryluchanka (Pryluky), Vinnychanka (Vinnytsya), Dnipryanka (Dnipro). The legal status is not a frequent motivator, perhaps due to its trivial nature since it is a mandatory element in any full company name (Ltd, Joint-stock company, partnership, etc.). Therefore, its persuasive power is very low. There are attested only a few cases of names with motivators from this semantic group: Akcioner ‘shareholder’, Akcioner Ukrainy ‘shareholder of Ukraine’, Hospodar ‘owner, master, host’, Volodar ‘owner’, Volodarka ‘female owner’. The use of personal names of owners does not constitute a dominant strategy in businesses naming in Ukraine. Embodied personal names are quite common among Ukrainian ergonyms. However, this motivation pattern embraces predominantly cases of transposition of private entrepreneurs’ personal names into business names. They do not create special names for their businesses and work under their personal names. Among proper company designations, the use of personal names is mainly restricted to some areas of business, e.g., legal firms and medical institutions: Yuryidychna ahenciya Averyanova ‘legal agency of Averianov’, Yuryidychne byuro Pysarenka ‘legal office of Pysarenko’. Moreover, there is another productive model – the use of personal names of famous people in commemorative function: Derzhavnyi trubnyi instytut im. Ia. Iu. Osady ‘state pipe institute named after Ya. Yu. Osada’ (Soviet engineer and researcher of 256 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation this field), Dytiachyi ozdorovchyi tsentr im. H. S. Titova ‘Children health center named after H. S. Titov’ (Soviet spaceman). Hence, ideological grounds of motivation prevail in such nominations. 2.5. Recipient (Addressee) The next element of the business frame is the recipient/addressee. Motivators that designate professional feature do not occur frequently in this slot and they typically belong to the category of media resources names. Technically, they are not a company but rather product names and appeal to the target audience: newspaper Ahrarnyk ‘agrarian’, journals Advokat ‘lawyer’, Autoperevozchyk ‘transporter’, reference book Spravochnyk ekonomysta ‘economist reference book’. There are only a few examples where companies with restricted target audiences have a profession designation of a potential client in their names, i.e., Hlabux–audyt ‘chief accountant audit’, Farmer–avtomatyk ‘farmer automation’, specialized language center Menedzher. Thus, this feature is asymmetric for two communicators, being important for an agent of action and not significant for a recipient. Perhaps the underlying reason for such a discrepancy is an attempt to maximize the target audience. Hence, avoidance of explicit specification of this frame element is to be interpreted as a marketing tool. Other minor addressees’ features that are reflected in company names include several subcategories. 1) Personal preferences, hobbies and free time activities of potential clients: Bibliofil ‘booklover’, Avtomobilist ‘motorist’, Strilets–2000 ‘shooter–2000’, Frant ‘dandy’, Gurrnan ‘gourmet’, Lasunka ‘sweet tooth’. Since some lexical units used as motivators exhibit distinct axiological value, both informative and persuasive strategy is engaged in naming in this subcategory. 2) The most salient age groups reflected in company names are children and youth: Obdarovani dity Ukrainy ‘talented children of Ukraine’, Karapuz ‘baby’, medical center Dytyna ‘child’, Dytodiah ‘child clothes’, Yunyi turist ‘young tourist’, Molodizhnyi tsentr pratsi ‘youth employment center’, Dovhozhytel ‘long living person’. 3) Gender differentiation is present in media resources names: Uspishna zhinka ‘successful woman’, Dlya budushchykh mam ‘for future mothers’, Zdorovie muzhchyny ‘man’s health’. 4) Social status is shown through a popular new loan word with axiological semantics: V. I. P.–tour, VIP auto, design group VIP, VIP Trevel Asistens, VIP–prezent, insurance company VIP–standart. Certainly, these names do not necessarily reflect the real belonging of a potential customer to this status group. They are rather a tool of manipulative nature aimed at raising products and services to the upmarket level. Straipsniai / Articles 257 GALYNA ZYMOVETS Even though there are several areas where nominators differentiate their potential clients, a more common strategy consists in appealing to the largest possible audience. Various resources are used for this purpose, including in minor cases common nouns with a very broad meaning, e.g. Pan i pani ‘mister and missis’, Dobrodij ‘my dear sir’. However, pronouns play the most important role in this strategy aimed at ensuring the broadest outreach. The underlying semiotic mechanism is straightforward since pronouns have very general meaning and can potentially refer to any object or entity. There are several groups of pronouns used in company names. 1) Possessive pronouns of the second person (predominantly plural) are productive motivators in business names. They co-occur with designations of the field of activity: real estate agency Vash dim ‘your house’, Vash tekstyl ‘your textile’; an agent of activity: Vash advokat ‘your lawyer’, Vash konsultant ‘your consultant’, Vash kurier ‘your courier’; lexical units with abstract meaning: credit union Vash dostatok ‘your welfare’, real estate agency Vash shans ‘your chance’. Possessive pronouns of the second person singular have similar functions: real estate agency Tvii dim ‘your house’, Tvii styl ‘your style’, Tvii format ‘your format’. They shorten social distance between communicators while increasing intimacy. Nevertheless, singular pronouns are less common then plural, which is to attribute to cultural standards in communication where plural forms are considered to be more polite in Ukrainian culture and are employed in interaction with people you do not know personally. The use of possessive pronouns of the first person both singular and plural is a tool of persuasive strategy. Singular forms put more emphasis on recipients imposing on them the idea of owning a specific product. This motivation is typical for media resources: magazines Mii avto ‘my car’, Moi sport ‘my sport’, Moi tsvetok ‘my flower’, Moiya hazeta ‘my paper’, publishing house Moya bat’kivshchyna ‘my motherland’. The manipulative assumption that both addressee (recipient) and addresser (agent) share the same goals underline the usage of pronouns in the first-person plural. They aim at establishing the effect of inclusiveness, i.e., a feeling of belonging of both communicators to the same group. They co-occur with other above-discussed groups of motivators and quite often form names of media resources: Nash dim ‘our house’, Nashe radio ‘our radio’, Nash doktor ‘our doctor’, newspaper Nashe misto ‘our city’, consulting agency Nashe misto ‘our city’, youth foundation Nasha slava ‘our glory’. Inclusive strategy also embraces usage of certain adjectives, e.g., narodnyj ‘people, folk, national’ and ridnyj ‘native’: newspaper Narodne slovo (‘people’s word’), real estate agency Ridnyj dim ‘native home’, public center Ridnyj kraj ‘native land’, insurance company 258 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation Ridna havan‘ ‘native harbour’. Thus, building group rapport constitutes an important tactic in the commercial naming. Other pronominal categories are less salient among company names. There are attested a few examples of the first person singular (newspaper Ya spozhlyvoach ‘I am a consumer’, weekly Ya ‘I’; the second person plural (Mebli dlya vas ‘furniture for you’, Neruxomist’ dlya vas ‘real estate for you’; a defining pronoun Sport dlya vsix ‘Sport for everybody’ (health center). Pronouns are used in proper names since they have the biggest possible extension and, consequently, can refer to any entity without attaching to it any specific sense, in particular, target group characteristics, with reinforcement of inclusive strategy. 3. CONCLUSIONS Thus, controversy over the meaning of proper names cannot be resolved in a simple way. The answer to the question whether proper names have sense or are senseless nominals depends on what linguistics theory the research relies on, i.e., whether we consider language to be an abstract system or a tool of real communication that is embedded in social interaction. In the latter case, lexical meaning can be interpreted within frame semantics, with a due analysis of the circumstances of name-giving process. Motivators of business names shed light on their conceptualization in language. The research has revealed that there are five essential slots of the business frame that constitute regular motivators of company and organization names, i.e., field of activity (product or service), place, type of business, agent, and recipient. Overall, they depict the general structure of the conceptualization of any business interaction. Significance of particular slot varies, the major slots being field and place of activity, which belong to core components of business interaction. The least informative slot is a type of business, as it does not provide additional information about specific features of a company and consequently tends to be omitted, especially in compounds, which is a manifestation of linguistic economy. The slot of an agent highlights the most relevant features of the doer of the action in business context, i.e., profession. This feature appeared to be not relevant for the slot of a recipient, where the dominant naming strategy is formation of names that appeal to the broadest audience possible. It is noteworthy that these slots correspond to the main constituents of a speech act, e.g., both communicators and its context, with the emphasis on the last – the most important part of business interaction. Not all names of the companies are efficient designations since they are sometimes too broad descriptions and do not provide for a recipient relevant Straipsniai / Articles 259 GALYNA ZYMOVETS information about company’s profile. Therefore, the informative strategy is not always the best solution in business naming. Along descriptive names that depict real features of companies, there are names that contain motivators with axiological meaning. The evaluative slot is integrated into five above-mentioned slots and constitutes an additional type of motivation. Hence, some company names are rhetoric by nature and serve as tools of persuasive strategy in business discourse, with quite law relevance for real company description. In some cases, names formed within persuasive naming strategy can be treated as manipulative and, accordingly, violating maxims of communication. Motivators with axiological meaning impose a certain evaluation of the company on a recipient, pointing out its advantages. Thus, commercial and organizational naming is based on real and relevant features of the context and motivators of names highlight elements that nominators consider efficient for their purposes of ensuring unhindered communication with their clients and counterparts. REFERENCES Aristotle 1963: Categories and De Interpretatione, translated with Notes by J. L. Ackrill, Clarendon Press, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 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Jespersen Otto 1935: The Philosophy of Grammar, London: Georg Allen and Unwin LTD, 1935 (reprinted). 260 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Frame Semantics as an Explanatory Model for Commercial Names Formation Mill John Stuart 1882: A System of logic, ratiocinative and inductive, being a connected view of the principles of evidence, and the methods of scientific investigation, eighth Edition, New York: Harper & Brothers. Minsky Marvin 1974: A Framework for Representing Knowledge. – Artificial Intelligence. Memo No. 306, Massachusetts Institute of Technology A. I. Laboratory. Nyström Staffan 2016: Names and meaning. – Handbook of names and naming, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 39–51. Podolskaya Natalya 1988: Slovar russkoi onomastychskoi terminologii, Moscow: Nauka. Potebnia Alexander 1993: Mysl y yazyk, Kyiv: SYNTO. Van Langendonck Willy 2005: Proper names and proprial lemmas. – Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Uppsala, 19–24 August, 315–323. Van Langendonck Willy , Van de Velde Mark 2016: Names and grammar. – Handbook of names and naming, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 17–38. Freimų semantika, kaip aiškinamasis komercinių pavadinimų formavimo modelis SANTRAUKA Tikrinių vardų reikšmę siūloma interpretuoti remiantis freimų teorija, atsižvelgiant į ekstralingvistinę patirtį ir žinias. Įvardijimo modeliai komercinių pavadinimų srityje yra pagrįsti verslo freimo elementais, t. y. penkiomis pagrindinėmis jo sritimis: veiklos sritimi (produktų ar paslauga), veiklos vieta, verslo ar organizacijos tipu, agentu ir gavėju (adresatu), dominuojant pirmosioms trims. Dažniausias motyvuojančių veiksnių derinys yra veiklos sritis ir vieta. Kai kurie verslo pavadinimai taip pat turi aksiologinę ir simbolinę reikšmę. Minėti motyvuojantys veiksniai yra informatyviosios arba įtikinamosios strategijos įrankiai. Įteikta 2020 m. sausio 20 d. GALYNA ZYMOVETS O. O. Potebnya Institute of Linguistics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Polkovnika Potekhina str., 12, app. 138, Kyiv, 03127, Ukraine [email protected] Straipsniai / Articles 261