Eponymous units in the english sublanguage of sport: Form, meaning and functioning

Abstract

The importance of studying the problem is determined by the fact that the sublanguage of sport is constantly developing, and in this process the definite role belongs to proper names, which is one of the ways of metonymic term formation. The author of the article is aimed at considering the eponymous units in the English sublanguage of sport in the formal, semantic, and functional aspects. The leading method used in the investigation of the material is descriptive analysis alongside studying print and electronic sport dictionaries and glossaries, institutional discourse corpus and interviews with people involved in sport. The terms under study mainly consist of two components, but may be reduced to a proper name. Proper names may function as separate one-word terms as well as be combined within one language unit with words of general vocabulary both in specialized and metaphorical meaning. The eponymous layer in the language of sport is not homogeneous, and includes simple and compound terms, widely and rarely used units, as well as archaisms and neologisms. These terminological units are brief and stylistically neutral. They are highly professional, as their meaning is known mostly by specialists, though they are rather frequently used in popular literature on sports and in mass media. The illustrating fragments of different genres of sport discourse are presented. Linguistic research of sport eponymous terms is of interest for terminological studies from the point of view of terminological systems development, function of proper names in terminology, models of word and phrase formation and translation of professional discourse.