TRADITIONAL AND NEW FUNCTIONS OF EGO-COMPONENT IN WORD FORMATION IN GERMAN AND ENGLISH

Abstract

The article considers traditional terminology as well as ego-component neologisms and occasionalisms in German and English and characterizes their structure and semantics. The research is based on German and English scientific and popular scientific works, as well as media articles. The Latin pronoun ego has long been used substantivized and in word formations in different languages. Traditionally, many ego-component words are terminological in nature. First of all, such vocabulary is common for psychological and philosophic terminology. The analysis of such lexical units is to determine new tendencies of how this pronoun component functions in word formation and how ego-component words operate in various texts. One of the tendencies is expanding the list of sciences where ego-component terms become common, for example, Ego-Dokumente in historical science. Another tendency is connected with the use of ego-component words in political life to criticize particular politicians or whole political parties. The emergence of neologisms such as der Ego-Shooter, ego surfing, das Ego-Googeln is associated with new technologies. The article also presents the variety of this vocabulary graphic representation in two languages. The novelty of the research lies in approaching the subject interdisciplinary by using terminology of different sciences and also analyzing occasionalisms and the role of context in their interpretation. The author concludes about a wide range of combinability of ego with roots from different languages, as well as the variability in the meaning of this component depending on the text subject. Refs 19.