An onomasiological competition

Abstract

An onomasiological competition between lexical units, in which they compete to name a certain object (phenomenon, process, event, etc.), rarely attracts the attention of linguists, mainly due to an interdisciplinary nature of such research and the lack of a developed methodology for that. In this article, the author presents a case study of the onomasiological competition between constructions of otkryvat' butylku (‘to open a bottle’) and otkuporivat' butylku (‘to uncork a bottle’) during the 19th and 20th centuries and reveals sociocultural factors influencing the course and result of this competition. Based on this analysis, a few sociocultural scenarios that should be taken into consideration in research of various types of onomasiological competition are presented.