Nomination by Phonetic Resemblance as a Way of 'Domesticating' Words

The present paper deals with a phenomenon specific for Russian. It consists in the emergence of a new (secondary) nomination, which is phonetically close to the primary nomination and coincides with a word already existing in the lexicon but whose meaning does not play any role, for example 'as'ka' (from ICQ), 'merin' (from mersedes), etc. This phenomenon is to various degrees related to such diverse concepts as homonymy, the speaker's personal sphere, pun, loanword or proper name. The primary nomination is characterized by semantic non-transparency: it is either an unknown foreign word, or a proper name (toponym or surname), or some kind of alphabetic number (a letter designating a route, or an abbreviation), or just a bulky denomination difficult to use in speech. The secondary nomination is semantically concrete, often tinged with emotion. Cases in point are names for animals or pets, that is common, native words, typical for informal speech. Thus, we may speak about mechanisms of changing a foreign, uncommon, abstract, unknown nomination for a familiar, simple, concrete one, that is about 'domesticating' the 'foreign' word as well as the concept it designates. Adapted from the source document