Eponymy and discursive-functional context

In this paper, which continues the series of his previous publications on theoretical and methodological issues in eponymy research, the author argues for the feasibility of the expansion of his three-component parametric model for description and analysis of this class of linguistic entities by adding to its three principal components, relating to the three parts of eponymic derivational relationship, a fourth part dealing with eponymy's discursive-functional context. It is the author's contention that the relationship between an eponym and the linguistic and extralinguistic cognitive-communicative environment in which it comes to being and/or occurs is the essential, intrinsic and crucial, rather than fortuitous and inconsequential, feature of the former, which therefore should be taken into account in in-depth research. Accordingly, an initial discursive parameter in this research should be tracing down the occurrence of eponyms in various types of discourse distinguished by their cognitive and communicative-functional characteristics, and so identifying items bound to such varieties as different from general-purpose ones. Next comes finding out the nature of relationship between a discourse variety and an eponym co-occurring in it, in particular, the influence of the former on the semantic and functional, and also, possibly, formal characteristics of the latter. An important eventuality that a comprehensive and inclusive eponymy description model should consider is the hierarchy of an eponym's possible discursive contexts, i.e. the possibility of its use in a discourse type other than its original one. Regarding this, the author introduces the concept of inter- and intralinguistic contacts of discourses as linguistic-cultural modes as a framework in which discursive transpositions of eponyms should be elucidated, as well as such instances, in which an underlying proper noun is employed to coin an eponymic entity designed for the use in the discursive-functional environment other than its own. The author illustrated his theses with instances drawn from Ukrainian as well as some other languages, and in these, from the scientific, ideological, folklore, religious, mythological, folk, and everyday discursive varieties.