THE PHENOMENON OF SPECIES SUBSTITUTION IN THE NAMES OF MINERALS AND METALS (a Case Study of the Names Including the Lexeme ‘Gold’)

The authors investigate the phenomenon of species substitution in official and unofficial names of stones, minerals and metals in the Russian language. Examples of species substitutions are the cases when the designation of a particular mineral (stone, metal) contains the name of a mineral or a metal of another type (class, category), e. g. the Ural emerald ‘demantoid’, the cat's gold ‘mica of golden colour’, pseudomalachite ‘water-phosphate of copper’ etc. As a rule, the objects chosen as a standard for comparing the nominated object with another one are those that were identified earlier than the nominated object and to which a greater value was attributed in many cases (most often the standards are the most valuable precious stones or precious metals (diamond, ruby, emerald, gold). The article presents some typical categories of mineralogical vocabulary which often include nominations with species substitution (for example, trade and everyday names that ‘raise the status’ of a mineral – Siberian diamond ‘colourless topaz’; pejorative names that indicate a false relationship between minerals – false diamond ‘rock crystal’; neutral names that capture the actual external or chemical similarity of objects – black amber ‘jet’, etc.). Separately, the authors focus on combinations with the lexeme gold which denote both substances not related to gold and alloys of gold and other metals – this allows us to trace in detail the possibilities of the separate lexeme’s participation in word formation resulting in nominations with species substitution. The authors propose their own motivational reconstructions for a number of ‘golden’ cases (for example, for mouse gold ‘marcasite’, frog gold ‘platinum’, etc.).