Linguistics
Syntactic way as a model of formation of English perfumery trademark names
Ksenia A. Dzyuba
Ph.D. student specializing in ‘Language Theory’,
teaching assistant of the English Philology Chair,
Institute of Philology.
Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavin.
392000, Russia, Tambov, Internatsionalnaya Str., 33.
kseniadzyuba@gmail.com
Abstract. In this article syntactic way is considered as a model of formation of
trademark names. The research is conducted on the material of English perfumery
trademarks. As a result, basic syntactic types of verbal perfumery trademarks are put
forward, and then these newly established types are further classified.
Key words: syntactic way of formation of trademark names, syntactic type of trademark
names, nominative word combination, nominative sentence.
Nowadays the problem of trademark nomination arouses great linguistic interest
as new goods appear, functioning as objects of linguistic nomination and thus
broadening the general onomastic space. Being closely connected with globalization
processes, trademark names integrate into our everyday active vocabulary and form the
cognitive experience of a customer through his or her participation in market relations.
Verbal trademarks play an important role in the life of a modern man, and this fact
determines their pragmatic orientation and the possible practical application of results of
this linguistic research.
However, ways of formation of English trademark names still didn’t serve as the
object of a broad linguistic study in our country. The same may be said about the names
of perfumery trademark names in particular. Works of contemporary Russian scientists
within the scope of this research area aren’t numerous. Moreover, they turn out to be
fragmentary and mostly descriptive. Such Russian authors as A.V. Superanskaya [3,4],
N.A. Stadulskaya [6], I.V. Kryukova [1], T.P. Romanova [5], V.A. Moskovich [7],
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T.V. Evsyokova [8], S.O. Goryaev [9] and E.G. Mikina [10] investigate some aspects of
semantic structure of trademarks. From the other hand, such foreign linguists as Graeme
B. Dinwoodie, Malcolm Coulthard, Ronald R. Batters and Syuogo Hotta in their works
pay the closest attention to the juridical aspect of trademark use, but they don’t study
the structural peculiarities of trademarks themselves [12, 13, 14, 15]. So this article aims
at systematizing the data about the syntactic structure of English trademark names on
the example of perfumery production. This problem seems to be topical owing to the
great demand of goods with English names in Russian everyday reality.
We define the syntactic way of formation of trademark names as the sum of
linguistic regularities which determine their syntactic structure. In onomastics this way
is used for creating trademarks of two syntactic types – nominative word-combinations
and nominative sentences [2:92]. According to T.P. Romanova, nominative wordcombinations show great potential in characterizing the object of study from rational
and emotional points of view [5:209]. Both above mentioned syntactic types of
formation of English trademark names are broadly referred to in advertizing business,
so it looks reasonable to present them in more detail.
The first syntactic type of verbal trademark names is nominative wordcombination. As we know a word-combination is defined in Russian linguistics as a
combination of two or more content words, connected by means of grammar and sense,
which designates a single but multipartite notion and turns out to be a complex name of
life phenomena [11]. In advertising communication word-combinations used for naming
English perfumery trademarks have a particular structure of their own. Thanks to that
we can put forward the following basic subtypes of nominal word-combinations, used
for nominating perfumery goods in English:
1) Subordinative word-combinations take up a top position by frequency of
occurrence. This subtype further falls into two groups:
1.1. Attributive word-combinations without prepositions. As a rule, in their
formal structure they combine a noun and an attribute to this noun, but the order of
these elements may differ. Firstly, we may distinguish such a model of wordcombinations as ‘Noun+Adjective’. For example, perfumes ‘Deep Energy’ and
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‘Dynamic Pulse’ by Addidas. Secondly, due to some peculiarities of the English
Grammar there are attributive word-combinations built in accordance with the model
‘Noun+Noun’ where the first element functions as an attribute. For instance, ‘Euphoria
Men’ by Calvin Klein, ‘Magic Woman’ by Bruno Banani, ‘Emerald Dream’ by Estee
Lauder. On the whole, attributive word-combinations without prepositions perform not
only a nominative function, but also a symbolic function while influencing a potential
buyer of perfumery goods implicitly. This explains such a broad use of trademarks of
this kind in English advertizing communication.
1.2. Word-combinations with prepositions are word-combinations where the
elements are connected to each other via prepositions [11]. Within this subtype one can
distinguish:
a. Word-combinations with the preposition ‘of’ implying the meaning of an
English Possessive Case which is close to the meaning of Russian Genitive Case, but
which in the English language involves the meaning of quality or possessiveness
defining inner and outer characteristics of animate or inanimate objects: ‘Joy of Pink’
and ‘Touch Of Pink’ by Lacoste.
b. Word-combinations with other prepositions, which designate the meaning of
English Common Case: ‘Magnetism for Men’ by Escada, ‘Escape for Men’ by Calvin
Klein and ‘Spirit for Woman’ by Antonio Banderas.
In general, since English word-combinations with prepositions display broad
potential in expressing different abstract and concrete linguistic meanings, authors of
perfumery trademark names choose this very type for their goods names.
2) Coordinative word-combinations. The elements in such-like English wordcombinations are connected via coordinating conjunctions ‘and’ (&) and ‘or’. ‘Sea &
Sun in Cadaques’ by Salvador Dali, ‘Forever and Ever’ by Christian Dior are the
examples we can refer to. Trademark names of this subtype are not really frequent in
English because of their semantic unambiguity, i.e. lack of metaphorical meaning.
Nevertheless,
coordinative
word-combinations
allow
us
accumulate
several
characteristics of perfumery product in one trademark name thus turning this syntactic
type to advantage of advertiser.
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3) Numerative word-combinations contain numerals. They are quite rare in
English trademark names, probably because of simplicity of their syntactic structure,
although trademark names like ‘The One’ by Dolce&Gabbana became classical for the
world-wide advertising business and they gained great popularity among perfumery
consumers. This happened mostly because numerative word-combinations allow us put
forward the most important characteristic of a perfumery product to the center of
attention thus accentuating its uniqueness and promoting the process of its
individualization.
Nominative sentences represent the second big type of verbal trademarks. Like
nominative word-combinations, they fall into several subtypes according to certain
criteria. Firstly, depending on the presence of all the necessary components, nominative
sentences may be:
a. complete: e.g. ‘I love Dior’ by Dior, ‘I am King’ by Sean John.
b. incomplete where ellipsis is usually presented: e.g. ‘Up to you’ and ‘Simply
because’ by Avon. In English perfumery business it is incomplete nominative sentence
that is usually used, probably because trademark names from the stylistic angle of view
resemble lively spoken language thus influencing a potential consumer. On a
subconscious psychological level a buyer seems to be involved into the process of
fulfilling incomplete syntactic structure and making it a complete sentence, so he or she
feels as if participating in the process of perfumery trademark nomination and, as a
result, a potential consumer prefers this very production.
Secondly, we consider necessary to single out a numerous subtype of verbal
trademarks which contains illocutionary nominative sentences: ‘Believe’ by Britney
Spears, ‘Desire Me’ by Escada, ‘Envy me’ by Givenchy, Gucci, ‘Just Play’ by Avon,
‘Marry Me’ by Lanvin. Almost every perfumery collection in English contains at least
one of above mentioned names. Hence to this fact, one may guess that this syntactic
subtype occupies a leading position among all nominative sentences which build up
trademark names. In their structure verbal trademarks of this subtype combine a name
of a perfumery product with an advertising slogan, so there is no need to use another
slogan separately and a more remarkable pragmatic effect is finally achieved.
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To sum up, it should be mentioned that types of syntactic structure of English
perfumery trademark names turn out to be basic and they may be further subdivided
into minor groups and subgroups. As our research indicates, among the names of
perfumery trademarks in English subordinative nominative word-combinations and
illocutionary nominative sentences are the most popular ones.
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