Cosmonomies in the ancient beliefs of the Balkar and Karachay people

The article is devoted to a multidimensional study of cosmonymic models in the materials of ancient beliefs of Balkarians and Karachays peoples, formed from physico–geographical, ethnocultural, and historical–cultural appellatives with semantic motivation and term-forming positivity. It examines issues caused by the functioning of «related» cosmic names - the transfer of names of natural objects to the names of celestial bodies. The paper analyzes lexical-semantic, word-formation, grammatical features of both positional substantive components, appearing in contextual use in the position of definition, and postpositional morphologized substantive units in descriptive attributive phrases, izafet constructions. Analysis of the names of numerous space objects indicates that attributive term-forming phrases, appearing in direct and figurative meanings, in which the lexical-semantic and grammatical connection between the combined components is noted, are, on the one hand, expressors of lexical meanings, on the other – word-formation, forming schemes of formal-semantic models of ethnocultural cosmonyms and appellatives.