Transition of proper personal names when using in the plural form (based on the material of the German language)

Abstract

The process of language unit reinterpretation to use them in a new communicative or syntactic function is observed in the history of development of all human languages and is characterized by extreme complexity and heterogeneity. This article deals with the process of transition of personal proper names to the category of common names at the morphological level, where the factor of this transition is the grammatical category of the plural, which determines the semantic specificity of proper names in a different way than that of common names. This is due to the fact that proper names are oriented to a single object, which does not imply multiplicity. The resulting semantic shift leading to partial or complete transition of proper names, is described in this article.