Types of titles in enigmatic texts by German authors

The article is devoted to the study of the types of titles in enigmatic texts written by German authors in the late 18th - early 20th centuries. It considers the views of domestic and foreign researchers on the functional potential of the title in the structure of a text. The following functions of the title are described: naming, attraction, content-shaping, intertextual, decoding, text-forming, and aesthetic. In addition, linguists' views on the title as one of the means of expressing the orientation of a text toward a particular addressee are outlined. As part of research on the preconditions for the emergence of titles of German-language riddles, the paper focuses on the role of the collection of riddles by Roman poet Symphosius in the development of German-language enigmatic texts and the influence of the works by epigrammatic poet Marcus Valerius Martial on it. The empirical research is based on the methods of component, contextual, and stylistic analyses. A corpus of titles was formed with the help of the directed sampling method. The study of the semantic connection between the title and the enigmatic text encoded in the title made it possible to identify three types of titles: metaphorical enigmatic titles, classical titles, and dedicatory titles. The title-metaphor type is represented by two subgroups. One subgroup consists of titles-metaphors whose motivation is obvious without reading the enigmatic text. Titles-metaphors of the other subgroup, on the contrary, represent an additional mystery for the addressee. Classic titles serve as a semantic convolution of the enigmator; titles-dedications express the addresser's intention through in addressing a particular individual. It is concluded that the title as an atypical structural element of enigmatic text demonstrates semantic diversity and creates an additional pragmatic load for this type of text.