Nadya I. Structural-stylistic and lexical-semantic features of testamentary documentation (on the data of the 17th - 18th centuries testaments).

The focus of dissertation is the Ukrainian testaments of the end of the 17th and 18th centuries. The author studies the written documents of the mentioned period. The actuality of the historical written documents' research is determined by the necessity to examine all the aspects of the Ukrainian official papers. Drawing on the basics of the comparative textual analysis the author determines the peculiarities of structure and defines linguistic features of different types of testaments. The research determines the similarities in testaments' composition as well as the differences in the way of writing clauses due to the writers' personal styles. The author examines the Ukrainian testamentary formulas' evolution bearing influence of the related official papers. The discontinuity of the formulas and their dispersion beyond the clauses result from the complicated formation of the testaments' genre context combining the elements of government-administrative, commercial, economic documentation and the writers' personal confessions. The author offers the lexical-semantic classification of the Ukrainian testaments, analyses the hand-written documents' linguistic richness and stylistic peculiarities riding on the genre features. Thedissertation emphasizes the specific character of the hand-written documents' linguistic traditions resulted from the testaments basic formulas' observation. The research also notes the genre expressiveness of the testament's vocabulary.