Ananchenko O. Linguistic cultural concept RELIGION in English and Ukrainian.

The thesis concerns itself with the linguistic cultural analysis of the semantic and structural peculiarities of the lexical means representing the concept RELIGION in English and Ukrainian. The criteria for the selection of the lexical units verbalizing the concept formulated, the corpus of the lexical units under analysis has been compiled. The meaningful layer of the linguistic cultural concept RELIGION in English and Ukrainian has been modelled. The semantics of the lexical means representing the meaningful layer has been studied with changes in their semantic structure described. The convergent and divergent characteristics of the language units under study have been revealed. There have been singled out three interrelated and interdependent conceptual spheres in the structure of the meaningful layer of the linguistic cultural concept RELIGION, namely SPIRITUAL WORLD, PERSON, MATERIAL WORLD. Every sphere has proved to be constituted of a certain number of meaningful units comprising semantic clusters and reflecting the meaning of the corresponding conceptual sphere. The evolution of the notion 'religion' in the English and Ukrainian models of the world has been traced. Cognitive interpretation of the results of semantic study of the lexical units verbalizing the concept RELIGION has enabled to work out its nominative core that coincides in the contrasted languages and to single out cognitive features of the concept RELIGION as a mental unit. The predominant ways of borrowing of the lexical means representing the concept RELIGION in English and Ukrainian have been identified, the productivity of the structural types of the lexemes under analysis has been determined.