Dolbina K. Cognitive Aspects of Zoonymic Proper Name Functioning.

The thesis presents a multivector analysis of the cognitive aspects of zoonymic proper name functioning. A comprehensive study of the structure, semantics, motivation of zoonyms simultaneously with the study of their conceptualization and categorization in the mental lexicon of Ukrainian, English and Russian languages speakers contributes to the definition of universal and ethnospecific features of multilingual zoonymic concepts in the Ukrainian, English and Russian language and conceptual maps of the world.The study describes the specific zoonymic vocabulary in language and speech based on structural and semantic features. The motivational structure of the three zoonymicons which belong to the analyzed languages with the establishment of both universal and ethnospecific features has been highlighted. The associative field of zoonymic concepts has been formed and characterized with the help of the free associative experiment. The author determined the gestalt cores of associative zoonymic fields. The thesis also represents the establishment of universal and distinctive features of zoonymic frames of English, Ukrainian and Russian native speakers.