Diachenko N. French Nursery Counting Rhymes: Linguocognitive, Structural and Compositional Aspect.

This thesis offers the complex research of linguocognitive, structural and compositional aspects of French nursery counting rhymes. French nursery counting rhymes are poems of small form with a clear rhythmic and rhyme structure that embody the way of counting and provide a situation of choice. Counting-out games are kind of a "training ground", in which a double meaning is realized, that is, the mental space is outlined by means of a symbolic reinterpretation of the selected segment of the real world The interdisciplinary nature of the mental space in the system of sciences has been elucidated, the scope and meaning of the term "mental space" have been clarified, as well as structural elements and constitutional components of French nursery counting rhymes have been highlighted. From the standpoint of cognitive linguistics, the mental space of French nursery counting rhymes is a conceptual formation that emerges in the course of discoursive activity, is constantly modified and constructed in real time, stored in the memory of participants during the conversation, and embodies the image of how one thinks and speaks about different things: real, predictable or fictional. It is a database of human intellectual and life experiences, via which the thought, expressed in the process of conversation or reading, is filled with meaning.