Tkachenko N. Functional semantic field “space” in the British and American variants of the English language: cultural linguistic approach.

The thesis represents the complex, multiparadigmal approach to investigating the cultural linguistic representations of the functional semantic field (FSF) “space” in the British and American variants of English. Methods and criteria of investigating the FSF “space” were devised. The FSF “space” was built with the layes of the core and periphery, the thematic groups, synonymic sets and other correlations and oppositioms were formed and analyzed, the British appelatives paradigms were contrasted to the American paradigms. The specific structure, semantics and functioning of the British and American apellatives and toponyms under analyses were established, the kinds of semantic changes in the texts of different styles and genres were described, and the principal tendencies of the space names functional semantics development were stated. The elements of the statistic and associative analysis were applied to verify for the territorial frequency of the dominants and nationally marked nominations. The classification criteria were devised to classify the investigated language units. The British and American linguistic culture codes characterizing space names were described and their function was defined.