Bezpala N. Moral-ethical vocabulary of the Ukrainian language of 16th – 18th centuries.

The dissertation is devoted to a first comprehensive research of a moral-ethical vocabulary of the Ukrainian language of 16th – 18th centuries in the Ukrainian language studies. The reconstruction of a structural organization of the vocabulary to denote virtues and sins in the Ukrainian language of 16th – 18th centuries was done; semantics and semantic load of the lexemes which express the concept about morals and ethics in view of Christian outlook were described; the composition of a moral-ethical vocabulary according to its origin was analyzed; the ways of its formation and historical perspectives of lexical units were identified; the connection with new Ukrainian literary language was grounded. Some specific aspects of vocabulary studying in diachrony was substantiated in the work, the vocabulary which is based on general principles of working on a lexical composition of the language, but the materials documented in written monuments do not enable to define a semantic structure of a word, its collocations, particularly in case of single fixation. In this connection, the description of thematic groups of vocabulary in diachrony is usually the reconstruction when all the elements of a structure can be restored. An important condition of vocabulary studying in diachrony is the ability to analyze a word taking into consideration some specific aspects of native speakers’ language consciousness in a chosen period for the research, in particular, the perception of church-Slavic language by Ukrainian community of 16th – 18th centuries as «a cultivated kind of a native language» rather than a strange one. The vocabulary of a moral-ethical sphere shows the world vision of the Ukrainians, their views of man and world, a place of man in the world, an attitude to God and man. The thematic group under study demonstrates a historical succession of the vocabulary to denote the concepts associated with morals and ethics.