Bohomolets-Barash O. The concept of EUROPE in the linguistic picture of the world of Ukrainians of the XVI–XVIII centuries

The proposed dissertation is a comprehensive study of the history of the formation of the concept of EUROPE in the conceptual picture of the world of Ukrainians of the XVI–XVIII centuries and the specifics of its verbalization in the linguistic picture of the world of that time. The purpose of the work was to identify the means of verbalization of the analyzed concept, to establish its cognitive features, and to clarify the dynamics of the concept’s nominative and semantic spaces during the time under consideration. To achieve this goal, various types of verbalizers of the concept, recorded in multi-genre texts of the Old Ukrainian language, were analyzed, systematized and described, given the specifics of syntagmatic (combinatorial), paradigmatic and epidigmatic (word-creating) connections between them; the nominative field and semantic space of the concept of EUROPE, which reflected the linguistic activity of the Ukrainian society of early modern Ukraine, are modelled. The concept, according to established scientific opinion, is interpreted as a nationally marked and value-oriented unit of the conceptual picture of the world, verbalized in the linguistic system of a certain linguoculture as well as in the linguistic picture of the world of its speakers. The scientific novelty of the research results lies in an attempt to comprehensively analyze the concept of EUROPE in synchronic and diachronic aspects in line with historical conceptology. For the first time in Ukrainian historical linguistics, the features of verbalization of the concept of EUROPE in the Ukrainian language of the XVI–XVIII centuries are highlighted considering verbal and nonverbal means, which allows us to trace the evolution of this concept in the linguistic picture of the world of our ancestors during this period.