Information on the thesis

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 the Modern English Language. The multiparadigmal
approach to studying the FSF “space” includes structural semantic, functional semantic,
cultural linguistic approaches as well as elements of contrastive, pragmalinguistic,
psycholinguistic and some other aрproaches.
Methods and the criteria of investigating units of the FSF “space” were devised. The
FSF “space” was built with the layes of the core and periphery, the thematical groups,
synonymic sets and other correlations and oppositions were formed and analyzed. The
specifics of structure, semantics and functioning of the British and American apellatives
and toponyms denoting space was established; the classification criteria of the units under
analysis were devised to classify the investigated language units; the British and American
linguistic culture codes characterizing space names were described and their functions
were defined. British appelatives paradigms were contrasted to the American paradigms.
The elements of the statisitic and associative analysis were applied to verify for the
territorial frequency of the dominants and nationally marked nominations.
The research was conducted in five stages. It was stated that British and American
nominations of space reveal common аnd different features. Common features include the
principal stock of space lexics, cultural linguistic representations (CLR), lexico-semantic
variants (LSV), culture codes, borrowings, doublets, etc. The contrasted CLR demonstrate
some difference not only in their structural, but also in the functional semantics:
analogues, divergents and analogues-divergents (analogues which differ in semantics),
determined by the social, political and economic factors. Еthnic and social factors
motivating culture codes and the role of space code in creating other culture codes were
revealed. The notions of the cultural linguistic function, cyclicity of space nominations,
analogue-divergent, cultural linguistic personality, notions of the national spirit, some
cultural linguistic figures of speech and cultural linguistic deixis were introduced in the
analysis of the CLR semantics.
The multiparadigmal analysis of the CLR in the texts of the business, scientific,
publicity and fiction styles confirms the common stock of the British and American
English and differenciation of LRP in the functional contexts.
The common regularities of the space representations development include the
processes of transsemanticity and transfunctionality, nominalization, toponymization, high
combinability on the lexical and syntactic levels, reducing the number of apellatives in
toponyms, territorial lacunes, borrowings, toponymic doublets and common culture codes.
The соmmon tendencies in developing CLR of the FSF “space” in the British and
American English include functional semantic differenciation, integrative cross-cultural
processes, which reveal themselves in the tendency to monocemanticity for the purpose of
stylistic differenciation, aging and archaization of the British historical semantics
influenced by ecological, economic and social factors; centripetal processes of attracting
nominations of other FSF to denote space, centifugal tendencies to the spatial meaning
loss in socio-cultural contexts, especially in space names conversives, devoid of national
colouring, the socio-cultural limitation on the natural space names usage or frequency and
actualizing the artificial space names connected with human activity on the criteria of
topical actuality and popularity.
This investigation conceptualize the British culture as more historical and the
American culture as inheriting, more democratic, technogenic and pragmatic in creating
functional space nominations. The results of this research justify the hypothesis “language
is determined by culture” realized in the conception of the interrelated functional styles,
polyethnithity and interaction of the British-American linguistic culture in creating CLR.
Кey words: functional semantic field, multiparadigmal, variants of English, cultural
linguistics, space representation.