Microtoponymy of the Northern Khmelnytskyi Region.

Abstract

The thesis is devoted to the structural, word-formative, lexico-semantic and motivational study of microtoponyms peculiarities of the Northern Khmelnytskyi region.

The study identified: 1) 798 proper names of rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, swamps, wells, springs, and other water objects; 2) 1258 names of settlements, farms, etc., as well as inhabited localities, which are the basis for localization of microtoponymy, and most of them, according to their size, can be qualified as denotations of microoikonyms; 3) 419 nominations of hills, valleys, ravines and other relief objects; 4) 4 640 proper names of streets and squares, nooks and microdistricts, forests, parks, gardens, and other territorial objects.

Generally, 7,115 microtoponyms are described, most of which are modern nominations, but diachronic variants were also recorded (from the end of eighteenth to the end of twentieth century), which later often function as nominations of other denotations. In total, 5 983 main forms and 1 132 variants were reported among the analyzed proper names. The dynamics of microtoponymy of the Northen Khmelnytskyi region is 1,1892 – almost every fifth denotation has two nominations.

Proper names of small geographical objects are stated in Izyaslavskyi (2 631), Polonskyi (989), Slavutskyi (1 454) and Shepetivskyi (2 041) districts of Khmelnitskyi region.

Two main varieties of word-formation are qualified: lexico-semantic (4 231), which dominates over the morphological one (2 857); the method of creating 27 microtoponyms is unknown.

A large part of from-appellative structures, which are commonly registered (3 477), are derived from geographical terms (1 248), names of erections (378), adjectives (679) and florolexems (240). A model «adjective + noun» is quite productive (472). From-onym proper names of small geographical objects of studied region (2 659) are represented primarily by nominations formed from anthroponyms (2 108) and toponyms (441).From-appellative onym structures (935) are foremost a combination of geographical terms and names of erections from-anthroponymical (288) and from-toponymical (264). A combination of prepositions with proper units (134) and various forms of onymes and appellatives are also singled out – both two- (143) and multi-component (105).

The leading motivational relationships for microtoponyms are qualitative (1 578), memorial (1 001), locative (900), possessive (756), essential (642), associative (407), qualitative-essential (425), essential-possessive (281) and locativeessential (264).