STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF THE LEICESTERSHIRE PLACE NAMES

Abstract

The etymology of the place names can be the key to the cultural aspect of the discourse semantics. The integral description of the place names of the county of Leicestershire (England) is in the focus of our research. The aim is to analyze the etymology of the place names of the county, to compare the factors of the formations of the place names, to define the formants of the place names, and to mark their position in the word-building models of the place names.

The topicality of our investigation is motivated by the necessity of an integral description of the territorial units in language and tourism advertisement discourse and the necessity to study the dynamics of the shifts in the semantics of oikonyms used in general and professional discourse registers..

The task is to define the source language of the place name formants, its origin and the way of borrowing. The topicality of the research lies in the necessity of elaborating of Glossary of place names of the county Leicestershire.

To reach the end-goal some linguistic methods are used: the etymological analysis to determine the source language of the formants, the derivative analysis to study the word-building models of place names and the quantitative analysis to reveal quantitative features of the formants in the place names structure.

The research revealed that the formants in place name structure can be registered in the initial, medial and final positions. The place names reflect the historical changes, characteristics of the local places and the cultural conceptions and world-view of the people. The place names under study may form the place names system in the English or British worldview on the basis of their cognitive information.

The perspective of the research is to analyse of the place names and proof that the place name shifts from general name, acquires all features of the geographic name and isolates from the general units in tourism advertising discourse.