Андресна функція топонімів в українських народних думах

Andrescus Function of Toponyms in Ukrainian People’s Ballads

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the functioning of toponyms in Ukrainian folk ballads. It is noted that toponyms as organic components of ballad lyrics are a source that helps to establish the time and place of the event. Ukrainian ballads appeared in the XV–XVI centuries and were created by kobza players up to and including the XX century. Ballads have always reflected reality, important social events, heroic deeds carried out in the name of the people, and therefore it is in this genre that the most reliable information about the fate of Ukraine is concentrated. Toponyms used in the context of folk ballads have an important place and meaning. This layer of vocabulary is important since it precisely reflects socio-historical events, as well as directly mirrors the people’s figurative understanding of the natural environment’s real specifics. Big cycles in the epic work consist of thoughts about the struggle against the Turkish- Tatar and Polish-noble invaders. A prominent place among the works of the heroic epic belongs to the ballads that reflect the history of Ukraine in the XX century (starting from the revolutionary events of 1905). These works are mostly devoted to specific historical events and personalities. The description of real events is impossible without an indication of the event’s place, a description of the area, and this explains the frequency of toponyms in ballad lyrics, as them perform the function of address. 115 toponyms were analyzed, among which the largest group was oykonymy (60), the group of hydronyms has 30 proper names, a slightly smaller number (25) is the group of horonyms. It was found that the frequency of use of one onym or another is primarily related to the subject and content of Ukrainian folk ballads. The central place in these epic works is the fate of Ukraine, the heroic and tragic life of Ukrainians, in this regard, the token Ukraine is a semantic center around which all the positive and negative, the glorious and tragic, is based. It is proved that one of the functions of toponyms in the texts of Ukrainian people’s ballads is address. Toponyms acquire a generalized, abstract meaning, ie the lyrics of Ukrainian folk ballads contain many toponyms, which add other meanings to their own lexicographically fixed meaning, and these meanings implicitly contain people’s attitudes to the world, environment, ie acquire for them a certain cognitive meaning. In this regard, the study of such toponyms allows us to analyze and understand the linguomentality of our people, their spirit, worldview and world perception.

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