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42I Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 2021 14(4): 478-488
DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-0735 УДК 81-11
Review of Toponymic Studies of Altai and Siberia in the Anthropocentric Paradigm
Svetlana P. Vasil'evaa and Lidia M. Dmitrievab*
aKrasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V.P. Astafiev Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation bAltai State University Barnaul, Russian Federation
Received 31.05.2020, received in revised form 31.01.2021, accepted 18.03.2021
Abstract. At the turn of the 20th-21st centuries there appeared a trend of appeal to the anthropocentric paradigm for scientific knowledge in the toponymic studies. In the previous period, the toponymic studies relied upon the properties of toponyms as language units at the semantic, structural, and grammatical levels. At the same time, the ethnocultural aspect of the geographic names manifesting the ethnocultural stereotypes for exploring the world, and, wider, for the worldview of both contemplating man and acting man remained outside the scope of linguistic studies.
Rooted in the integrative approach to analysis of linguistic phenomena, the anthropocentrism principles determined a qualitatively new stage of research based on activating the cognitive structures of mental knowledge.
Thus, the presented review shows that toponyms are an important source of ethnocultural information that can be extracted through cognitive modelling and linguistic and cultural interpretation within the framework of the anthropocentric paradigm. In the future, the applied methods of toponymic research can be extrapolated to other sources of linguistic and cultural information.
Keywords: toponym, anthropocentric paradigm, ethnolinguistic and cultural aspect, space, concept, mental stereotype, mental image, toponymic associations, world outlook, toponymic personality, ethnocultural contacts.
Research area: philology.
Citation: Vasil'eva, S.P., Dmitrieva, L.M. (2021). Review of toponymic studies ofAltai and Siberia in the anthropocentric paradigm. J. Sib. Fed. Univ. Humanit. Soc. Sci., 14(4), 478-488. DOI: 10.17516/19971370-0735.
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: vasileva@kspu.ru, dmitrlm@mail.ru ORCID: 0000-0003-1091-4829 (Vasil'eva)
Обзор топонимических исследований Алтая и Сибири в антропоцентрической парадигме
С. П. Васильева3, Л. М. Дмитриева6
аКрасноярский государственный педагогический университет
им. В. П. Астафьева
Российская Федерация, Красноярск
бАлтайский государственный университет
Российская Федерация, Барнаул
Аннотация. На рубеже ХХ-ХХ1 веков в области топонимических исследований отмечается переход к антропоцентрической парадигме научного знания. Предшествующий период в изучении топонимических систем основывался на исследовании системных признаков топонимов как языковых единиц на семантическом, структурном, грамматическом уровнях. При этом вне поля зрения языковедов оставался этнокультурный аспект географических названий, отражающих этнокультурные стереотипы освоения пространства, шире - картины мира человека не только созерцающего, но и действующего.
Принципы антропоцентризма, основанные на интегративном подходе к анализу языковых явлений, обусловили качественно новый этап в исследованиях, основанных на активизации когнитивных структур ментального знания.
Таким образом, представленные в обзоре исследования свидетельствуют о том, что топонимия являет собой важный источник этнокультурной информации, которая может быть извлечена путем когнитивного моделирования и лингвокультурологической интерпретации в рамках антропоцентрической парадигмы.
В перспективе применяемые методы топонимических исследований могут быть экстраполированы на другие источники лингвокультурной информации.
Ключевые слова: топоним, антропоцентрическая парадигма, этнолингвокультурный аспект, пространство, концепт, ментальный стереотип, ментальный образ, топонимические ассоциации, картина мира, топонимическая личность, этнокультурные контакты.
Научная специальность: 10.00.00 - филологические науки.
Introduction
In the modern linguistics of the last decades of the 20th - early 21st century, a trend of turning to the anthropocentric paradigm for the knowledge of the world based on the "man - language - worldview" triad began to appear.
This yielded an inevitable application of the cognitive methods for the studies of language units, linguocultural interpretation of meaning, the ethnocultural status of a word as a language unit within the scope of toponyms.
Focusing on regional toponyms was typical for the previous period of toponym-
ic studies, which created both qualitative and quantitative grounds for the paradigm switch.
In the 1960-80s, the system-centric approach was applied in the studies of top-onyms of different regions of the country (R.A. Ageeva, V.D. Bondaletov, I.A. Vo-rob'eva, V.A. Zhuchkevich, A.I. Lebe-deva, A.K. Matveev, O.T. Molchanova, V.A. Nikonov, Z.P. Nikulina, N.V. Podol-skaia, S.A. Polkovnikova, E.N. Poliako-va, E.M. Pospelov, A.I. Popov, G.Ia. Simi-na, G.P. Smolitskaia, A.V. Superanskaya, N.K. Frolov and others).
The linguistic studies of the Siberian toponyms in the first half of the 20th century are mostly associated with the names of V.B. Shostakovich, N.Ia. Marr. and, most of all, A.P. Dul'zon, who developed a method for the analysis of substrate toponyms of Siberia, proved the presence of such tiers of aborigine toponyms as Chulym-Turkic, Ket, and Indo-European, and also described the range of the Paleo-Asiatic toponyms and their stratigraphy. His students and successors came up with the systematic description of both substrate and Russian toponyms of West Siberia (I.A. Vo-rob'eva, N.L. Frolov, M.F. Rozen, E.G. Bekker, K.F. Gritsenko, O.T. Molchanova and others).
In the second half of the 20th century, the new information of the Russian Altai and Siberian toponyms that had never previously been an object of a special toponymic analysis was made known. As a rule, in that period the system-centric approach covered the entirety of the toponyms of the region that were grouped into multiple tiers by types of the geographic items, by the semantic types of the topographic bases and by structural models. The results made up a quantitatively general picture of structural and semantic types of Russian toponyms and their nomination principles. The regional differences were studied quantitively, by the structural and semantic types found within a given territory.
This was a period when a great lexicographic work was being done. The Siberian toponyms were recorded in a number of dictionaries, including "Geographic names of the Tyumen North" by A.K. Matveev (Matveev, 1997); "Geographic names of the Yenisey Siberia" by M.N. Mel'kheev (Mel'kheev, 1986); "Toponymic dictionary of the Khakass-Minusinsk Territory" by V.Ia. Butanaev (Bu-tanaev, 1995); "Geographic terms of West Siberia" by M.F. Rozen and A.M. Malolet-ko (Rozen, Maloletko, 1986); "Why are they named so?" by Iu.R. Kislovskii (Kislovskii, 1999); "Toponym and microtoponym dictionary of the Krasnoyarsk Territory" (edited by S.P. Vasil'eva) (Vasil'eva et al., 2000); in the dissertation studies "Toponyms of the Khakass-Minusinsk Hollow" by M.A. Zhevlov (Zhevlov, 1984); "Oronyms of Khakassia" by
R.D. Sunchugashev (Sunchugashev, 1999); "Russian oronyms of Altai in the nomination aspect" by T.V. Chernyshova (Chernyshova, 1988); "Russian Toponyms of the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory" by V.N. Mal'tseva (Mal'tseva, 1995), "Evolution and variation of Russian oikonyms of the Sverdlovsk Oblast" by L.P. Matei (Matei, 1991), "Toponyms and geographic nomenclature of the Amur Region" by T.N. Chernoraeva (Chernoraeva, 2002). The listed works present a significant stage in the regional toponymic studies and in the search for the new aspects of studies, that made an important contribution to the common knowledge of the regional worldview.
The studies of the toponyms of the regions beyond the Urals appear unique because, due to the historical specificity, the Siberian and Altai toponymic corpus development is a natural laboratory of the toponymic system formation which had always remained understudied. In her works dedicated to the onomastic problems, I.A. Vorob'eva justified the need to approach the Altai toponyms as a continuously developing territorial toponymic system (Dmitrieva, 2002).
The studies of the Ural, Siberian, and Far Eastern toponyms made within the same concept, revealed a certain scope of problems and attempted to get beyond that. In particular, the paper titled "Russian hydronyms and oikonyms of the Obva River in the Western Urals" by O.V. Gordeeva (Gordeeva, 1998) presents the specificity of hydronyms functioning, describes the variability and reasons for their emergence: the influence of the local subdialects, adoption of foreign words, as well as typically toponymic trends (influence of the toponymic models, replacement of ^ with ^ in the oikonyms with the -оe-//-еe-//-ин suffixes), notes the effect made by the scope of functioning (documents, maps, live speech), and designates folkloric texts as an additional scope of toponyms functioning with a conclusion that in toponymic legends, toponyms play the key plot-forming role.
In the dissertation study titled "Oronyms of Khakassia" by R.D. Sunchugashev where the ethnolinguistic trend is presented (Sunchuga-shev, 1999), the author attempts to identify a
direct or indirect connection of the orographic names with the practical activity of man. He analyzes the interesting facts of oronym nomination that display the specific Khakassian vision of the world, for example, the name of Morsy-gas mountain (Anzhul village, Tashtypsky District) is interpreted as the Badger (according to the locals, in autumn when birch trees turn yellow and the coniferous trees remain green, the mountain appears "striped"); the other example is the microtoponym of Sagay Kholl (Sagay Ravine) that originates from the name of one Khakassian tribal group. The ritual-associated vocabulary also found its place in the Khakas-sian oronyms: for example, Yzykh Tag (yzykh "sacred, venerable") (Sunchugashev, 1999: 21). The author defines ethnolinguistic information as that associated with the ethnogenetic stratification, leaving the language- and culture-specific, cultural-historical stratigraphy outside.
Specific linguistic and culture problems are set in the monograph "Onomastics of the Baikal Region" written by L.V. Shulunova during her research work on the doctor thesis "Buryat Onomastics" (Shulunova, 1995); it focuses on the proper names used by the Bury-ats living in the ethnic Buryatia territory, i.e., the Republic of Buryatia, Irkutsk and Chita Oblasts. The paper appears valuable for eth-nolinguistics for the selection of the object for the research and the way it explores the ethnic properties of onyms at the semantic, structural, and linguocultural levels. As a result of studying the regional onomastics at the linguocultur-al level, the author concludes that the onomas-tic concepts from different epochs, territories, and languages are universal.
The research of "Morphemics and semantics of the Russian toponyms of the Tyumen Ob Region" was a significant input to the traditional description of the regional toponymic systems not only due to the abundance of the Russian regional toponymic material presented but also thanks to the way of presentation, firstly, within the lexical-semantic group that accumulates a variety of the generic toponymic concepts; secondly, because of the semantic type representing the generic and specific toponym-ic concepts; thirdly, because of toposememes (or, in the broader sense, of the semantic-top-
onymic model) that "express the material status of a concept or a word as a unit of meaning that corresponds to a unit of sound (expression)" (Frolov, 1996: 42-43). The monograph by N.K. Frolov summarized the system-centric studies of the regional toponyms of that period and completed the transition to a new research paradigm.
There is no doubt that by the end of the 20th century, the structural, semantic, and functional properties of toponyms had been described in a quite successful way, but the researchers still admit that the spiritual and creative intentions of the nominators expressed in the toponyms and formed in the process of cognition of the reality were left behind.
To continue the toponymic studies in the 21st century, the students and successors of I.A. Vorob'eva, A.K. Matveev, N.K. Frolov, L.V. Shulunova are elaborating the idea of describing the toponymic system at a new linguistic and methodological level.
Theoretical framework
At the modern level, the onomastic research problems are determined by the multiple aspects of the form and content of the onyms. The onomastic studies of the 20th-21st centuries focus more on the cultural-historical aspect of the proper names (G.P. Smolitskaia, M.V. Gorbanevskii) interpreted also as country-specific (E.M. Vereshchagin, V.G. Kosto-marov, V.D. Bondaletov), linguoculturologi-cal (V.P. Neroznak, M.V. Gorbanevskii et al.), ethnolinguistic (N.I. Tolstoi, V.N. Toporov, A.S. Gerd, N.K. Frolov, E.L. Berezovich et al.), cognitive (M.E. Rut, M.V. Golomidova, L.M. Dmitrieva etc.). The interest in the eth-nocultural meaning of the language units is determined by the deficit of the explaining capacity of the system-centric paradigm that does not take the role of man, his/her cognitive and mental intention to develop the linguistic worl-dview into account.
The anthropological linguistics assumes the development of a unified theory of man and language based on the following principles:
1) cognition of man would not be complete or even possible without studying the language;
2) the nature of language can be comprehended
and explained only based on the comprehension of man and his worldview. The linguistic worldview is studied within the scope of ideas expressed by W. von Humboldt, L. Weisgerber, E. Sapir, B. Whorf, A. Zholkovsky, I.A. Melchuk, Iu.D. Apresian, N.D. Arutiun-ova, G.V. Kolshansky, N.I. Tolstoi, S.M. Tol-staia, V.Vs. Ivanov, V.N. Toporov, T.V. Tsiv'ian, T.V. Bulygina, A.D. Shmelev. Anthropological linguistics belongs to the fundamental branches of linguistics that express the specificity of man and human being, their relations with the world and the underlying conditions of their existence in the world.
Discussion
Summarizing the toponymic studies of the Trans-Ural Territory, it is impossible to ignore one of the most significant onomastic schools, which is the Ural School of Onomastics founded in 1961 by the Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.K. Matveev. Currently, the school is developing under the supervision of Professor M.E. Rut. The school members are researching the interregional lexical and onomastic relations between the Russian North, Russian Northwest, Upper Volga Territory, the Urals and West Siberia (USO).
The Ural School of Onomastics is still making a huge impact on the toponymic studies of Altai and Siberia. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the first studies of the Russian North and Ural toponyms in the anthropocentric paradigm carried out by the representatives of this school: M.E. Rut with her "Figurative nomination in Russian language" (Rut, 1992), E.L. Berezovich - "Toponyms of the Russian North: ethnolinguistic studies" (Berezovich, 1998), M.V. Golomidova - "Artificial nomination in Russian onomastics" (Golomidova, 1998), that traditionally manifest the main principles of the school: "A linguistic study shall be based on the reconstruction of the history and culture of the ethnos" (Berezovich et al., 2006; Skuridina, 2015). The successors of A.K. Matveev study toponyms as a product of human consciousness, its experience and space-cognising activity. They attempt to classify the toponyms in the way that "in addition to
classifying the toponyms traditionally by their type and function, introduces a new aspect, the functioning of the name in the human consciousness, as it is the consciousness that carries the system-forming function" (Dmitrieva, 2002: 7).
The figurative nomination problems determined on the basis of Russian toponyms became the research object for M.E. Rut who, while formulating the research objectives, wrote: "Every new nominative unit is a piece of information that introduces the nominator. A figurative name is abundant in such knowledge. A figurative nomination system is a mirror of the proper and sensual ideas of a subject about the world. If the nomination subject is an ethnos, the system-atization of the nomination images will reveal the basic properties of the ethnic worldview. Reconstruction of the ideas of the surrounding reality and the place the man occupies in it, of the ideas manifested in the figurative names, became another objective of the research" (Rut, 1992: 4).
The main achievement of E.L. Berezovich was the "justification of the ethnolinguistic top-onymic study principles and the technology of explicating ethnocultural information out of the toponymic material" (Berezovich, 1999: 5).
Under the new paradigms, the methods and objectives of toponymic studies underwent a certain change. For example, in her paper entitled "Russian toponyms in the ethnolinguistic aspect", E.L. Berezovich wrote that defining the originality of toponyms means finding a linguistic source of information of the spiritual culture of the nation; the main methods of her studies were semantic reconstruction and conceptual analysis. In the research, "for the first time, there were studied the real geographic and unreal sacral space concepts represented in the top-onymicon; the versions of the information about the space explicated based on the toponyms and folklore were compared" (Berezovich, 1999: 7).
The paper by E.L. Berezovich was such a major milestone for further studies that it was republished in 2009. In the introduction to the 2nd edition, the author remarked that during the transition to the new paradigm, the understanding of ethnolinguistics as a science became ambiguous, divided into the "broad" and "narrow"
ways of interpretation that, nevertheless, were different from the previous one: "in any case, any ethnolinguistic study is a multi-aspect research. It may be focused either on describing this or that fragment of the traditional world-view based on the data of different substantial codes of the culture, or the identification of the specificity of manifesting the spiritual culture in the language (against other substantial codes)" (Berezovich, 2009: 8).
"Artificial nomination in Russian onomas-tics" by M.V. Golomidova (Golomidova, 1998) elaborates on the specific processes that occur inside the nominator's consciousness, the results of which are the most vivid in the onymic nomination. The author intended to solve the following problems: "determine the action-information structures involved in the proper names' development; specify the notion of 'artificial nomination' and describe the dichotomy of 'natural vs artificial nomination'; identify the Russian onomastic space zones that are the priority for the artificial nomination, as well as the varieties of names that are made up along with that" (Golomidova, 1998: 9). The author studies the name creation process based on the main types of names, anthroponyms and toponyms, outlining the models, strategies, and tactics of artificial nomination, identifying the extralin-guistic (historical, social, cultural), cognitive and linguistic conditions for the emergence of particular onymic units.
The works of the representatives of the Ural School of Onomastics laid the foundation for the development of anthropocentrism principles in topoonomastics. In the early 21st century, regional toponymic systems of Altai and Siberia were carried out by L.M. Dmitrie-va (2003) - Altai, I.S. Karabulatova (2002), N.V. Labunets (2007) - West Siberia, S.P. Vasil'eva (2006), T.I. Fedotova (2012) - East Siberia.
The methodological framework of the research "Ontological and mental being of a top-onymic system (based on Russian toponyms of Altai)" by L.M. Dmitrieva (Dmitrieva, 2002), was the comprehensive linguistic approach including the elements of the cognitive and culturological analysis of the linguistic phenomena.
The toponymic microsystem is interpreted by the author as the integrity of age, gender and professional subensembles.
Following E.L. Berezovich, L.M. Dmitrie-va presents the centre of the toponymic world-view as a spatial concept regarded from three points: 1) three-dimensional physical space as a whole; 2) mental space as the integrity of mental representations corresponding to different scopes of human knowledge; 3) linguistic space as a special type of space that encompasses some linguistic categories and the entire system of language, e.g. parts of speech, synonymic and antonymic chains. The concept of space, an essential concept for the linguistic consciousness of a toponymic personality, is understood as a "mental formation, a focus of spatial reflections, a cognitive structure, including operative consciousness units of different substrates" (Dmitrieva, 2002: 88).
The structure of space is presented in the research as a set of three models (types): of the route-related, radial, and being-related qua-si-space.
The ways space differentiation may be presented are studied through the toponymic contexts. The linguistic-cognitive way of forming the mental stereotypes of space reflection implies analyzing the utterances of the dialect-speakers about the objects characterized by a regional, social, and cultural specificity.
"The first river is the Bela, as it comes from Belki, and the name was given for the water, and the water is clear and pure (model B, nuclear level). There is another river, the Krok-holikha, as there are lots of ducks we call kro-khal. The Kopalukha flows into the Bela (model A, type 2). Kopalukha is an old word for a woodgrouse; there used to be lots of them there (model C, type 2, 3)" (Dmitrieva, 2002: 100).
The study by L.M. Dmitrieva vividly demonstrates the role of the nominating subject in the space image development. The author concludes that "In the cognition process, the toponymic worldview replaces and presents the ontological form of existence of the landscape reality in the human consciousness" (Dmitrieva, 2002: 120).
This way, the mental being of the common regional toponymic system appears as an open,
dynamic, continual network of interacting microsystems formed in the consciousness of a toponymic personality based on the cognitive and pragmatic context and the intercrossing peripheral zones (Dmitrieva, 2002: 231).
The further idea of studying the toponymic system based on the "toponymic personality" concept was brilliantly put into practice in the dissertation of E.V. Makarova "Regional toponymic personality (based on the Russian toponyms of Altai)" (Makarova, 2004) supervised by L.M. Dmitrieva.
E.V. Makarova developed a concept for the description of a "regional toponymic personality" as a basic linguocultural category. For the research, the author selected a discourse-based construction method. This piece of work is remarkable for encompassing the texts, spatial descriptions presenting the functioning of toponyms in the language and culture of the region, along with the corpus of verbal and associative reactions to the toponymic stimuli.
The author defines the regional toponym-ic personality as a component of the linguistic personality. The research evaluates an algorithm for the linguoculturological study of toponyms "in the aspect of functioning in the consciousness and speech of the language speakers" (Makarova, 2004).
The scholarly importance of the research by E.V. Makarova is the transformation of the discreet toponymic material in the model of the cognitive and mental structures of the language consciousness, manifesting the creative cognitive activity of the language speaker and culture carrier.
The regional toponymic personality is presented by the author in two capacities: the acting man and the contemplating man. The first presents the toponymic personality that produces the actual toponymic model with the semantic dominant of "relation of the object to man" (Kuzmin wood), "practical property of the object" (Krivoi garden), "spatial location of the object" (Verkhniaia Arbaita), "temporal status of the object" (Novaia and Staraia village). The contemplating man manifests himself in the aspect of "contemplation, reflection, high moral and ontological mindsets" (Ma-karova, 2004: 16).
The relevance of the research carried out by E.V. Makarova is in the development of the linguistic personality theory and the successful application of the principles for modelling the toponymic personality as its component.
The study entitled "Russian toponyms in the ethnopsycholinguistic aspect" (Karabu-latova, 2002b) is based on the description of toponymic associations. The toponymic system is studied by the author from the point of view of the "ethno-linguocultural contacts" registered in the Russian toponyms in the polyethnic regions of West Siberia. The work provides a theoretic description and analysis of the verbal associations recorded in the dictionary of toponymic associations of the Tyumen Oblast. The researcher focuses on the phenomenon of interpretation and psychological perception of the foreign names by Russian language speakers.
To fulfil this objective, the author performed a psycholinguistic experiment and analysed the associations to the non-Russian top-onym stimuli. The experiment involved both Russian speakers and Russian-Khanty, Russian-Tatar bilinguals.
The main concept of the toponymic associations' dictionary by I.S. Karabulatova is the idea that the psycholinguistic models of speech make it possible to comprehend the "mechanisms of verbal and cogitative activity and language itself" (Karabulatova, 2002a: 17). The author believes that the main value of the associative method of studying toponyms is its capacity for identifying various connections of the toponym with other words of the vocabulary.
The outcomes and specificity of interaction between the ethnoses of the West Siberia were the main objects of the integrative description of the folk geographic terminology by N.V. Labunets - "Russian geographic terminology in the language contact situation" (La-bunets, 2007). The research appears especially relevant for raising the problem of "insiders" and "outsiders" in the linguistic space of the region. Focusing on the identification of the local specificity of the Tyumen geographic terminology used in the linguistic contact situation, the author develops integrative methods of dialect
studies including "ideographic commenting, historical and dialectological insights, etymological analysis, sociolinguistic aspects of approaching the studies of the language 'borderzone'" (Labunets, 2007: 47).
As a result of the integrative description of the folk geographic terminology, a series of linguistic contact models functioning throughout the contact history were identified. In a certain period of historical development, the scope of foreign word adoption for Russian monolin-guals could expand or contract depending on the process of integrating the adopted units into the linguistic system. The complex interaction between Russians and the indigenous people in different periods had different outcomes; according to the historical documents, Russians had some passive knowledge of the language spoken by the neighbouring ethnos. For the bilingual indigenous people, the contact resulted not only in the secondary language spoken by the bilinguals but also in the changes in the primary language affected by the secondary (La-bunets, 2007: 21).
The author remarks that the Russian old-settlers remained monolingual almost throughout entire West Siberian history, while the indigenous people contacting them were mostly bilingual. Generally, the "Linguistic borderzone of Tyumen can be described as an antinomy, a bipolar space of opposing divergent-convergent tendencies. At the present moment, both Russian and Turkic gene pool develop as relatively isolated and endemic systems not exposed to a serious influence of the contiguous co-functioning languages on their 'core' systems regardless of the active process of convergence" (Labunets, 2007: 46).
The research proceedings were published in the "Tyumen Oblast folk geographic terminology dictionary" (Labunets, 2003).
In her dissertation entitled "Russian top-onyms of the Yenisey Siberia: the worldview" (Vasil'eva, 2006), S.P. Vasil'eva strives to unveil the mental reception stereotypes and the reception and comprehension of the realities encompassed in the Yenisey Siberia toponyms through the reconstruction of the worldview based on structuring the mental images of Man, Space, and River.
Turning to the toponymic analysis, the author relies upon the ontological core of the toponym as a verbal sign that is determined by the nomination of the actual objects of reality based on apperception. The gnoseological (cognitive) aspect of the toponym is determined by the high level of its informative-ness (sign + its denotation and meaning). The epistemological concept of the toponym (from the consciousness point of view) lies in the relationship between the subject matter and the image of the object (idea); at the same time, the image of the subject matter encompassed by the toponym is refined with the idea that underlies the geographic term, an integral element of the toponymic object idea (and sometimes, its component). The image of the human community (ethnos) expressed through the language (toponyms) makes up an objectified image of the subject matter (Vasil'eva, 2006: 42).
Turning to a mental image as a unit of the world knowledge representation is a result of a search for an adequate shape for the transition from the semantic level to the mental one. Presented by the author, a mental image is a way of representing knowledge, a voluminous interim structure between language and consciousness based on an ontological essence of the toponym as a linguistic sign that exists to denote the objects of reality, their gnoseological (toponym is a sign + denotation and meaning) and episte-mological (expressing the relations between the subject matter and the perception of it) properties (Vasil'eva, 2006: 59).
To model the mental ideas of the Yenisey Siberians, the author used the following analysis algorithm: toponym ^ semantic field ^ ideographic field ^ mental image ^ world outlook. Modelling the toponymic world outlook through structuring the mental images, the author considers the linguistic (toponymic) and conceptual (mental) world models' junction points, taking the social nature of the toponym as a sign into consideration, respecting its connection with the 1) cultural and historical background knowledge, 2) irrational, sensual-empirical knowledge (Vasil'eva, 2006: 53).
As a result of the analysis, the specific factors that determined the manifestation of the regional character of the Yenisey Siberia
toponymic worldview were outlined, with the major one being the space-forming role of the river (the Yenisey) and the nature-transforming, economic and industrial activity of man.
Along with the systematic description, the cognitive approach is employed in the research "Russian toponymic system of the East Transbaikal Territory" by T.V. Fedotova (2012). The author comes up with a set of approaches to describing a toponymic system: "1) cultural-historical approach that enables tracing the development stages of Russian toponyms in the period of the Transbaikal exploration; 2) cognitive-semantic approach that demonstrates the outcomes of the sensual, empirical and mental experience of man manifested in the toponyms; 3) structural and word-building approach used for modelling the derivation types and processes that took place in the Russian toponymicon development; 4) method of reconstructing the initial motives and nomination sources of Russian toponyms" (Fedotova, 2012). The scope of material studied by T.V. Fedotova includes both originally Russian and "substrate and adopted toponyms from the point of view of adoption through inter-linguistic contacts". The researcher focuses on the representation in the toponymic units of the cognitive, mental, and economic experience of the Russian migrants acquired in the inter-linguistic contacts with the local population. The principles listed above enable the author to present the toponymic system of the East Transbaikal territory as a specific system that reflects the factors of various levels: geographic, chronological and linguistic.
Conclusion
Therefore, the anthropocentric paradigm employed in the mentioned studies determined
References
the possibility of revealing the deeper structures of the knowledge encompassed in the toponymicon.
The ethnocultural studies carried out in Altai and Siberia make it possible to conclude that toponyms are a valuable source of lin-guocultural information that may be extracted within the anthropocentric paradigm with a variety of methods, including the analysis of "toponymic contexts" (L.M. Dmitrieva), analysis of discourse (texts, spatial descriptions presenting the functioning of the top-onymic units in the language and the regional culture) (E.V. Makarova), analysis of associations (I.S. Karabulatova), based on the semantic analysis of a toponym as a linguistic sign that manifests its specificity with a given semantic domain (S.P. Vasil'eva), based on the integrative analysis of geographic terms in the ethno-linguistic contacts (N.V. Labunets), based on the comprehensive approach to a toponym as a world cognition fact (T.V. Fe-dotova).
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The collected results prove the efficiency of the studies for the further extrapolation on other sources of linguocultural information representing various substantional culture codes.
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