Abstract:
Diminutiveness in the text discussed in a variety of modes of Ukrainian nomination and in the correlation with other conceptual categories. Meaning of diminution links the category of diminutiveness with the categories of unmaturity, family and social hierarchy (‘parent-child’: коваль and коваленко, ковалiвна - a son and daughter of a smith, ткач and ткаченко - apprentice, assistant of weaver, young weaver). Decrease can not only creature, object, but also the action, attribute 1сти ‘to eat’ - Чстоньки, зелений ‘green’ - зелененький. The significance of the phenomena for the language consciousness of Ukrainians proves the formation of oppositions ‘diminutive - standard - augmentative’. The Ukrainian is attracting word formative modes as well as lexical and syntactic ones. For example, to describe the rain of varying strength as opposed to rain proper lexical мряка - дощ - сльота, word-formative дощик, дощичок - дощ - дощище, дощака and syntactic oppositions скупий дощ - дощ - тучний дощ are presented.
