Toponymic image in the mirror of a foreign culture: an experimental study

Yue Qu

This article is devoted to the description and identification of toponymic images in the minds of native Chinese speakers using an associative onomastic experiment based on the material of Moscow urbanonyms. The relevance of the research is determined by the tasks of adequate assimilation of Russian toponymy in its linguistic, linguocultural and geocultural aspects. The degree of distortion of the Moscow urbanonym image revealed in our associative experiment, and the linguistic and cultural analysis of the reasons for this quasi-identification, will be a useful hint for choosing the necessary motivational features that characterize the toponym in the training toponymic database we are developing – a new type of educational tool designed to form the necessary skills and abilities of foreign communicants to adequately identify elements of the Russian geocultural space.

Keywords:urbanonym, toponymic image, associative experiment, geocultural space, quasi-identification, training toponymic database