PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ASSOCIATIVE FIELDS OF WORD-STIMULUS ДРУГ (FRIEND) ACCORDING TO THE DATA OF DIRECTED ASSOCIATIVE EXPERIMENTS

Introduction The associative approach to the study of the meaning of the word is nota new one in psycholinguistics, however, having received a positive assessment of leading scientists,it still remains in the priority areas of semantics research next to the parametric, feature, prototypeand situational approaches. Scientists use it both for revealing the ethnocultural specificity ofthe image of the world of representatives of various ethnoses, and for a comprehensive analysisof the meaning of the word of a certain language. We used both perspectives of research in ourprevious scientific studies. In this article we present the results of directed associative experiments,that were held at the beginning of the XXI century in Ukraine. Purpose. The purpose ofthe study is to reveal the structure of the associative value by the example of the associative fieldsof the stimulus FRIEND in the Ukrainian language. Methods. The main methods of researchare descriptive, structural (component analysis), associative experiment (directed), “associativegestalt”. Results. The psycholinguistic analysis demonstrates the structure of associative fieldof the stimulus FRIEND, obtained as a result of conducting of the directed associative experimentsas for the selection of definitions and comparisons. The placement of zones and their filling showthe main association strategies that we consider as specific components leading in determiningof the associative meaning of the word, in the formation of images of the linguistic consciousnessof Ukrainian respondents. Conclusion The study of the meaning of the word on the materialof lexicographic sources and a number of associative experiments that were applied to a specificword-stimulus is justified and necessary for the comprehensive identification of semantics.