Onomastic Content of Geographical Normative Scientific Texts: A Quantitative Approach

The article focuses on topical issues of statistical processing of educational books, which might contribute to their content peculiarities identification. The aim of this interdisciplinary research, within the framework of which this study is conducted, is to determine the role and place of proper names in the structure of universally mandatory knowledge and its individual fragments. The analysis undertaken resulted in identifiing and structuring the onomastic space of geographical normative scientific macrotexts. The application of quantitative analysis revealed the composition of the onomastic core and periphery of these macrotexts, as well as the basic and variable components of onyms and their distribution across the text. The composition and frequency of toponyms in geographical normative scientific texts are noted to serve as markers of the content of the geographical excerpt of the normative scientific picture of the world (universally mandatory geographical knowledge). The findings allow for conclusions not only about the composition and structure of the onomastic content of normative scientific macrotexts but also about the degree of its stability over time. The proposed methodology for determining the onomastic (informational) load of a text can be applied to the analysis of textbooks in other subjects. The analysis applied to onomastic content of geographical normative scientific texts, which forms particular onomastic space, has significant practical relevance, related to the objectification of expert evaluations of existing textbook texts and the prospect of developing recommendations for newly created ones.