Керт, Г. М. Применение компьютерных технологий в исследовании топонимии (прибалтийско-финская,русская) / Г.М. Керт ; Рос. акад. наук, Карел. науч. центр, Ин-т яз., лит. и истории. - Электрон. дан. (1 файл: 95 МБ). - Петрозаводск : Карел. науч. центр РАН, 2002.

Summary The growing interest towards place names research is explained in the first place by specific peculiarities of this component of the vocabu lary. The role of toponyms — identificators of geographical objects as accurate landmarks grows considerably in information-oriented society. Toponymy which has been forming for several centuries represents a powerful stratum of the culture, reflecting mentality of the nation. The striking differences between the toponym and appellative, revealed in their functions, place name structure, semantics of their components, have always been of great genuine interest to scientists. Finally, toponymy has significant resolving opportunities when solving problems of the origin and history of this or that ethnos. In reality, toponymies as a discipline, which developed from ethnog raphy, at the initial stage dealt mostly with etymologization. Only later identification of semantic, grammatical, functional and territorial peculi arities of place names became the subject of this science. The role of toponymy in solving ethnogenetic problems is widely known. It is due to toponymy that the areas of former settlements of Indoeuropean and Uralic nations have been identified. Toponyms have convincingly verified the presence of the Finno-Ugric substratum in the European North of Russia. At the same time, toponymy, applied in its traditional way in research of ethnogenetic problems, is now exhausting itself. In comparing substratum toponyms with the appellative vocabu lary of «living» languages, on the principle of «similarity», only a tiny part of the vocabulary of these languages is used. A huge massif of sub stratum vocabulary (for instance, the substratum of substratum Uralic toponymy in the European North of Russia) remains unclaimed, i. e. beyond the range of research. Meanwhile, just like the identified toponymy, it is a manifestation of spiritual activities of people, and must, therefore, be included in scientific research. Moreover, the amount of toponymy used in scientific research, is growing with avalanche speed. The natural potential of human being fails to comprehend the huge amount of this material. Now there is high demand for using computers in toponymic research. Computers enable researchers to store and