ORIGINAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE IN EXPRESSIONS OF CULTURAL ICONS

The article clarifies the list of the most basic features of the Ukrainian language, which have become the focus of attention of leading cultural figures, scientists in linguistic aphorisms of different time periods. The sources of the research were figurative statements about the language, represented in the works of famous scientists, cultural icons and included in modern collections of statements about the language. To implement this task a descriptive method and elements of the linguistic component analysis of the text were used. 
The analysis of linguistic aphorisms, whose authors are scientists, cultural icons of the past and present, proves that to the most important specific features of the Ukrainian language they attribute the power, richness of expressive means, picturesqueness, brightness, melodiousness, sweetness, flexibility of morphological and syntactic means, poeticity of the Ukrainian language. These features are currently confirmed by the scientific investigations of modern scientists. The melodiousness and sweetness of the Ukrainian language is based on the pronunciation peculiarities of vowels and consonants, the structure of the Ukrainian syllable, and quantitative indicators of the frequency of sounds formed with the participation of the voice in texts of various styles. The power is confirmed by the stability of linguistic means over the centuries, the richness of expressive means – the length of the rows of lexical synonyms, the variety of grammatical and syntactic synonymy. 
Picturesqueness, brightness, and poetics are confirmed by classical prose and poetic works that enrich world culture. We see the prospects of the research in describing the specifics of figurative means of linguistic aphorisms, scientific, journalistic and artistic discourse.