Continuation. Started in No. 42/2001. Printed in abbreviation
11. COMMUNICATION FUNCTION
The most important function of language is communicative. Communication means communication, exchange of information. In other words, language arose and exists primarily so that people can communicate.
Let us recall the two definitions of language given above: as a system of signs and as a means of communication. There is no point in pitting them against each other: these are, one might say, two sides of the same coin. Language carries out its communicative function due to the fact that it is a system of signs: it is simply impossible to communicate in any other way. And signs, in turn, are intended to transmit information from person to person.
Actually, what does information mean? Does any text (remember: this is the implementation of a language system in the form of a sequence of signs) carry information?
Obviously not. Here I am, passing by people in white coats, and accidentally hear: “The pressure has dropped to three atmospheres.” So what? Three atmospheres – is it a lot or a little? Should we rejoice or, say, run for the hills?
Another example. Having opened the book, we come across, let us say, the following passage: “Destruction of the hypothalamus and the upper part of the pituitary stalk as a result of neoplastic or granulomatous infiltration can cause the development of the clinical picture of ND... In a pathological study, insufficiency in the development of supraoptic neurons of the hypothalamus was less common than paraventricular ones; a reduced neurohypophysis was also detected.” It’s like a foreign language, isn’t it? Perhaps the only thing we will take away from this text is that this book is not for us, but for specialists in the relevant field of knowledge. It doesn't provide any information for us.
Third example. Is the statement “The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea” informative for me, an adult? No. I know this well. Everyone knows this well. Nobody doubts this. It is no coincidence that this statement serves as an example of banal, trivial, hackneyed truths: it is of no interest to anyone. It is not informative.
Information is transmitted in space and time. In space - this means from me to you, from person to person, from one nation to another... In time - this means from yesterday to today, from today to tomorrow... And “day” here should not be taken literally , but figuratively, in general: information is stored and transmitted from century to century, from millennium to millennium. (The invention of writing, printing, and now the computer has made a revolution in this matter.) Thanks to language, the continuity of human culture is carried out, the accumulation and assimilation of experience developed by previous generations occurs. But this will be discussed below. For now, let us note: a person can communicate in time and... with himself. Really: why do you need a notebook with names, addresses, birthdays? It was you “yesterday” who sent a message to your “today” self for tomorrow. What about notes and diaries? Without relying on his memory, a person gives information “for preservation” to the language, or more precisely, to its representative – the text. He communicates with himself over time. Let me emphasize: in order to preserve himself as an individual, a person must communicate - this is a form of his self-affirmation. And as a last resort, in the absence of interlocutors, he must communicate at least with himself. ( This situation familiar to people who have found themselves cut off from society for a long time: prisoners, travelers, hermits.) Robinson in famous novel D. Defoe, until he meets Friday, begins to talk with a parrot - this is better than going crazy from loneliness...
We have already said: the word is also, in a sense, a deed. Now, in relation to the communicative function of language, this idea can be clarified. Let's take the simplest case - the elementary act of communication. One person says something to another: asks him, orders him, advises him, warns him... What dictates these speech actions? Caring for the good of your neighbor? Not only that. Or at least not always. Usually the speaker has some kind of self-interest in mind, and this is completely natural, such is human nature. For example, he asks the other person to do something instead of doing it himself. For him, the deed, as it were, turns into a word, into speech. Neuropsychologists say: a speaking person must first of all suppress, slow down the excitation of some centers in his brain that are responsible for movements and actions (B.F. Porshnev). The speech turns out to be deputy actions. Well, is the second person the interlocutor (or, in other words, the listener, the addressee)? He himself, perhaps, does not need what he will do at the request of the speaker (or the reasons and grounds for this action are not entirely clear), and nevertheless he will fulfill this request, translate the word into real action. But in this you can see the beginnings of the division of labor, the fundamental principles of human society! This is how the greatest American linguist Leonard Bloomfield characterizes the use of language. Language, he said, allows one person to perform an action (action, reaction) where another person experiences a need for this action (stimulus).
So, it’s worth agreeing with the idea: communication, communication through language, is one of the most important factors that “created” humanity.
12. THINKING FUNCTION
But a speaking person is a thinking person. And the second function of language, closely related to the communicative one, is the function thinking(in another way - cognitive, from lat. cognition– ‘cognition’). They often even ask: what is more important, what comes first – communication or thinking? Probably, the question cannot be posed this way: these two functions of language determine each other. To speak means to express one's thoughts. But, on the other hand, these thoughts themselves are formed in our heads with the help of language. And if we remember that among animals, language is “already” used for communication, but thinking as such is not “yet” here, then we can come to the conclusion about the primacy of the communicative function. But it's better to say this: the communicative function educates, “nurtures” the mental. How should this be understood?
One little girl put it this way: “How do I know What I Think? I’ll tell you, then I’ll find out.” Truly, through the mouth of a child the truth speaks. Here we come into contact with the most important problem of the formation (and formulation) of thought. It is worth repeating once again: a person’s thought at its birth is based not only on universal content categories and structures, but also on the categories of a specific language unit. Of course, this does not mean that, besides verbal thinking, there are no other forms of intelligent activity. There is also figurative thinking, familiar to any person, but especially developed among professionals: artists, musicians, performers... there is technical thinking - the professional dignity of designers, mechanics, draftsmen, and again, to one degree or another, not alien to all of us. Finally, there is objective thinking - we are all guided by it in a lot of everyday situations, from tying shoelaces to unlocking the front door... But the main form of thinking that unites all people in the vast majority of life situations is, of course, thinking linguistic, verbal.
It’s another matter that words and other units of language appear in the course of mental activity in some kind of “not their own” form, they are difficult to grasp and isolate (of course: we think much faster than we speak!), and our “inner speech” (this is a term introduced into science by the wonderful Russian psychologist L.S. Vygotsky) is fragmentary and associative. This means that the words here are represented by some of their own “pieces” and they are connected to each other differently than in ordinary “external” speech, and in addition, images are interspersed into the linguistic fabric of thought - visual, auditory, tactile, etc. p. It turns out that the structure of “internal” speech is much more complex than the structure of “external” speech that is accessible to observation. Yes, that's true. And yet, the fact that it is based on the categories and units of a specific language is beyond doubt.
Confirmation of this was found in various experiments, especially actively carried out in the middle of our century. The subject was specially “puzzled” and, while he – to himself – was thinking about some problem, his speech apparatus was examined from different angles. Either they scanned his throat and oral cavity with an X-ray machine, or with weightless sensors they took the electrical potential from his lips and tongue... The result was the same: during mental (“silent!”) activity, the human speech apparatus was in a state of activity. Some shifts and changes were taking place in him - in a word, work was going on!
Even more characteristic in this sense are the testimonies of polyglots, that is, people who are fluent in several languages. Usually they easily determine at any given moment in which language they are thinking. (Moreover, the choice or change of the language on which the thought is based depends on the environment in which the polyglot is located, on the very subject of the thought, etc.)
Famous Bulgarian singer Boris Hristov, for many years living abroad, considered it his duty to sing arias in the original language. He explained it this way: “When I speak Italian, I think in Italian. When I speak Bulgarian, I think in Bulgarian.” But one day, at a performance of “Boris Godunov” - Christov sang, naturally, in Russian - the singer came up with some idea in Italian. And he unexpectedly continued the aria... in Italian. The conductor was petrified. And the public (it was in London), thank God, did not notice anything...
It is curious that among writers who speak several languages, authors who translate themselves are rarely found. The fact is that for a real creator, translating, say, a novel into another language means not just rewriting it, but change your mind, to re-experience, to write anew, in accordance with a different culture, with a different “view of the world.” Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, a Nobel laureate, one of the founders of the theater of the absurd, created each of his works twice, first in French, then in English. But at the same time he insisted that we should be talking about two different works. Similar arguments on this topic can also be found in Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote in Russian and English, and in other “bilingual” writers. And Yu.N. Tynyanov once justified himself about the heavy style of some of his articles in the book “Archaists and Innovators”: “Language not only conveys concepts, but is also the process of their construction. Therefore, for example, retelling someone else’s thoughts is usually clearer than telling your own.” And, therefore, the more original the thought, the more difficult it is to express it...
But the question naturally arises: if a thought in its formation and development is connected with the material of a specific language, then does it not lose its specificity, its depth when transmitted by means of another language? Is translation from language to language and communication between peoples even possible then? I will answer this way: the behavior and thinking of people, with all their national coloring, is subject to some universal, universal laws. And languages, with all their diversity, are also based on some general principles (some of which we have already observed in the section on the properties of a sign). So, in general, translation from language to language is, of course, possible and necessary. Well, some losses are inevitable. So are acquisitions. Shakespeare in Pasternak's translation is not only Shakespeare, but also Pasternak. Translation, according to a well-known aphorism, is the art of compromise.
All that has been said leads us to the conclusion: language is not just a form, a shell for thought, it is not even means thinking, but rather it way. The very nature of the formation of thought units and their functioning largely depends on language.
13. COGNITIVE FUNCTION
The third function of language is educational(its other name is accumulative, that is, cumulative). Most of what an adult knows about the world came to him with language, through the medium of language. He may have never been to Africa, but he knows that there are deserts and savannas, giraffes and rhinoceroses, the Nile River and Lake Chad... He has never been to a metallurgical plant, but he has an idea of how iron is smelted, and perhaps also about how steel is made from iron. A person can mentally travel through time, access the secrets of the stars or the microcosm - and he owes all this to language. His own experience, obtained through the senses, constitutes an insignificant part of his knowledge.
How is it formed? inner world person? What is the role of language in this process?
The main mental “tool” with the help of which a person understands the world is concept. A concept is formed in the course of a person’s practical activity thanks to the ability of his mind to abstract and generalize. (It is worth emphasizing: animals also have lower forms of reflection of reality in consciousness - such as sensation, perception, representation. A dog, for example, has an idea of its owner, his voice, smell, habits, etc., but a generalized one The dog does not have the concept of “master,” as well as “smell,” “habit,” etc.) The concept is detached from the visual-sensory image of the object. This is a unit of logical thinking, the privilege of homo sapiens.
How is a concept formed? A person observes many phenomena of objective reality, compares them, and identifies various features in them. He “cuts off” the unimportant, random signs, distracts himself from them, but adds up the significant signs, sums them up - and a concept is obtained. For example, comparing various trees - tall and short, young and old, with a straight trunk and with a curved one, deciduous and coniferous, shedding leaves and evergreen, etc., he identifies the following characteristics as constant and essential: a) these are plants ( generic sign), b) perennial,
c) with a solid stem (trunk) and d) with branches forming a crown. This is how the concept of “tree” is formed in the human mind, under which all the variety of observed specific trees is subsumed; it is this that is enshrined in the corresponding word: tree. A word is a typical, normal form of existence of a concept. (Animals have no words - and concepts, even if there were grounds for their emergence, have nothing to rely on, nothing to gain a foothold in...)
Of course, it takes some mental effort and probably a lot of time to understand that, say, a chestnut tree under the window and a dwarf pine tree in a pot, a twig-sapling of an apple tree and a thousand-year-old sequoia somewhere in America are all "tree". But this is precisely the main path of human knowledge - from the individual to the general, from the concrete to the abstract.
Let us pay attention to the following series of Russian words: sadness, upset, admire, education, passion, treatment, understand, disgusting, openly, restrained, hate, insidious, justice, adore... Is it possible to find anything in common in their meanings? It's difficult. Unless they all mean some abstract concepts: mental states, feelings, relationships, signs... Yes, that’s true. But they also have, in a sense, the same story. All of them are formed from other words with more specific – “material” – meanings. And, accordingly, the concepts behind them are also based on concepts of a lower level of generalization. Sadness derived from bake(after all, sadness burns!); grieve– from bitter, bitterness; upbringing– from nourish, food; enthusiasm– from attract, drag(that is, ‘drag along’); justice– from right(i.e. ‘located on the right hand’), etc.
This is, in principle, the path of semantic evolution of all languages of the world: generalized, abstract meanings grow in them on the basis of more specific, or, so to speak, mundane meanings. However, for every nation, some areas of reality are divided in more detail than others. It is a well-known fact that in the languages of the peoples inhabiting the Far North (Lapps, Eskimos), there are dozens of names for different types snow and ice (although there may not be a generic name for snow at all). Bedouin Arabs have dozens of names for different types of camels - depending on their breed, age, purpose, etc. It is clear that such a variety of names is caused by the conditions of life itself. This is how the famous French ethnographer Lucien Lévy-Bruhl wrote about the languages of the indigenous people of Africa and America in his book “Primitive Thinking”: “Everything is presented in the form of image-concepts, that is, a kind of drawings where the smallest features are fixed and indicated (and this is not true only in relation to all objects, whatever they may be, but also in relation to all movements, all actions, all states, all properties expressed by language). Therefore, the vocabulary of these “primitive” languages must be distinguished by such a wealth of which our languages give only a very distant idea.”
Just don’t think that all this diversity is explained solely by exotic living conditions or the unequal position of peoples on the ladder of human progress. And in languages belonging to the same civilization, say, European, you can find any number of examples of different classifications of the surrounding reality. So, in a situation in which a Russian will simply say leg(“Doctor, I hurt my leg”), the Englishman will have to choose whether to use the word leg or word foot- depending on what part of the leg we are talking about: from the hip to the ankle or the foot. A similar difference is das Bein And der Fu?– presented in German. Next, we will say in Russian finger regardless of whether it is a toe or a finger. And for an Englishman or a German this "different" fingers, and each of them has its own name. What is a toe called in English? toe, finger on hand - finger; in German – accordingly die Zehe And der Finger; however, the thumb has its own special name: thumb in English and der Daumen in German. Are these differences between fingers really that important? It seems to us, Slavs, that we still have more in common...
But in Russian, blue and cyan colors are distinguished, and for a German or Englishman this difference looks as insignificant, secondary, as for us, say, the difference between red and burgundy color: blue in English and blau in German it is a single concept “blue-blue” (see § 3). And it makes no sense to ask the question: which language is closer to the truth, to the real state of affairs? Every language is right, because it has the right to its own “vision of the world.”
Even very close languages, closely related, now and then reveal their “independence”. For example, Russian and Belarusian are very similar to each other, they are blood brothers. However, in Belarusian there are no exact correspondences to Russian words communication(it is translated as adnosins, that is, strictly speaking, ‘relationships’, or how wear and tear, that is, ‘intercourse’) and connoisseur(it is translated as connoisseur or how amatar, that is, ‘amateur’, and this is not quite the same thing)... But it is difficult to translate from Belarusian into Russian shchyry(this is both ‘sincere’ and ‘real’ and ‘friendly’) or captivity('harvest'? 'success'? 'result'? 'effectiveness'?)... And there are a whole dictionary of such words.
Language, as we see, turns out to be a ready-made classifier of objective reality for a person, and this is good: it, as it were, lays the rails along which the train moves human knowledge. But at the same time, the language imposes its classification system on all participants in this convention - it is also difficult to argue with this. If we were told from an early age that a finger on the hand is one thing, and a toe is something completely different, then by adulthood we would probably already be convinced of the validity of just such a division of reality. And if we were only talking about fingers or limbs, we agree “without looking” with other, more important points of the “convention” that we sign.
At the end of the 60s, on one of the islands of the Philippine archipelago (in the Pacific Ocean), a tribe was discovered living in Stone Age conditions and in complete isolation from the rest of the world. Representatives of this tribe (they called themselves tasaday) did not even suspect that, besides them, there were other intelligent beings on Earth. When scientists and journalists began to closely describe the world of the Tasadays, they were struck by one feature: in the language of the tribe there were no words like war, enemy, hate... The Tasaday, as one journalist put it, “learned to live in harmony and harmony not only with nature, but also with each other.” Of course, this fact can be explained this way: the original friendliness and goodwill of this tribe found its natural reflection in the language. But language did not stand aside from public life; it left its mark on the formation of the moral norms of a given community: how could a newly minted tasaday learn about wars and murders? We and our languages signed a different information “convention”...
So, language educates a person, shapes his inner world - this is the essence of the cognitive function of language. Moreover, it manifests itself this function maybe in the most unexpected specific situations.
American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf gave such examples from his practice (he once worked as a fire safety engineer). In a warehouse where gasoline tanks are stored, people behave carefully: they do not light a fire, do not flick lighters... However, the same people behave differently in a warehouse that is known to store empty (in English empty) gasoline tanks. Here they show carelessness, they may light a cigarette, etc. Meanwhile, empty gasoline tanks are much more explosive than full ones: gasoline vapors remain in them. Why do people behave so carelessly? – Whorf asked himself. And he answered: because the word calms them, misleads them empty, which has several meanings (for example, the following: 1) ‘does not contain anything (about vacuum)’, 2) ‘does not contain something’...). And people unconsciously seem to replace one meaning with another. From such facts arose a whole linguistic concept - the theory of linguistic relativity, which asserts that a person lives not so much in the world of objective reality, but in the world of language...
So, language can be the cause of misunderstandings, mistakes, misconceptions? Yes. We have already talked about conservatism as the original property of a linguistic sign. The person who signed the “convention” is not very inclined to then change it. And therefore, linguistic classifications often diverge from scientific classifications (later and more accurate). We, for example, divide the entire living world into animals and plants, but systematologists say that such a division is primitive and incorrect, because there are still at least fungi and microorganisms that cannot be classified as either animals or plants. Our “everyday” understanding of what minerals, insects, and berries are does not coincide with the scientific one; to be convinced of this, just look in an encyclopedic dictionary. Why are there private classifications? Copernicus proved back in the 16th century that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and language still defends the previous point of view. We say: “The sun rises, the sun sets...” - and we don’t even notice this anachronism.
However, one should not think that language only hinders the progress of human knowledge. On the contrary, he can actively contribute to its development. One of the largest Japanese politicians of our time, Daisaku Ikeda, believes that it was the Japanese language that was one of the main factors that contributed to the rapid revival of post-war Japan: “In the development of modern scientific and technological achievements that have been coming to us for a long period of time from European countries and the USA, a huge The role belongs to the Japanese language, the flexible mechanism of word formation contained in it, which allows us to instantly create and easily master the truly huge number of new words that we needed to assimilate the mass of concepts that poured in from outside.” The French linguist Joseph Vandries once wrote about the same thing: “A flexible and mobile language, in which grammar is reduced to a minimum, shows thought in all its clarity and allows it to move freely; an inflexible and ponderous language hampers thought.” Leaving aside the controversial issue of the role of grammar in the processes of cognition (what does “grammar is reduced to a minimum” mean in the above quote?), I hasten to reassure the reader: you should not worry about this or that particular language or be skeptical about its capabilities. In practice, each means of communication corresponds to its own “view of the world” and sufficiently fully meets the communicative needs of a given people.
14. NOMINATIVE FUNCTION
Another extremely important function of language is nominative or nominative. In fact, we have already touched upon it when reflecting in the previous paragraph on the cognitive function. The point is that naming is an integral part of cognition. A person, generalizing a mass of specific phenomena, abstracting from their random features and highlighting the essential ones, feels the need to consolidate the acquired knowledge in words. This is how the name appears. If not for it, the concept would remain an ethereal, speculative abstraction. And with the help of a word, a person can, as it were, “stake out” the surveyed part of the surrounding reality, say to himself: “I already know this,” hang up a name sign and move on.
Consequently, the entire system of concepts that has modern man, rests on the naming system. The easiest way to show this is with the example of proper names. Let's try to throw out all proper names from courses in history, geography, literature - all anthroponyms (this means names of people: Alexander the Great, Columbus, Peter I, Moliere, Afanasy Nikitin, Saint-Exupery, Don Quixote, Tom Sawyer, Uncle Vanya...) and all toponyms (these are names of places: Galaxy, North Pole, Troy, City of the Sun, Vatican, Volga, Auschwitz, Capitol Hill, Black River...), – what will remain of these sciences? Obviously, the texts will become meaningless, and the person reading them will immediately lose orientation in space and time.
But names are not only proper names, but also common nouns. Terminology of all sciences - physics, chemistry, biology, etc. - these are all names. Atomic bomb and it could not have been created if the ancient concept of “atom”* had not been replaced by new concepts - neutron, proton and other elementary particles, nuclear fission, chain reaction, etc. - and all of them were fixed in words!
The characteristic confession of the American scientist Norbert Wiener is known about how the scientific activity of his laboratory was hampered by the lack of an appropriate name for this direction search: it was unclear what the employees of this laboratory were doing. And only when Wiener’s book “Cybernetics” was published in 1947 (the scientist came up with this name, taking as a basis the Greek word meaning ‘helmsman, helmsman’), the new science rushed forward by leaps and bounds.
So, the nominative function of language serves not just to orient a person in space and time, it goes hand in hand with the cognitive function, it participates in the process of understanding the world.
But man is a pragmatist by nature; he seeks, first of all, practical benefits from his affairs. This means that he will not name all the surrounding objects in a row in the hope that these names will someday come in handy. No, he uses the nominative function deliberately, selectively, naming first of all what is closest to him, most often and most important.
Let us recall, for example, the names of mushrooms in Russian: how many of them do we know? White mushroom (boletus), boletus(in Belarus it is often called grandma), boletus (redhead), milk mushroom, saffron milk cap, oiler, chanterelle, honey fungus, russula, trumpet... – there will be at least a dozen. But these are all healthy, edible mushrooms. What about the inedible ones? Perhaps we distinguish only two types: fly agarics And toadstools(well, not counting some other false varieties: false honey mushrooms etc.). Meanwhile, biologists claim that there are much more varieties of inedible mushrooms than edible ones! People simply don’t need them, they are uninteresting (except for narrow specialists in this field) - so why waste names and bother yourself?
One pattern follows from this. Any language must have gaps, that is, holes, empty spaces in the picture of the world. In other words, there must be something not named– what is not important to a person (yet) is not necessary...
Let's look in the mirror at our own familiar face and ask: what is this? Nose. And this? Lip. What's between the nose and lip? Mustache. Well, if there is no mustache, what is this place called? The answer is a shrug (or the sly “The place between the nose and lip”). Okay, one more question. What is this? Forehead. And this? Back of the head. What's between the forehead and the back of the head? In response: head. No, the head is the whole thing, but what is this part of the head called, between the forehead and the back of the head? Few people remember the name crown, most often the answer will be the same shrug... Yes, something should not have a name.
And one more consequence follows from what has been said. In order for an object to receive a name, it must enter into public use and step over a certain “threshold of significance.” Until some time it was still possible to get by with a random or descriptive name, but from now on it is no longer possible - you need a separate name.
In this light, it is interesting, for example, to observe the development of means (tools) of writing. History of words pen, pen, fountain pen, pencil etc. reflects the development of a “piece” of human culture, the formation of corresponding concepts in the minds of a native Russian speaker. I remember how the first felt-tip pens appeared in the USSR in the 60s. Then they were still rare, they were brought from abroad, and the possibilities of their use were not yet entirely clear. Gradually, these objects began to be generalized into a special concept, but for a long time they did not receive their clear name. (There were names like “plakar”, “fiber pencil”, and there were variations in spelling: felt-tip pen or marker?) Today, a felt-tip pen is already a “established” concept, firmly entrenched in the corresponding name. But quite recently, in the late 80s, new, somewhat different writing tools appeared. This, in particular, is an automatic pencil with an ultra-thin (0.5 mm) lead that extends with clicks to a certain length, then a ballpoint pen (again with an ultra-fine tip), which writes not with paste, but with ink, etc. What are they called? Yes, so far - in Russian - no way. They can only be characterized descriptively: approximately as is done in this text. They have not yet entered into everyday life and have not become a fact. mass consciousness, which means you can still do without a special name.
A person’s attitude towards a name is generally not simple.
On the one hand, over time, the name becomes attached, “sticks” to its subject, and in the head of the native speaker there arises the illusion of the originality, the “naturalness” of the name. The name becomes a representative, even a substitute, of the subject. (Even the ancient people believed that a person’s name is internally connected with himself and forms a part of him. If, say, the name is harmed, then the person himself will suffer. This is where the ban, the so-called taboo, on using the names of close relatives came from.)
On the other hand, the participation of a name in the process of cognition leads to another illusion: “if you know the name, you know the object.” Let's say I know the word succulent- therefore, I know what it is. The same J. Vandries wrote well about this peculiar magic of the term: “Knowing the names of things means having power over them... Knowing the name of a disease is already half of curing it. We should not laugh at this primitive belief. It still lives in our time, since we attach importance to the form of diagnosis. “I have a headache, doctor.” - “This is cephalalgia.” “My stomach doesn’t work well.” “It’s dyspepsia”... And patients feel better only because a representative of science knows the name of their secret enemy.”
Indeed, often in scientific discussions one witnesses how disputes on the essence of a subject are replaced by a war of names and a confrontation of terminologies. The dialogue follows the principle: tell me what terms you use, and I will tell you which school (scientific direction) you belong to.
Generally speaking, the belief in the existence of a single correct name is more widespread than we imagine. This is what the poet said:
When we clarify the language
And let's name the stone as it should,
He himself will tell you how he came into being,
What is its purpose and where is the reward.When we find a star
Her only name is
She, with her planets,
Will step out of muteness and darkness...
(A. Aronov)
Isn’t it true, this reminds me of the words of the old eccentric from the joke: “I can imagine everything, I can understand everything. I even understand how people discovered planets so far from us. There’s just one thing I can’t understand: how did they know their names?”
Of course, one should not overestimate the power of a name. Moreover, one cannot equate a thing with its name. Otherwise, it won’t take long to come to the conclusion that all our troubles stem from incorrect names and if we just change the names, everything will immediately get better. Such a misconception, alas, cannot escape a person either. The desire for wholesale renaming is especially noticeable during periods of social upheaval. Cities and streets are renamed, instead of some military ranks others are introduced, the police become the police (or, in other countries, vice versa!), technical schools and institutes in the blink of an eye are rebaptized into colleges and academies... This is what the nominative function of language means, this is what faith is person in the title!
15. REGULATORY FUNCTION
Regulatory the function unites those cases of language use when the speaker aims to directly influence the addressee: to induce him to take some action or to prohibit him from doing something, to force him to answer a question, etc. Wed. statements such as: What time is it? Do you want some milk? Please call me tomorrow. Everyone to the rally! May I never hear this again! You will take my bag with you. No need for unnecessary words. As can be seen from the examples given, the regulatory function has at its disposal a variety of lexical means and morphological forms ( special role the category of mood plays here), as well as intonation, word order, syntactic constructions, etc.
I note that various kinds of incentives - such as a request, order, warning, prohibition, advice, persuasion, etc. - are not always formalized as such, expressed using “own” linguistic means. Sometimes they appear in someone else's guise, using linguistic units that usually serve other purposes. Thus, a mother can express her request to her son not to come home late, directly, using the imperative form (“Don’t come late today, please!”), or she can disguise it as a question (“What time are you going to be back?”), and also under reproach, warning, statement of fact, etc.; let’s compare statements such as: “Yesterday you came late again...” (with a special intonation), “Look - now it’s getting dark early”, “The metro is open until one o’clock, don’t forget”, “I’ll be very worried”, etc. .
Ultimately, the regulatory function is aimed at creating, maintaining and regulating relationships in human micro-collectives, that is, in the real environment in which a native speaker lives. Focusing on the addressee makes it similar to the communicative function (see § 11). Sometimes, along with the regulatory function, the function is also considered phatic*, or contact-setting. This means that a person always needs to enter into a conversation in a certain way (call out to the interlocutor, greet him, remind him of himself, etc.) and leave the conversation (say goodbye, thank him, etc.). But does establishing contact really boil down to exchanging phrases like “Hello” and “Goodbye”? The phatic function is much broader in its scope, and therefore it is not surprising that it is difficult to distinguish it from the regulatory function.
Let's try to remember: what do we talk about during the day with others? Is all this information vital for our well-being or directly influencing the behavior of the interlocutor? No, for the most part these are conversations, it would seem, “about nothing”, about trifles, about what the interlocutor already knows: about the weather and about mutual acquaintances, about politics and about football for men, about clothes and children for men. women; now they have been supplemented by comments on television series... There is no need to treat such monologues and dialogues ironically and arrogantly. In fact, these conversations are not about the weather and not about “rags”, but about each other, about you and me, about people. In order to occupy and then maintain a certain place in a micro-team (and this includes family, a circle of friends, a production team, housemates, even companions in a compartment, etc.), a person must talk with other members of this group.
Even if you accidentally find yourself in a moving elevator with someone, you may feel a little awkward and turn your back: the distance between you and your companion is too small to pretend that you do not notice each other, and to start a conversation too in general, it makes no sense - there is nothing to talk about, and the ride is too short... Here is a subtle observation in the story of the modern Russian prose writer V. Popov: “In the mornings we all went up in the elevator together... The elevator creaked, went up, and everyone in it was silent. Everyone understood that they couldn’t stand like that, that they had to say something, say something quickly, in order to defuse this silence. But it was still too early to talk about work, and no one knew what to talk about. And there was such silence in this elevator, even if you jumped out while walking.”
In relatively permanent, long-term teams, establishing and maintaining verbal contacts is the most important means of regulating relationships. For example, you meet your neighbor Maria Ivanovna on the landing and say to her: “Good morning, Marya Ivanna, you’re early today...”. This phrase has a double bottom. Behind its “external” meaning one can read: “I remind you, Maria Ivanovna, I am your neighbor and would like to continue to remain on good terms with you.” There is nothing hypocritical or deceitful in such greetings; these are the rules of communication. And all these are very important, simply necessary phrases. We can figuratively say this: if you don’t praise the new beads on your friend today, and she, in turn, tomorrow doesn’t ask how your relationship with a certain mutual friend is developing, then in a couple of days a slight chill may run between you, and in a month you may even lose your girlfriend altogether... Would you like to try an experiment? Take my word for it.
Let me emphasize: communication with relatives, friends, neighbors, companions, and co-workers is necessary not only to maintain certain relationships in micro-teams. It is also important for the person himself - for his self-affirmation, for his realization as an individual. The fact is that the individual plays in society not only some constant social role(for example, “housewife”, “schoolboy”, “scientist”, “miner”, etc.), but also constantly tries on different social “masks”, for example: “guest”, “passenger”, “sick” ", "advisor", etc. And this whole “theater” exists mainly thanks to language: for each role, for each mask there is its own means of speech.
Of course, the regulatory and phatic functions of language are aimed not only at improving relations between members of a microcollective. Sometimes a person, on the contrary, resorts to them for “repressive” purposes - in order to alienate, push away his interlocutor. In other words, the tongue is used not only for mutual “stroking” (this is a term accepted in psychology), but also for “pricks” and “blows”. In the latter case, we are dealing with expressions of threat, insults, curses, curses, etc. And again: social convention is what establishes what is considered rude, offensive, humiliating for the interlocutor. In the Russian-speaking criminal world, one of the most powerful, deadly insults is “goat!” And in the aristocratic society of the century before last, the words scoundrel was enough to challenge the offender to a duel. Today, the language norm is “softening” and the bar for the repressive function is rising quite high. This means that a person perceives only very strong means as offensive...
In addition to the linguistic functions discussed above - communicative, mental, cognitive, nominative and regulatory (to which we “added” the phatic), we can distinguish other socially significant roles of language. In particular, ethnic function means that language unites an ethnic group (people), it helps to form a national identity. Aesthetic function turns text into a work of art: this is the sphere of creativity, fiction– it has already been discussed before. Emotionally expressive function allows a person to express his feelings, sensations, experiences in language... Magical(or incantatory) function is realized in special situations when the language is endowed with a kind of superhuman, “otherworldly” power. Examples include conspiracies, gods, oaths, curses and some other ritual types of texts.
And all this is not yet the full “range of responsibilities” of language in human society.
Tasks and exercises
1. Determine what functions of language are implemented in the following statements.
a) Kryzhovka (signboard on the railway station building).
b) Rediscount (sign on the store door).
c) Hello. My name is Sergey Alexandrovich (teacher entering class).
d) An equilateral rectangle is called a square (from the textbook).
e) “I won’t come to training on Wednesday, I won’t be able to.” - “We must, Fedya, we must.” (from a conversation on the street).
f) May you fail, damned drunkard! (From an apartment squabble).
g) I studied the science of parting In the simple-haired complaints of the night (O. Mandelstam).
2. In one film “from life abroad” the hero asks the maid:
- Is Mrs. Mayons at home?
And receives the answer:
- Your mother is in the living room.
Why does the questioner call his mother so formally: “Mrs. Mayons”? And why does the maid choose a different name in her answer? What language functions are implemented in this dialogue?
3. What language functions are implemented in the following dialogue from V. Voinovich’s story “Life and extraordinary adventures soldier Ivan Chonkin"?
We were silent. Then Chonkin looked at the clear sky and said:
– Today, apparently, there will be a bucket.
“There will be a bucket if there is no rain,” said Lesha.
“There is no rain without clouds,” noted Chonkin. - And it happens that there are clouds, but there is still no rain.
“It happens like that,” agreed Lesha.
On this they parted.
4. Comment on the following dialogue between two characters in M. Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
-...But if a person comes up to you and asks: “Parle vous France?” – what do you think?
“I won’t think of anything, I’ll take it and hit him on the head...
What language functions “do not work” in this case?
5. Very often a person starts a conversation with words like listen, do you know (do you know) or by addressing the interlocutor by name, although there is no one next to him, so this appeal also does not make much sense. Why is the speaker doing this?
6. Physics teaches: the main colors of the solar spectrum seven: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Meanwhile, the simplest sets of paints or pencils include six colors, and these are other components: black, brown, red, yellow, green, blue. (When the set “expands”, blue, orange, purple, lemon and even white appear...) Which of these pictures of the world is more reflected in the language - “physical” or “everyday”? What linguistic facts can confirm this?
7. List the names of the fingers on your hand. Do all names come to your mind equally quickly? What is this connected with? Now list the names of the toes. What conclusion follows from this? How does this fit with the nominative function of language?
8. Show yourself where the person’s shin, ankle, ankle, wrist are located. Was this task easy for you? What conclusion follows from this about the relationship between the world of words and the world of things?
9. The following law operates in language: the more often a word is used in speech, the wider its meaning (or, in other words, the more meanings it has). How can this rule be justified? Show its effect using the following Russian nouns for body parts as an example.
Head, forehead, heel, shoulder, wrist, cheek, collarbone, arm, foot, leg, lower back, temple.
10. A tall and large person in Russian can be called something like this: atlas, giant, giant, hero, giant, colossus, Gulliver, Hercules, Antaeus, brute, big man, big man, elephant, closet... Imagine that you are tasked with choosing a name for a new ready-to-wear store large sizes(from 52nd and above). Which title(s) will you choose and why?
11. Try to determine what concepts historically underlie the meanings of the following Russian words: guarantee, antediluvian, literally, proclaim, disgusting, restrained, liberated, compare, distribution, inaccessible, patronage, confirmation. What pattern can be seen in the semantic evolution of these words?
12. Below is a number of Belarusian nouns that do not have one-word correspondences in the Russian language (according to the dictionary “Original Words” by I. Shkraba). Translate these words into Russian. How to explain their “originality”? What function of language (or what functions) does the presence of such non-equivalent words correlate with?
Vyrai, paint, klek, grutsa, kaliva, hanger, garbarnya.
13. Can you accurately determine the meaning of such words in Russian as brother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, sister-in-law? If not, why not?
14. In the book “Wild-growing useful plants of the USSR” (M., 1976) one can find many examples of how scientific (botanical) classification does not coincide with everyday (“naive”) classification. Thus, chestnut and oak belong to the beech family. Blueberries and apricots belong to the same family, Rosaceae. Walnut (hazel) belongs to the birch family. The fruits of pear, rowan, and hawthorn belong to the same class and are called apples.
How to explain these discrepancies?
15. Why does a person, in addition to his own name, also have various “middle names”: nicknames, nicknames, pseudonyms? Why should a person, when becoming a monk, renounce his worldly name and accept a new one - a spiritual one? What language functions are implemented in all these cases?
16. There is an unwritten rule that students adhere to when preparing for exams: “If you don’t know it yourself, explain it to a friend.” How can we explain the effect of this rule in relation to the basic functions of language?
*In Ancient Greek a-tomos literally meant 'indivisible'.
(To be continued)
Ticket#1
Basic functions of the language.
Psychological and social problems bilingualism. Language interference.
Bilingualism is the coexistence of two or more languages in a certain territory; simultaneous knowledge of two or more languages.
A socio-psychological problem is the problem of an individual’s choice of language.
Psychological problem– it is impossible to independently master several languages at the same time. Levels: Receptive, reproductive bilingualism, productive
Diglossia is the coexistence of two or more forms of one language in society; simultaneous mastery of forms of one language in conditions of functional distribution.
In a situation with diglossia, one of the forms is the most prestigious.
Interference is the overlay of language systems on top of each other, which leads to distortion. Occurs at different levels of language. Grammatical interference is a distortion of grammatical norms. Interference at the lexical-sematic level - “false friends of the translator” If the mutual influence of language is viewed in a positive way, then it is called transposition (helps to learn the second and subsequent languages). Types: Sound (phonetic, phonological and sound-reproductive) interference. Orthographic interference. Grammatical (morphological, syntactic and punctuation) interference. Lexical interference. Semantic interference. Stylistic interference. Intralingual interference
Phonetics and phonology as branches of linguistics.
Subject of research: sound. Studies all the sounds of the language: physiological and acoustic properties. Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sound structure of a language, i.e. speech sounds, syllables, stress, intonation. There are 3 sides of speech sounds, and three sections of phonetics correspond to them: 1. Speech acoustics (studies the physical signs of speech), 2. Anthropophonics or physiology of speech (studies the biological signs of speech, i.e. the work performed by a person when pronouncing (articulation) or perception of speech sounds), 3. Phonology (studies the sounds of speech as a means of communication, i.e. the function or role of sounds used in language). Phonology is the study of phonemes. Phonology studies the social, functional side of speech sounds. A phoneme is a sound type, a generalized perfect performance about sound. The features by which a phoneme differs from others are called differential (different) features.
Ticket#2
- Philosophical problems of linguistics. Connection of linguistics with other sciences.
Philosophical problems concern the most general fundamental properties of language. Philosophical problems of linguistics are connected with the fundamental problem of philosophy: primacy.
1) What came first: thinking or language? Is thinking possible without language?
2) Language and speech. Speech is the physical expression of language through sounds.
3) Language and society. Is it possible for a society to exist without language?
4) Language and culture. Culture is the totality of the spiritual and material advantages of a person.
The iconic nature of language. Is language a system of conventional signs? Sign characteristic - words are not connected by a physical connection.
System and structure in language. All levels of language form a system.
Connection of linguistics with other sciences.
Linguistics is associated with a number of humanities, natural and exact sciences, because language covers all spheres of life.
Humanities:
1. Ethnography. Ethnolinguistics is a science that studies tribes, names of rivers, countries, etc.
2. Anthropology – studies man as a biological, unique phenomenon.
3. Sociology is a science that studies society. Sociolinguistics – studies the influence of society on language. On the other hand, it studies the role of language in society.
4. Semiotics – the science of signs. Road sign system, chess game system...
5. Literary criticism. Tasks: linguistic analysis artistic text. Linguistics + literature = philology.
6. History. Historical linguistics studies history linguistic phenomena, related languages, etc.
7. Psychology. Studies the human thinking process. Psycholinguistics studies the connection between the processes of thinking, perception and language.
Natural sciences:
1. Biology. Human language ability.
2. Medicine. Neurolinguistics is a science that studies the connection between language and the lobes of the brain. Psychoanalysis (analysis of errors), paralinguistics (conspiracies).
3. Physiology – the work of various organs of the speech apparatus.
4. Physics. Acoustics – lowering of intonation.
Exact sciences:
Mathematics or information sciences. Mathematical linguistics – formulas describing linguistic processes.
1. The computer helps create dictionaries, dictionaries of foreign languages.
3. Calculate the prospects for the development of a particular language.
4. With the help of linguistics, artificial languages (including machine languages) are created.
Ticket No. 3.
- Basic sections of linguistics and levels of language.
Any language can have no less than 10 and no more than 80 phonemes.
Level is part of the overall language system. We can distinguish levels that make up hierarchies. Level:
Phonemes (basic non-significant unit of language, abstract unit)
Morphemes (a minimal sign; a unit for which certain phonetic forms stand for a certain content. They can also be materially expressed as zero).
Word parts
Words (the basic structural-semantic unit of language, used to name objects and their properties, phenomena, relationships, having a set of semantic, phonetic and grammatical sounds. Words can be divided into 2 types of units: word form (words in a certain grammatical form) and lexeme (abstract a two-way unit of language, a unit of vocabulary, a set of its specifically grammatical forms).
Sentences (any (from a detailed construction to a single word) statement that is a message about something: intonation of the message, syntactic moods, tense syntax, modality).
Main sections of linguistics:
Phonetics (phonology). Subject of research: sound. Studies all the sounds of the language: physiological and acoustic properties. Phonology is the study of phonemes. Grammar– studies the formal structure of the language. Studies 2 planes (meanings): expressions, contents. It is divided into a number of subsections: morphemics (word composition), word formation (derivatology), morphology (studies inflection, parts of speech, categories of meaning), syntax. Lexicology– studies words and their lexical meanings. Semantics: sema – sign. Etymology- origin of the word. Stylistics– studies the use of words or functional styles. Written speech divided into book style and everyday style. Dialectology: territorial dialects (where the language is used). Southern Russian dialect (“a”) and Northern Russian (“o”). In Moscow, the Central Russian dialect is: moderate A, G - explosive. Phraseology– studies stable units of language – idioms. The principle of dividing language into levels. Units of each level are subject to special rules: 1. Levels can form only certain units; units of different levels do not enter into any type of relationship with each other except hierarchical ones. Relations of units of the same level: 1. Paradigmatic - all variants of the same unit have two properties: have a common part, must be different in some way. 2. Syntagmatic - the rule of compatibility.
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Ticket No. 5.
Types of linguistic universals.
LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS, properties inherent in human language as a whole (and not in individual languages or the languages of individual families, regions, etc.). The ability to identify the universal properties of language is one of the most important conclusions reached by linguistic science in last decades, and at the same time an essential premise of most modern theories of language.
The classification of universals is made on several grounds.
§ Contrasted absolute universals (common to all known languages, for example: every natural language has vowels and consonants) And statistical universals ( trends). An example of a statistical universal: almost all languages have nasal consonants(however, in some West African languages, nasal consonants are not separate phonemes, but allophones of oral stops in the context of nasal consonants). Statistical universals include the so-called frequentalia- phenomena that occur quite often in the languages of the world (with a probability exceeding chance).
§ Absolute universals are also contrasted implicative (complex), that is, those that assert a connection between two classes of phenomena. For example, If a language has a dual number, it also has a plural number. A special case of implicate universals are hierarchies, which can be represented as a set of “two-term” implicate universals. This is, for example, the Keenan-Comrie hierarchy (a hierarchy of availability of noun phrases, regulating, among other things, the availability of arguments for relativization:
Subject > Direct object > Indirect object > Indirect object > Possessed > Object of comparison
According to Keenan and Comrie, the set of elements available for relativization in some way covers a continuous segment of this hierarchy.
Other examples of hierarchy are Silverstein's hierarchy (hierarchy of animacy), a hierarchy of types of arguments available for reflexivization
Implicative universals can be either one-sided (X > Y) or two-sided (X<=>Y). For example, SOV word order is usually associated with the presence of postpositions in a language, and conversely, most postpositional languages have SOV word order.
§ Also contrasted deductive(required for all languages) and inductive(common to all known languages) universals.
Ticket No. 6.
Types of word meanings.
1. The conceptual meaning of a word is the relationship between a sign and the object denoted by this sign
2. The lexical meaning of a word is the correlation of a sound complex with a particular phenomenon of reality, fixed in the minds of speakers. Most words name objects, their characteristics, quantity, actions, processes and act as full-valued, independent words.
3. Word-formative (or derivational) meaning, on the one hand, participates in the formation of lexical meaning, and on the other hand, it carries information about the part-verbal identity of the word. For example, in the word TEACHER the derivational meaning of a person is expressed by the suffix –tel, which also signals that this word is a noun.
4. Relational meanings are expressed either by inflection (ending) or in other ways. For example, in the word TEACHER, the grammatical meanings of gender, number, and case are expressed with a zero ending. (doll - dolls, red - red - red, etc.)
Ticket No. 7.
Ticket No. 8.
1. F. de Saussure on the properties of a linguistic sign.
1) Sign arbitrary: the connection between the signifier and the signified is usually not dictated by the properties of the designated object. However, the sign may be "relatively motivated"if its syntagmatic analysis is possible (decomposition into symbolic units of a lower order, for example, dividing a word into morphemes) or it is used in a figurative meaning. Motivation limits the arbitrariness of the sign. IN various languages and in different periods of the existence of one language the ratio of arbitrary and partially motivated units is not the same. Thus, in the French language, the proportion of unmotivated units appears to have increased noticeably compared to Latin.
2) The sign has significance(value) - a set of relational (correlative) properties. Significance can only be identified in a system by comparing a linguistic sign with other linguistic signs.
3) Sign asymmetrical: one signifier can have several signifieds (in cases of polysemy and homonymy), one signified can have several signifiers (in cases of homosemy). The idea of asymmetric dualism of a linguistic sign was expressed by S. O. Kartsevsky. In his opinion, both sides of the linguistic unit (the signifier and the signified) are not fixed, that is, the relationship between them is inevitably violated. This means that both the sound appearance of a linguistic unit and its meaning gradually change, which leads to a violation of the original correspondence.
4) The signifier wears linear character: in speech there is a sequential deployment of units located relative to each other according to certain laws.
5) The sign is characterized variation.
6) The sign is characterized changeability. This property can manifest itself in various ways:
§ the signifier changes, but the signified remains unchanged. For example, earlier a month February was called February, over time, this name transformed into the one we are familiar with February; Wed Also brow - forehead;
§ the signifier remains unchanged, but the signified changes. Yes, word girl in the XVIII-XIX centuries. did not have a negative connotation, today we use it in expressions like walking girl. Also bastard previously they named the one who was brought to the police station. Word boy possessed in the XVIII-XIX centuries. negative derogatory connotation; in the 20th century the word young man falls out of use and the word is neutralized boy. The meaning may expand or contract over time. For example, the word beer previously meant everything that can be drunk, and the word powder called any granular substance.
- Analytical ways of expressing grammatical meaning.
1) The method of function words is the expression of meanings outside the word. I WRITE - I WILL WRITE, BEAUTIFUL - MORE BEAUTIFUL.
2) Method of intonation - intonation refers not to the word, but to the phrase and is thus grammatically related to the sentence and its structure. Example: did he come? He came; he came...he..came? I couldn’t walk for a long time, I couldn’t walk for a long time.
3) The linearity of speech allows it to be considered as a goal with sequentially located in a time sequence, and the order of the links in this chain can be significant. Example: father loves his son; the son loves his father.
4) Grammatical context - a type of linguistic context, the immediate syntactic position of a word in a phrase or sentence: he has a white jacket on; he with – jacket with – white.
- Hypotheses about the origin of language.
Origin of language. Natural ways of language development:
1) There is a theory that the first sounds are an expression of emotions;
2) Onomatopoeia with animals;
3) Labor shouts;
4) Agreed.
Divine path of development:
1) Language was given (by God, an alien...)
Ticket No. 9
- Types of verbal signs.
The proper name is expressed only by denotation. If a proper name becomes a common noun, it is also expressed by a syndicate. Example: Napoleonic plans - properties of Napoleon. The main lexical background is the original vocabulary, words that represent the basis of the language (100-200 words). Basis - words that surround a person since ancient times (body parts, relatives, poems, etc.). The words of the basic vocabulary are unmotivated - they do not have a specific base. Motivated vocabulary (words of secondary nomination) - words that have a producing base, arose on the basis of certain words. Deictic words (pronouns) are instructions. Pronouns do not correlate with either denotation or signification. Functional vocabulary (function words) – linking verbs, particles, conjunctions, prepositions.
Ticket number 10.
Ticket No. 11
Ticket number 12.
- Logical direction in linguistics.
The logical direction in linguistics is a set of trends and individual concepts that study language in its relation to thinking and knowledge and are oriented towards certain schools of logic and philosophy.
Characteristics:
1) Discussion of problems of epistemology
2) The tendency to identify the universal properties of language to the detriment of its national characteristics
3) Development of unified principles for analyzing language, independent of real linguistic forms (a common representation of sentence structure for all languages, a system of parts of speech, etc.)
4) Preference for synchronic analysis to diachronic and, accordingly, descriptive grammars over historical and comparative historical ones
5) Advantages, development of syntax (sentence theory) and semantics
6) Predominance of function, approach to implementation, definition and systematization of language categories
7) Definition of grammatical categories in their relation to the universal categories of logic: words - to the concept (concept), parts of speech - to the part performed by it logical function, sentences - to a judgment, a complex sentence - to a conclusion.
8) Assumption of hidden components of a sentence extrapolated from its logical model
Periodization:
1) Ancient period
In the 5th century BC V Ancient Greece the science of rhetoric (about eloquence) was born. In the 3rd century BC logic was formed. The ancient Greeks did not separate speech and language.
2) Medieval, Western European scholastic science.
3) Linguistics of the New Age
Western Europe represents an area where Romance and Germanic languages were spoken.
2 directions: 1. Creation of philosophical grammars - all people think alike, all categories are the same. 2. Creation philosophical languages(expresses the category of mind). Major thinkers of modern times: Locke, Leibniz, etc.
In 1660, in a monastery in France, two monks wrote a universal and rational grammar.
4) Recent period.
By the end of the 20th century. The logical approach has become inconvenient because... National sociology, national characteristics, etc. were not taken into account.
On the basis of the logical approach, the theory of linguistic universals was created.
At the end of the 20th century. A typology of languages has appeared - the study of the grammatical type of a language, regardless of its origin. Advantages of the logical direction: a base is created for the grammar of any language
Ticket No. 13
Ticket number 14.
Ticket#15
Affixation. Types of affixes.
An affix is a service morpheme, a minimal building element of a language, attached to the root of a word in the processes of morphological derivation and serving to transform the root for grammatical or word-formation purposes; the most important means of expressing grammatical and word-formation meanings; part of a word opposed to the root and concentrating its grammatical and/or word-formation meanings.
Affix types:
1) Prefix is a morpheme that stands before the root and changes its lexical or grammatical meaning (prefix).
2) Postfix (in in a broad sense) is the part of the word that comes after the ending or formative suffix (reflexive suffix of the verb).
3) Suffix is a morpheme, a variable part of a word, usually located after the root.
4) Inflection - endings that usually mark not only the end of a word and therefore serve as its boundary signal, but also characterize the form itself as ready for use as part of a syntactic structure and therefore “self-sufficient” for autonomous use between two spaces and the organization of a separate utterance.
5) Postfix (in the narrow sense) is a morpheme that comes after the ending, which is called a reflexive morpheme (SAY LAUGHED, SOMEONE, SOMETHING)
6) Confix - combinations of prefix and postfix, which always act together, surrounding the root (UNDRESS)
7) Infix - affixes inserted into the middle of the root; serve to express a new grammatical meaning; found in many Austronesian languages.
8) Transfix - affixes that, breaking a root consisting of only consonants, themselves break and serve as a “layer” of vowels among consonants, determining the grammatical meaning of the word.
9) Interfix - service morphemes that do not have their own meaning, but serve to connect roots in complex words.
Ticket number 16.
ESSENCE OF THE HYPOTHESIS: “The nature of knowledge of reality depends on the language in which a person thinks. People dissect the picture of the world, organize it into concepts and distribute meanings this way and not otherwise, because are participants in a certain agreement that is valid only for this language. Cognition does not have an objective, universal character. Similar physical phenomena make it possible to create a similar picture of the universe only if the language systems are similar or at least correlative.”
In Russian, blue and blue, and even more so blue and green, are different from each other. The reason for this is the Russian language itself. There is a separate word for each of these colors.
But in other languages the situation is different. In German and English it is the same word. In Breton, Korean, Vietnamese, the same word means both “green” and “blue”.
In the Hopi Indian language there is a word that applies to any flying object except birds: an airplane, a fly, a pilot, and a bat.
In the Swahili language, the same word is used to describe a steam locomotive, a train, a car, a wagon, a cart, a baby stroller, and a bicycle.
One Melanesian language has 100 special names for 100 varieties of banana.
The Sami language has 20 words for ice, 11 for cold, and 26 for frost and melting.
In addition, there are differences in the design of proposals:
English: He invites some guests for supper= 6 words
Nootka Indian language: cooked-eating-to-them-goes (incorporating language)
Conclusion: we dissect nature in the direction that our native language tells us. We distinguish categories not because these categories are self-evident. The world is a kaleidoscopic flow of impressions, which must be organized by our consciousness, and, therefore, by the language system.
Refutation: According to many scientists, cause and effect are confused here. There are 100 varieties of bananas, therefore 100 names.
For a villager in East Africa, it makes no difference what the difference is between a steam locomotive and a bicycle.
The division of the world is determined not by language, but by the social practice of a given people.
Ticket number 17.
Ticket#18
- Functions of language from the point of view of the theory of the communicative act of R. Jacobson.
1. referential
2. regulatory
3. emotive (expressive)
4. contact-making
5. metalinguistic
6. aesthetic
- Referential function associated with creation and transfer information, i.e. essentially combines the cognitive and communicative functions of language.
- Regulatory function of language
If communication is focused on the addressee, then the regulation of his behavior comes to the fore. Behavior can be regulated by inducing action, to answer a question, or by prohibiting action.
In science, this function is called differently:
conative (conation - ability to volitional movement)
appellative (appellare - to appeal, to call, to incline to action)
voluntary (voluntas - will, desire)
inviting and motivating.
Associated with this function is the intention, the intention of the speaker; that for which he addresses the listener. There are such speech acts as question, prohibition, request, motivation, order, warning, advice...
For the most common speech acts, special syntactic structures have been developed: narrative, interrogative, incentive.
Sometimes the grammatical structure is used in a figurative sense: the question: “Do you have any matches?” expresses a request rather than a question.
3. Emotional-expressive function (emotive).
Sometimes the statement directly expresses subjective psychological attitude person to what he is talking about. Then the emotive function is realized.
The main means of expressing emotions in speech is intonation. In studio experiments, K. Stanislavsky was able to distinguish up to 40 emotional situations when uttering one phrase “tonight”.
Emotions are also expressed using interjections or words with expressive connotations (coloring): honey, amazing, hard worker, my friend. These words are marked in the dictionary as “dismissive, ironic, etc.”
The emotional side of speech is associated with the work of the right hemisphere of the brain. If a person has a disorder of the right hemisphere, then his speech becomes intonationally monotonous. Speech perception is also impaired. He understands the meaning of what is being communicated, but cannot understand whether it is being said seriously or jokingly.
If the left hemisphere is damaged and the right hemisphere is intact, the patient may not understand the meaning of what is being communicated, but reacts to the emotional tone with which it was uttered.
4. Contact making function.
Sometimes communication seems aimless. Speakers do not care about the information they convey to each other; they do not seek to express their emotions or influence each other.
The tongue here acts as a contact-establishing function.
These are greetings, congratulations, routine questions “How are you?” and conversations about the weather, traffic jams, the global financial crisis and other well-known things. Communication is for the sake of communication; it is aimed primarily at establishing or maintaining contact.
The form and content of contact-building communication are different for people of different ages, gender, social status, relationships between speakers. But in general, such proposals are standard and minimally informative. Wed. clichéd congratulations, initial and final phrases in letters. Redundancy of addresses by name in a conversation between two people, high predictability of texts performing this function.
These conversations help overcome disunity and lack of communication.
Children's speech initially performs exactly this function: 3x summer child When he starts to say something, he still doesn’t know what he is going to say. It is important for him to establish contact.
6. Metalinguistic function= explanatory commentary of speech.
This function is implemented when any difficulties arise in verbal communication
(when talking with a child, a foreigner, or another person who does not speak this professional language, style, jargon).
For example, hearing the unfamiliar word “laptop,” your grandmother may ask, “What is that?” And you say: “Well, a laptop is such a thing... etc.” By explaining, you implement a metalinguistic function.
Sometimes in a conversation with a foreigner or a child or grandmother, it is worth asking if they understand everything. All comments and explanations are implementations of a metalinguistic function.
Sometimes languages are assessed by their degree of circularity, i.e. the degree of definability of words through each other.
The metalinguistic function is realized in all statements and explanations.
6. Aesthetic function of speech (poetic).
It has to do with paying attention to the message for its own sake.
How is an aesthetic attitude towards language manifested? Speakers begin to notice the text itself, its sound and verbal texture.
You may or may not like a particular word, turn, phrase. It is speech, and not its content, that is perceived as beautiful or ugly or annoying.
The aesthetic function is associated with updating the usual usage of words, with the violation of clichés, everyday speech: unexpected comparisons, sound organization of speech - alliteration, sound writing.
The language shell itself, the word, becomes part of its content.
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Linguistics as a science. Basic functions of the language.
Linguistics is the science of natural human language in general and of all the languages of the world as its individual representatives. By language we mean natural human language (as opposed to artificial languages and the language of animals), the emergence and existence of which is associated with the emergence and existence of man. The term “language” has at least 2 interrelated meanings: language in general, as a certain class of sign systems; specific language, i.e. ethnic language– a really existing significant system that is used in a certain society, at a certain time, in a certain space. A specific language is numerous implementations of the properties of a language in general.
Basic functions of the language. Language is a multifunctional system. Among the important functions of language, those related to a person’s meaning of reality are highlighted: the creation, storage and transmission of information. The first function is associated with the nominative function. In words we encode information about reality. The second function is associated with the cognitive function or cognitive function (the ability to compress and expand knowledge). The third function is associated with the communicative function or communication.
Language is usually defined in two aspects: the first is a system of phonetic, lexical, grammatical means, which are a tool for expressing thoughts, feelings, expressions of will, serving as the most important means of communication between people, i.e. language - social phenomenon, associated in its emergence and development with the human collective; the second is a type of speech characterized by certain stylistic features ( Kazakh language, spoken language).
Language as the main means human communication designed in such a way that it is adequate to the intentions and desires of an individual linguistic personality and the tasks of the human community to perform various functions. In the most general form, the functions of language mean the use of potential properties of language means in speech for various purposes.
Language is not a natural phenomenon, and, therefore, does not obey biological laws. Language is not inherited, it is not passed on from elders to younger ones. It arises precisely in society. It arises spontaneously and gradually turns into a self-organizing system, which is called upon to fulfill certain functions.
The first main function of language is cognitive(i.e. cognitive), meaning that language is the most important means of obtaining new knowledge about reality. The cognitive function connects language with human mental activity.
Without language, human communication is impossible, and without communication there can be no society, there cannot be a full-fledged personality (for example, Mowgli).
The second main function of language is communicative, which means that language is the most important means of human communication, i.e. communication, or transfer from one person to another of any message for one purpose or another. Communicating with each other, people convey their thoughts, feelings, influence each other, and achieve mutual understanding. Language gives them the opportunity to understand each other and establish joint work in all spheres of human activity.
The third main function is emotional and motivating.. It is intended not only to express the attitude of the author of the speech to its content, but also to influence the listener, reader, and interlocutor. It is implemented in means of evaluation, intonation, exclamation, and interjections.
Other language features:
– thought-forming, since language not only conveys thought, but also forms it;
– accumulative– is a function of storing and transmitting knowledge about reality. In written monuments, oral folk art the life of the people, the nation, the history of the speakers of the language is recorded;
– phatic (contacting) func-
tion is the function of creating and maintaining contact between interlocutors (formulas of greetings when meeting and parting, exchanging remarks about the weather, etc.). The content and form of phatic communication depend on the gender, age, social status, and relationships of the interlocutors, but in general they are standard and minimally informative. Phatic communication helps to overcome incommunicability and disunity;
– conative function - the function of assimilation of information by the addressee, associated with empathy (the magical power of spells or curses in an archaic society or advertising texts in a modern one);
– appellative function - the function of calling, inciting one or another action (forms of the imperative mood, incentive sentences, etc.);
– aesthetic function - a function of aesthetic impact, manifested in the fact that the reader or listener begins to notice the text itself, its sound and verbal texture. You begin to like or dislike a separate word, turn, phrase. Speech can be perceived as something beautiful or ugly, i.e. as an aesthetic object;
– metalinguistic function (speech commentary) – the function of interpreting linguistic facts. The use of language in metalinguistic function is usually associated with difficulties verbal communication, for example, when talking with a child, a foreigner or another person who does not fully speak a given language, style, or professional variety of language. The metalinguistic function is realized in all oral and written statements about language - in lessons and lectures, in dictionaries, educational and scientific literature about language.
LANGUAGE – social processed, historically variable system of signs, serving as the main means of communication and representation different forms existence, each of which has at least one form of implementation - oral or written.
SPEECH – this is one of the types of human communicative activity, i.e. using language to communicate with other people
Types of speech activity:
Speaking
Hearing
The main functions of the language are:
communicative (communication function);
thought-forming (function of embodiment and expression of thoughts);
expressive (function of expressing the internal state of the speaker);
aesthetic (the function of creating beauty through language).
Communicative function lies in the ability of language to serve as a means of communication between people. Language has the units necessary to construct messages, the rules for their organization, and ensures the emergence of similar images in the minds of participants in communication. Language also has special means of establishing and maintaining contact between participants in communication.
From the point of view of speech culture, the communicative function presupposes the orientation of participants in speech communication towards the fruitfulness and mutual usefulness of communication, as well as a general focus on the adequacy of understanding speech.
Thought-forming The function is that language serves as a means of designing and expressing thoughts. The structure of language is organically connected with the categories of thinking. “The word, which alone is capable of making a concept an independent unit in the world of thoughts, adds to it a lot of its own,” wrote the founder of linguistics Wilhelm von Humboldt (V. Humboldt. Selected works on linguistics. - M., 1984. P. 318).
This means that the word highlights and formalizes the concept, and at the same time a relationship is established between units of thinking and symbolic units of language. That is why W. Humboldt believed that “language must accompany thought. Thought must, keeping up with language, follow from one of its elements to another and find in language a designation for everything that makes it coherent” (Ibid., p. 345) . According to Humboldt, “in order to correspond to thinking, language, as far as possible, in its structure must correspond to the internal organization of thinking” (Ibid.).
The speech of an educated person is distinguished by the clarity of the presentation of his own thoughts, the accuracy of the retelling of other people's thoughts, consistency and information content.
Expressive the function allows language to serve as a means of expressing the internal state of the speaker, not only to convey some information, but also to express the speaker’s attitude to the content of the message, to the interlocutor, to the communication situation. Language expresses not only thoughts, but also human emotions. The expressive function presupposes the emotional brightness of speech within the framework of socially accepted etiquette.
Artificial languages do not have an expressive function.
Aesthetic the function is to ensure that the message, in its form in unity with the content, satisfies the aesthetic sense of the addressee. The aesthetic function is characteristic primarily of poetic speech (works of folklore, fiction), but not only of it - journalistic, scientific speech, and everyday colloquial speech can be aesthetically perfect.
The aesthetic function presupposes the richness and expressiveness of speech, its compliance with the aesthetic tastes of the educated part of society.
language is system(from Greek systema – something whole made up of parts). And if this is so, then all its constituent parts should not represent a random set of elements, but some kind of ordered combination of them.
How does the systematic nature of language manifest itself? First of all, the language has a hierarchical organization, in other words, it distinguishes different levels(from lowest to highest), each of which corresponds to a specific linguistic unit.
Typically the following are highlighted levels of the language system: phonemic, morphemic, lexical And syntactic. Let us name and characterize the corresponding linguistic units.
Phoneme– the simplest unit, indivisible and insignificant, serving to distinguish minimally significant units (morphemes and words). For example: n ort – b ort, st O l – st at l.
Morpheme– the minimum significant unit that is not used independently (prefix, root, suffix, ending).
Word (lexeme)– a unit that serves to name objects, processes, phenomena, signs or indicates them. This is the minimum nominative(nominal) unit language, consisting of morphemes.
The syntactic level corresponds to two linguistic units: phrase and sentence.
Collocation is a combination of two or more words between which there is a semantic and/or grammatical connection. A phrase, like a word, is a nominative unit.
Offer– a basic syntactic unit that contains a message about something, a question or an incentive. This unit is characterized by semantic design and completeness. Unlike the word - the nominative unit - it is communicative unit, since it serves to transmit information in the process of communication.
Between the units of the language system certain relationship. Let's talk about them in more detail. The “mechanism” of language is based on the fact that each linguistic unit is included in two intersecting rows. One row, linear, horizontal, we directly observe in the text: this syntagmatic series, where units of the same level are combined (from the Greek. syntagma - something connected). In this case, units of a lower level serve as building material for units of a higher level.
An example of syntagmatic relations is the compatibility of sounds: [city of Moscow]; grammatical compatibility words and morphemes: play football, play the violin; blue ball, blue notebook, under+window+nick; lexical compatibility: desk, work at a desk, mahogany desk –"piece of furniture" plentiful table, dietary table -"food", "nutrition", passport office, information desk –“department in an institution” and other types of relations of linguistic units.
The second row is nonlinear, vertical, not given in direct observation. This paradigmatic series, i.e. this unit and other units of the same level, associated with it by one or another association - formal, meaningful similarity, opposition and other relationships (from the Greek. paradeigma - example, sample).
The simplest example paradigmatic relations is a paradigm (pattern) of declension or conjugation of a word: home, ~ A, ~y...; I’m going, ~eat, ~eat... Paradigms form interrelated meanings of the same thing polysemantic word (table– 1.piece of furniture; 2. food, nutrition; 3. department in an institution); synonymous series (cold-blooded, restrained, unperturbed, balanced, calm); antonymous pairs (wide - narrow, open - close); units of the same class (verbs of motion, designations of kinship, names of trees, etc.), etc.
From the above it follows that linguistic units are stored in our linguistic consciousness not in isolation, but as interconnected elements of unique “blocks” - paradigms. The use of these units in speech is determined by their internal properties, by the place this or that unit occupies among other units of a given class. Such storage of “linguistic material” is convenient and economical. IN everyday life we usually don't notice any paradigms. Nevertheless, they are one of the foundations of language knowledge. It is no coincidence that when a student makes a mistake, the teacher asks him to inflect or conjugate this or that word, form the desired form, clarify the meaning, choose the most suitable word from a synonymous series, in other words, turn to the paradigm.
So, the systematic nature of a language is manifested in its level organization, the existence of various linguistic units that are in certain relationships with each other.
Related information.
| Parameter name | Meaning |
| Article topic: | Language functions |
| Rubric (thematic category) | Connection |
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Language arose naturally and is a system that is necessary simultaneously for the individual (individual) and society (collective). As a result, language is multifunctional in nature.
LANGUAGE is a socially determined system of verbal signs that serve as a means of denoting various information and communication between people; it is the most important tool of human activity. In human activity, language performs several important functions. The main ones are: communicative; cognitive (cognitive); accumulative; emotional; magical and poetic.
Communicative function of language
The communicative function of language is due to the fact that language is primarily a means of communication between people. It allows one individual - the speaker - to express his thoughts, and another - the perceiver - to understand them, that is, to somehow react, take note, change his behavior or his mental attitudes accordingly. The act of communication would not be possible without language.
Communication means communication, exchange of information. In other words, language arose and exists primarily so that people can communicate.
The communicative function of language is carried out due to the fact that language itself is a system of signs: it is simply impossible to communicate in any other way. And signs, in turn, are intended to transmit information from person to person.
literary language antithesis rhetorical
Message and influence and communication are the implementation of the communicative function of language.
Cognitive or cognitive function of language
The cognitive or cognitive function of language (from the Latin cognition - knowledge, cognition) is associated with the fact that human consciousness is realized or recorded in the signs of language. Language is an instrument of consciousness that reflects the results of human mental activity.
Scientists have not yet come to a clear conclusion about what is primary - language or thinking. Perhaps the question itself is incorrect. After all, words not only express our thoughts, but the thoughts themselves exist in the form of words, verbal formulations, even before their oral utterance. At least, no one has yet succeeded in recording the pre-verbal, pre-linguistic form of consciousness.
Any images and concepts of our consciousness are realized by ourselves and those around us only when they are clothed in linguistic form. Hence the idea of an inextricable connection between thinking and language.
The connection between language and thinking has even been established through physiometric evidence. The person being tested was asked to think about some complex problem, and while he was thinking, special sensors took data from the speech apparatus of a silent person (from the larynx, tongue) and detected the neural activity of the speech apparatus. That is, the mental work of the subjects “out of habit” was reinforced by the activity of the speech apparatus.
Interesting evidence comes from observations of mental activity polyglots - people who can speak many languages well. They admit that in each specific case they “think” in one language or another. The example of intelligence officer Stirlitz from the famous movie is indicative - after many years of work in Germany, he caught himself “thinking in German.”
The cognitive function of language not only allows you to record the results of mental activity and use them, for example, in communication. It also helps to understand the world. Human thinking develops in the categories of language: realizing new concepts, things and phenomena, a person names them.