Cognitive interpretation of lexical units

Chapter 1. The concept of cognitive linguistics
1.1 Formation of cognitive linguistics as a science

Cognitive linguistics has firmly taken its place in the paradigm of the concepts of modern world linguistics. It is its emergence and rapid development at the present stage that are a characteristic feature of linguistics at the turn of the century.

According to the definition of V. Z. Demyankov and E. S. Kubryakova , cognitive linguistics studies language as a cognitive mechanism that plays a role in encoding and transforming information [Brief Dictionary of Cognitive Terms, p. 53-55].
In cognitive linguistics, we see a new stage in the study of complex relations between language and thinking, a problem that is largely characteristic of Russian theoretical linguistics. Cognitive research has gained recognition in Russia, as E. S. Kubryakova rightly emphasizes , primarily because they address “topics that have always worried Russian linguistics: language and thinking, the main functions of language, the role of man in language and the role of language for man” [ Kubryakova , 2004, p. eleven].
The beginning of such a study was laid by neurophysiologists, doctors, psychologists (P. Broca , K. Wernicke, I. M. Sechenov, V. M. Bekhterev, I. P. Pavlov, etc.). On the basis of neurophysiology, neurolinguistics arose (L. S. Vygotsky, A. R. Luria ). It became clear that language activity takes place in the human brain, that different types of language activity (learning a language, listening, speaking, reading, writing, etc.) are associated with different parts of the brain.²
The next stage in the development of the problem of the relationship between language and thinking was psycholinguistics, within which the processes of generating and perceiving speech, the processes of learning a language as a system of signs stored in the human mind, the correlation of the language system and its use, functioning (American psycholinguists C. Osgood , T. Sebeok , J. Grinberg, J. Carroll and others, Russian linguists A. A. Leontiev, I. N. Gorelov, A. A. Zalevskaya , Yu. N. Karaulov and others).
Cognitive linguistics takes shape in the last two decades of the 20th century, but its subject - features of the assimilation and processing of information, ways of mental representation of knowledge with the help of language - was already outlined in the first theoretical works on linguistics in the 19th century.
So, considering W. Humboldt's theory of the folk spirit, A. A. Potebnya recognizes the question of the origin of language as a question about the phenomena of mental life that precedes language, about the laws of its formation and development, about its influence on subsequent mental activity, that is, a purely psychological question. . A. A. Potebnya understands that in mental activity there are the strongest concepts that are put forward, and concepts that remain far away [ Potebnya , 1993, p. 83]. It is the strongest representations that are involved in the formation of new thoughts ( Herbart 's law of apperception ). A. A. Potebnya clearly sees the role of association and fusion of associations in the formation of series of representations. Heterogeneous ideas, perceived simultaneously, without losing their integrity, can be combined into one whole. When merging, two different representations are perceived as one [ Potebnya , 1993, p. 91].
In other words, A. A. Potebnya perfectly understood the role of language in the processes of cognition of the new, in the processes of formation and development of human knowledge about the world on the basis of the psychological processes of apperception and association, on the basis of different human ideas about phenomena that have names in the language.
The subject of cognitive linguistics is even more obvious in the following statement by I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay : “... From linguistic thinking, one can reveal a whole peculiar linguistic knowledge of all areas of being and non-being, all manifestations of the world, both material and individual psychological and social (public)" [ Baudouin de Courtenay , 1963, p. 312].
Reflections on the participation of language in the knowledge of the world can be found in the works of thinkers of different times and peoples from antiquity to the present day. Their detailed reviews were made by L. G. Zubkova [Zubkova, 2000] and N. A. Kobrina [ Kobrina , 2000].
However, the frontal development of linguocognitive problems begins only in the last decades of the 20th century, and the main publications in cognitive linguistics fall on this period.³
Modern cognitive linguistics is one of a number of sciences that, with their specific methods, explore one common subject - cognition .
In this regard, now we can talk about the existence of cognitive science, which, according to the definition of E. S. Kubryakova , is interdisciplinary and is an umbrella term [ Kubryakova , 2004, p. 7] for a number of sciences - cognitive psychology, cognitive linguistics, philosophical theory of cognition , logical analysis of language, theory of artificial intelligence, neurophysiology; “disciplines such as cognitive anthropology, cognitive sociology, and even cognitive literary criticism have already been established, i.e., in almost every humanities, a special area has emerged associated with the application of a cognitive approach and cognitive analysis to the relevant objects of this science” [ Kubryakova , 2004, p. . 10-11]. Cognition as a process of cognition, reflection by human consciousness of the surrounding reality and transformation of this information in consciousness, is currently understood in modern science in a broad sense - “previously meaning simply “cognitive” or “related to knowledge”, the term cognitive is increasingly acquiring the meaning of “internal” , "mental", " internalized "" [ Kubryakova , 2004, p. nine].
The tasks of cognitive science "include both the description/study of knowledge representation systems and information processing and processing processes, and - at the same time - the study of the general principles of organizing human cognitive abilities into a single mental mechanism, and establishing their relationship and interaction" [ Kubryakova , 2004, p. 8-9].
Thus, cognitive linguistics is one of the areas of interdisciplinary cognitive science.
Formally, in linguistic historiography, the emergence of cognitive linguistics is attributed to 1989, when in Duisburg (Germany) at a scientific conference the creation of an association for cognitive linguistics was announced, and cognitive linguistics, thus, became a separate linguistic direction. The formation of modern cognitive linguistics is associated with the works of American authors George Lakoff , Ronald Langaker , Ray Jakendoff and others. The works of these scientists and the development of the problems of cognitive linguistics in the works of E. S. Kubryakova are characterized in the most detailed and detailed way [ Kubryakova , 1994, 1997, 1999, 2004]. The works of E. S. Kubryakova became fundamental, they formed the basis of cognitive linguistics in Russia.
The works of American scientists were published in translation into Russian in the series "New in Foreign Linguistics" [ vol . XXIII, M., 1998]. The scientific apparatus of American cognitive linguistics is presented in particular detail and in detail in the Concise Dictionary of Cognitive Terms, edited by A. E. S. Kubryakova [M., 1996]. The works of leading American cognitivists are also discussed in detail in the article by A. Chenky [Chenky, 1996]. You can read about cognitive research in France in the article by R. A. Plungyan , E. V. Rakhilina [ Plungyan , Rakhilina 1994].
The stages in the development of cognitive linguistics in Russia were the book Structures of Knowledge Representation in Language [M., 1994], as well as N.N. Boldyrev's book Cognitive Semantics [Boldyrev 2001].
Many useful considerations about the structures of knowledge can be gleaned from modern works on the problem of "language and thinking", the authors of which in one way or another touch upon the problems of cognitive linguistics (Vasiliev 1990, Segal 1997, Pinker 1999, etc.). A variety of interpretations and definitions of the subject of cognitive linguistics and its categories are offered by authors who specifically deal with these problems [Rozina, 1994; Demyankov, 1994; Khudyakov, 1996; Frumkina, 1996; Ruzin , 1996; Baranov and Dobrovolsky, 1997; Boldyrev, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001; Zalevskaya , 1998, 2000; Sharandin , 1998; Shakhovsky , 2000; Krasnykh, 2000; Arkhipov, 2001 and others].⁴
In Russia, theories of the meaning of the word were developed on the basis of component analysis. The semantic parameters found by Yu. D. Apresyan, I. A. Melchuk, A. K. Zholkovsky made it possible to start compiling semantic dictionaries, searching for semantic primary elements. These primary elements, as it is now increasingly becoming clear, lie in the sphere of human cognitive activity and represent, in fact, the same categories that are identified in the works of American cognitive scientists . In this regard, we should also mention the work of the Polish researcher Anna Wierzbicka [ Wierzbicka , 1996].
Both directions - classical American Cognitivism and Russian structural-semantic studies - developed independently of each other and used different terminology, however, the categories discovered as a result of these studies overlap in many respects. This is well shown in the works of E. V. Rakhilina , who made an attempt to correlate the terminology of American cognitive linguists and the Moscow semantic school of Yu. D. Apresyan [ Rakhilina , 1998, 2000].
Cognitive linguistics explores the mental processes that occur during perception, comprehension and, consequently, cognition of reality by consciousness, as well as the types and forms of their mental representations.
The material of linguo -cognitive analysis is language, and the goals of such research in different specific areas (schools) of cognitive linguistics may vary - from an in-depth study of the language using a cognitive categorical-terminological apparatus to specific modeling of the content and structure of individual concepts as units of national consciousness ( conceptosphere ).
Thus, cognitive linguistics, as an independent area of modern linguistic science, has emerged from cognitive science. The ultimate goal of cognitive linguistics, as well as cognitive science in general, is "obtaining data on the activity of the mind" [ Kubryakova , 2004, p. thirteen]. At the same time, the study of consciousness is a common subject of cognitive science and cognitive linguistics [ Kubryakova , 2004, p. ten].
At the same time, the difference between cognitive linguistics and other cognitive sciences lies precisely in its material - it explores consciousness on the material of language (other cognitive sciences explore consciousness on their own material), as well as in its methods - it explores cognitive processes, draws conclusions about the types of mental representations in human consciousness based on the application to the language of the linguistic methods of analysis at the disposal of linguistics, followed by a cognitive interpretation of the results of the study.
Modern cognitive linguistics is heterogeneous, “different directions in cognitive research are presented and leaders and leading figures in different schools of cognitive linguistics have been identified” [ Kubryakova , 2004, p. eleven].