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Key words: linguistics, grammar, logics, naming, maxim of quantity.
Within the discussion with N. Chomsky about questions which face to the linguists S. Shaumyan writes in "Two Paradigms of Linguistics: The Semiotic Versus Non-Semiotic Paradigm" (1998) that "What is language?" is a central question to any linguistic theory [Shaumyan 1998: 7]. I think the answer to it can be found through analysis of language functions.
It's not important within the framework of which paradigm any research is created. Anyway philologist makes a start from assumption that main language functions are nominative and communicative. The others are considered in the capacity of complementary functions by him. I'm not going to be engaged in detailed analysis of this classification. I just note that it is very important for us to allocate on the foreground communication and naming - kinds of human activity in which the language plays the main role. The problem of genesis of language grows out of the joint these concepts. Really we can hear about animal communication (and even about animals languages) sometimes; there are similarities between communication systems of different kinds of animals with human language founded and essential difference noted: animals don't give names objects around them. Naming is an extremely kind of human activity.
Man not only establish between signifie and signifiant some connection while name something but also create model of reality and structuralizes it. Any word allocates some object, draws a border between that is named and that is not named. While name some kind of animals "tigers" we allocate certain kind from set of animals. Word is the sign of this allocation. Word "tiger" tell profane English-speaking person about the wild animal but to philologists the existence of a word must indicate fact of allocation any essence from set of essences first of all. Dictionaries show that does word "tiger" mean but the fact of allocation of tigers from set of other animals isn't analyzed in any dictionary though the fact of allocation had served the reason of the act of the name and was reflected in the appropriate word.
If I name something and draw a border between this object and other objects it means signifiant carries information not only about signifie but also about something is opposed to this signifie in my consciousness. Unfortunately as a rule philologists' lose sight of this layer of the contents the though being of any language in the capacity of system is possible due to its presence. "Information about fact A concerning in reality and/or in recipient's thesaurus with facts B, C, D etc. potentially imply them in his consciousness: A --> B, C, D" [Dolinin 1983: 38]. Distinct elements of language system support each other, making a unit.
Probably this idea isn't obvious in application to a separately taken word, but it's especially visible well in constructions which are structurally large than word. For example, word combination "green herb" indicate that not all herb is green but it can be another color too. It's senseless for us to designate by a word combination that's possible to designate by one word without loss of sense. Besides in the event that really all herb was only green but we used a word combination it would contradict a principle of economy of speech efforts. V. G. Kostomarov describes similar infringement. He writes word "idiomatic" is meaningless in the dissertation title "English Idiomatic Phraseology and Language Picture of the World" because "phraseology can't be non-idiomatic by definition" [Kostomarov 2000: 2].
Our concept is crossed with H. Grice's idea of necessary and enough quantity of the information in the communication process here. Utterance should contain not less information than it is required, but also no more for performance of the current purposes of dialogue [Grice 1985]. Human experience is reflected in language, so opportunity to say "green herb" indicates that there is information about multicolor of herb in cumulative experience of the English-speaking people.
Obviously in language of professional communication degree of detailing certain area of the reality will be higher than in profane language. There, where for profane English-speaking person is only "Japanese hieroglyphs" or "Japanese writings", for specialist is "katakana" and "hiragana". Degree of subject studying causes lexicon of professional language. Different viewings on environmental reality cause differences between terminologies which make difficulties of translation. For example, there is the term for self-antonymy phenomenon (we can calque it as "enantiosemy") but no term for word is its own antonym in Russian linguistic terminology. On the contrary there is the term for self-antonym ("contranym") but no term for phenomenon in English.
I think the quantitative characteristic of a lexicon isn't correlate with level of detailing professional picture of the world: synonymy is shown in professional languages too and can lead us into error. Semantic connections between words here are faster important. Besides "branchiness" of specialist's idiolect can be caused by insufficient possession of the appropriate terminology.
So, term as a result of purposeful development of the certain area of the reality serves "by a starting point for judgments of professional space and promotes optimal organization of specialists' activity" [Golovanova 2004: 24]. It's important to note on the one hand professional picture of the world is caused by experience of professional activity, on the other hand the young specialists' vision of the reality is caused by language of the professional communications substantially at entry them in professional community.
REFERENCES
Dem'iankov, V. Z. Kognitivnaia lingvistika kak raznovidnost' interpretiruiushchego podkhoda // Vopr. iazykoznaniia. - 1994. - 4.
Dolinin, K. A. Implitsitnoe soderzhanie vyskazyvaniia // Vopr. iazykoznaniia. - 1983. - 6.
Golovanova, E. I. Lingvisticheskaia interpretatsiia termina: kognitivno-kommunikativnyi podkhod // Izv. Ural'sk. gos. un-ta. - 2004. - 33.
Grice, H. P. Logika i rechevoe obshchenie // Novoe v zarubezhnoi lingvistike. - Vyp.16. Lingvisticheskaia pragmatika. - Moscow, 1985.
Humboldt, V. fon O sravnitel'nom izuchenii iazykov primenitel'no k razlichnym epokham ikh razvitiia // Humboldt, V. fon Izbrannye trudy po iazykoznaniiu. - Moscow, 2001.
Kostomarov, V. G. O iazyke dissertatsii // Biulleten' VAK RF. - 2000. - 2.
Potebnia, A. A. Mysl' i iazyk // Potebnia, A. A. Slovo i mif. - Moscow, 1989.
Shaumyan, S. Two Paradigms of Linguistics: The Semiotic Versus Non-Semiotic Paradigm // Web Journal of Formal, Computational & Cognitive Linguistics. 1998. Sept. 19.
This thesises in Russian.
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