LANGUAGE AS THE MOST IMPORTANT MEANS OF COMMUNICATION
AND AS THE IMMEDIATE REALITY OF THOUGHT
(Kasevich of General Linguistics. 1977)
Language is the most important means of transmitting and storing information: the bulk of information circulating in society exists precisely in linguistic form.
The transfer of information is one of the most important types and aspects of communication between people, therefore, language is the most important means of human communication. It follows, in turn, that the central function of language is the function of communication, or communicative.
It is known that there is another characteristic of language as the immediate reality of thought. Another function of the language is emphasized here, namely reflective (mental): thinking, that is, a person's reflection of the world around him, is carried out mainly in linguistic form. Otherwise, we can say that the function of language is to generate (form) information. How are these two functions of the language related?
It can be argued that the communicative function, or the function of communication, is primary, and the function of reflection is secondary, while both functions are closely related. Indeed, the reflection of the external world in itself does not require a linguistic form: animals already have relatively developed forms of reflection of the external world; the need for a linguistic form for the "products" of reflection arises precisely because these results of reflection of mental activity need to be communicated, transmitted to other members of the human collective. The exchange of individual experience, coordination of actions become possible thanks to the language, which is precisely the tool that allows "casting" the results of individual mental activity into universally significant forms.
The above at the same time means that the very reflective function of language is called into being by its communicative function: if there was no need for communication, there would be, generally speaking, the need for a linguistic form of a person's reflection of the external world.
Since the reflection of the external world at some high levels always acts as a generalization in relation to objects of reality and their properties, it can be said, after that, in the language is realized "the unity of communication and generalization." This means that, on the one hand, language provides communication; on the other hand, the results of mental activity, activity on the generalization of the properties of reality, are developed and fixed precisely in the linguistic form. Every word generalizes, in other words, every word is the result of the abstracting work of thought (the word wood means "tree in general"), and, conversely, an abstract concept common to all members of a given collective requires the presence of a word for its existence.
We can say that language, together with labor, created man: “First labor, and then articulate speech with it, were the two most important stimuli, under the influence of which the monkey's brain turned into a human brain” (F. Engels. Dialectics of Nature).
Communication is impossible without language, therefore, the existence of society is impossible, and hence the formation of a human personality, the formation of which is conceivable only in a social collective. Outside the language there are no generally valid concepts and, of course, the existence of developed forms of generalization, abstraction is difficult, i.e., again, the formation of a human personality is virtually impossible.
The communicative function of language presupposes a semiotic (sign) aspect of its consideration. The study of the reflective function of language is closely related to the problem "Language and thinking"... Consider the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, according to which a person's thinking is determined by the language in which he speaks, and he cannot go beyond this language, since all human ideas about the world are expressed through his native language. Opponents of this hypothesis point out that both a person's thinking and, indirectly, his language are determined by reality, the external world, therefore, to assign to language the role of a determining factor in the formation of thinking is idealism.
The decisive role of external reality in the formation of human thinking, of course, is not subject to discussion. It is undeniable. In this case, however, one should take into account activity processes of reflection of reality by a person: a person by no means passively captures the material that the external world "supplies" to him - this material is organized in a certain way, is structured by the perceiving subject; a person, as they say, "models" the external world, reflecting it by means of his psyche. One way or another of modeling is determined by human needs, primarily social, industrial. It is quite natural that these needs associated with the conditions of existence may be different for different historically formed communities of people. To some extent, the ways of modeling reality also differ accordingly. This is manifested primarily in the language. Consequently, the specificity of language here - contrary to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - is rather secondary, in any case, it is not primary: it cannot be said that the specificity of language determines the specificity of thinking.
This is the case in phylogenesis, that is, in the history of the formation and development of man (and his language). However, in ontogenesis, that is, in the individual development of a person, the situation is somewhat different. Each person acquires knowledge about the world, about external reality - reflects external reality to a very large extent not directly, but "through" the language. A textbook example: the spectrum of emission and absorption of light waves, which determines color, of course, is the same everywhere, and the physiological abilities of representatives of different ethnic groups to color perception do not differ either; however, it is known that some peoples differ, for example, three colors, while others have seven or more. It is natural to ask the question: why, say, every African shona(southeastern language group Bantu) learns to distinguish exactly three primary colors, no more and no less? Obviously, because in his language there are names for these three colors. Here, therefore, language acts as a ready-made tool for one or another structuring of reality when it is displayed by a person.
Thus, when the question arises as to why, in general, in a given language there are so many names of flowers, types of snow, etc., the answer to it is that the Russians, French, Indians, Nenets, etc., for their In practical activity during the previous centuries (perhaps millennia), roughly speaking, it was “necessary” to distinguish precisely the varieties of the corresponding objects, which was reflected in the language. Another question is: why does each representative of the linguistic community distinguish so many colors, etc., etc.? Here the answer is that this or that way of perceiving external reality is to a certain extent "imposed" on a specific individual by his language. In this respect, language is nothing more than the crystallized social experience of a given collective, people. From this point of view, therefore, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is quite reasonable.
The above, of course, does not mean in any way that a person is generally incapable of knowing what is not indicated in his language. The entire experience of the development of various peoples and their languages shows that when the production and cognitive evolution of society creates the need for the introduction of a new concept, then the language never interferes with this - to designate a new concept, either an already existing word is used with a certain change in semantics, or a new one is formed according to the laws of the given language. Without this, in particular, it would be impossible to imagine the development of science.
One more remark needs to be made in connection with the problem of "language and thinking". Even with the most concise consideration of this problem, the question arises how close, how indissoluble the connection between language and thinking is.
First of all, it must be said that in ontogeny (in a child) the development of speech and intellectual development are initially carried out "in parallel", according to their own laws, while the development of speech turns out to be more connected with the emotional sphere, with the establishment of "pragmatic" contact with others. Only later, by the age of two, the lines of speech and intellectual development "intersect", enriching each other. A process begins, as a result of which thought receives a linguistic form and the ability to join through language to the accumulated social experience; now language begins to serve not only the needs of elementary contact, but also, with the development of the individual, complex forms of self-expression, etc.
Consequently, there is a certain autonomy of language and thinking from a genetic point of view (that is, from the point of view of their origin and development), and at the same time their closest relationship.
From our own experience, everyone knows that thinking does not always take place in an expanded speech form. Does this mean that we have before us evidence (albeit intuitive) of the independence of thinking from language? This is a difficult question, and so far only a preliminary answer can be given.
Much depends on how we interpret the concept of "thinking". If this term for us means not only abstract thinking, but also the so-called thinking in images, then it is quite natural that this last - figurative thinking - should not necessarily be verbal, verbal. In this sense, non-verbal thinking is obviously quite possible.
Another aspect of the same problem is associated with the existence of such types of thinking, where the speech form is used, but appears as if reduced: from only some of the most important elements remain, but everything that "goes without saying" does not receive speech design. This process of "compressing" linguistic means resembles common practice in dialogues, especially in a well-known situation where much that is taken as known is omitted. This is all the more natural in mental monologues, or "monologues for oneself," that is, when there is no need to worry about achieving understanding on the part of the interlocutor.
Such curtailed speech that shapes thinking is called inner speech. It is important to emphasize that inner speech is still a reduced "ordinary" speech, arises on its basis and is impossible without it (inner speech is absent in a child who has not yet mastered the language sufficiently).
Questions to the article
1. How do the basic functions of the language relate to each other? Comment on the statement of the famous Russian psychologist: in the language there is "the unity of communication and generalization."
2. What is the essence of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
3. Answer, how is the interaction of language and thinking manifested in phylogenesis (the history of the formation and development of a person and his language) and in ontogenesis (individual development of a person)?
4. What is “inner speech”? How does it differ from ordinary speech?
Language is primarily a means of communication. Our communication, however, takes place in different places, at different times and with different interlocutors. It is easy to see that depending on the situation, we use the capabilities of the language in different ways. One of the most important tasks of linguistics is to find out how people use language in the process of communication, or, as scientists say, in the process communications
... Linguist Grigory Osipovich Vinokur noted that, in addition to the "anatomy" of language, there is its "physiology" and it is necessary to study not only the structure of the language, but also its use.
The use of the language depends primarily on communication situations,
on its specific conditions. Even speaking to oneself is also communication. A person, as it were, performs two roles simultaneously: a partner who speaks and a partner who answers.
Especially important goal
communication, i.e. that for which a person enters into communication: to communicate something, to ask for something, just to pass the time. For some purposes of communication in the language, special forms of expression are assigned. For example, orders, instructions, requests are usually expressed using the imperative mood: Close the door; Please give me a kilogram of flour... If the goal is to find out something from the interlocutor, then the most often used question is: How to get to the cinema? Do you know where Seryozha is? The purpose of communication determines both the choice of words and intonation. To comfort the little child, we will try to speak in a softer, softer voice, using diminutive-affectionate terms: Hush, Tanya, don't cry. / The ball will not sink in the river.
There are two forms of communication (communication) - written and oral ... Scientists have noticed that speaking is very different from writing. In a conversation, many words can be omitted, replaced with gestures, and thoughts and feelings can be expressed using intonation. In a situation of direct oral communication, it is enough to say to the interlocutor: I will be there, and indicate with a nod of the head exactly where (for example, in the yard). But the note will have to write in full: I will be in the yard... And, conversely, the speech of a person who, instead of Tomorrow at seven on Taganka will say in a conversation: I remind you that tomorrow at seven o'clock in the evening I will be waiting for you at the Taganskaya metro station, seems very strange. Many scientists even believe that there is a written language and an oral language, and that their systems are very different.
Speech largely depends on the relationship between the interlocutors: friendly, family, neutral, official. It is unlikely that we will turn to a stranger older than us in age, or say to him: Great! Hey! This behavior does not correspond to the conditions of communication, it violates the accepted norms of speech etiquette. This is another very important parameter of the situation - the nature of the relationship between partners
communications.
Also matter time
and a place
communications. A person's life is divided into weekdays and holidays, into work and rest: "Business is time, fun is an hour." Each of these time frames is closely related to specific events and possible types of conversations. Time is usually associated with the place of communication. What, for example, will school friends talk about at the festive table on the birthday of one of them? About different things, of course. But it is unlikely that the conversation will go about the lessons for tomorrow, in such an environment it is inappropriate. The person who nevertheless starts talking about them will be called a bore. However, the same theme is quite natural in the classroom at school. Remember the well-known expression: "This is not the time or the place to talk about this." This means that everyone intuitively feels the dependence of the topic and the nature of communication on the conditions in which it takes place.
Of course, speech largely depends on themes
communication. A serious conversation on an important topic for the interlocutors is unlikely to be conducted with playful intonations. And, conversely, during a casual conversation on "frivolous" topics, relaxed speech behavior, a joke and a game are quite appropriate.
Thus, the communication situation affects the way we speak. If even one of the parameters of the situation (partners, goal, form of communication - written or oral, time and place of communication) changes, speech means will be used in a different way.
The famous Gogol hero Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, thanks to his amazing ability to adapt to the interlocutor, literally charmed all the provincial officials and their wives. Even the gloomy Sobakevich said about him: "An agreeable person." This ability of Chichikov is very clearly manifested in his speech behavior. With the sentimental Manilov and his wife, he is extremely courteous and eloquent. Madam! here, - said Chichikov, - here, that's where, - here he put his hand on his heart, - yes, here the pleasantness of the time spent with you will remain! He does not stand on ceremony with the "club-headed" Korobochka: Yes, you will not find words with you! Really, like some, without saying a bad word, a mongrel lying in the hay: she herself does not eat, and does not give to others... When bargaining with Sobakevich, our hero is prudent and careful: My price! We must have somehow made a mistake or do not understand each other, have forgotten what the subject is. For my part, I suppose, in all honesty: eight hryvnia per soul, this is the reddest price! In these cases, the decisive influence on Chichikov's speech is exerted by the one with whom he is currently talking.
A very special type of communication - public communication ... Public speech has its own characteristics: it is more strict, formal. During a public speech, a person is more accurate in expressions, his pronunciation is more distinct. In a relaxed atmosphere, communicating with familiar people, we may well turn to them: Mary Vasilna! San Sanych! But when announcing the names of speakers at the meeting (i.e. in a more formal, public setting), you need to pronounce them differently: And now Maria Vasilievna Ivanova will speak in front of you or The floor is given to Alexander Alexandrovich Petrov.
So, a person's speech changes depending on the conditions of communication. This means that our language as a means of communication is heterogeneous, it is functionally oriented. Scientists distinguish three main functional-speech varieties of the modern Russian language: book-written language, spoken language
(or Speaking
) and language of fiction
.
Literary speech is a conditional name. It can exist not only in writing, but also orally. It is on the norms of the book-written language that any oral official public speech is oriented. Even if only two are talking, but in an official setting, the conversation will most likely take place in a book-written language.
In a relaxed (friendly, homely) atmosphere, they usually switch to spoken language. Imagine that you are listening to a weather forecast on the radio. The announcer announces: Partly cloudy weather is expected on the next day. Possible short-term precipitation, temperatures from five to ten degrees above zero... Then a friend or family member asked you to retell this prediction. The dialogue will be something like this:
- You haven't heard the weather for tomorrow?
- Heard. Well, they said, the weather is not very good. Mainly cloudy. They promised a rain. True, not for the whole day.
They learned the written language much better than the spoken language. Linguists began to study spoken language relatively recently. Live speech turned out to be richer than expected, and further from written speech. Many of its features became completely unexpected for scientists, giving rise to new questions.
Language provides us with every opportunity to fully and accurately express thoughts in any situation. You just need to be able to use these opportunities.
On the subject: " Russian language»
On this topic: " Language as the most important means of human communication»
INTRODUCTION
In ancient Greece and Rome, the culture of the native word was already developing. The ancient world brought up wonderful poets, writers, playwrights - masters of artistic speech. This world gave stories of outstanding orators who raised and solved important issues of speech skills. An understanding of the usefulness and necessity of good speech grew in society, and respect for those who knew how to value and successfully use their native language grew. Techniques for the exemplary use of language were taught in special schools.
Later, in various countries, including Russia, advanced social circles jealously protected their native language from damage and distortion. The consciousness grew that speech is a powerful force if a person is willing and able to use it. This consciousness became the clearer and more definite, the more successfully and widely the fiction, scientific and journalistic literature developed.
In Russia, the struggle for speech culture was comprehensively developed in the works of M.V. Lomonosov and A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol and I.S. Turgenev, N.A.Nekrasov and A.P., Chekhov, A.I. Kuprin and M. Gorky - in the works of those whom we call the classics of the Russian literary word; political and judicial figures, orators, scientists contributed to the formation of exemplary Russian speech.
In their practical activities and theoretical statements, an understanding of the multilateral role of language in the development of fiction, science, and journalism was more and more clearly formed. The originality, wealth and beauty of the Russian language, the participation of the people in its development were more and more fully appreciated. The activities of revolutionary democrats - V.G.Belinsky, A.I. Herzen, N.G. Chernyshevsky, N.A. Dobrolyubov, N.A.Nekrasov, M.E. participation of literature in its improvement.
In the development of correct views on language, Marxist philosophical teaching played an important role. K. Marx and F. Engels in "German Ideology" (1845-1846) formulated the famous philosophical definition of language. It expresses thoughts about language as a means of communication and cognition of reality, about the unity of language and thinking, about the initial connection of language with the life of society.
The Marxist understanding of the role of language in people's lives is succinctly and clearly conveyed in the well-known words of V. I. Lenin - "language is the most important means of human communication." The need for communication was the main reason for the emergence of language in the distant past. The same need is the main external reason for the development of language throughout the life of society.
Communication of people with the help of language consists in the "exchange" of thoughts, feelings, experiences, moods.
In words, combinations of words and sentences, certain results of the mental activity of people (concepts, judgments, inferences) are expressed. For example, the word tree expresses the concept of one of the plant species. And in the sentence the green tree expresses the idea of the presence of a certain sign (green) in a certain object (tree). Thus, the sentence expresses a qualitatively different result of a person's cognitive work - in comparison with the result that is expressed in a separate word.
But words, their combinations and whole utterances not only express concepts and thoughts: they participate in the very process of thinking, with their help thoughts arise, are formed, and therefore become a fact of a person's inner life. IP Pavlov substantiated the materialistic proposition that human thoughts cannot exist and develop outside of speech. The "second signaling system" (language) is involved in the formation of thought. This is why psychologists talk about perfecting thought in a word.
LANGUAGE AS A MEANS OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION.
The world is full of wonders. Isn't it a miracle that we can talk with people in another city, and at the same time see them? Or watch from Earth what is happening in the spacecraft? Or watch sports games taking place in the other hemisphere? Is it just that? But among the various miracles, we somehow do not pay attention to one of the most amazing - our native language.
The human language is an amazing, unique miracle. Well, what would we humans be worth without language? It is simply impossible to imagine us speechless. After all, it was the language that helped us stand out from the animals. Scientists understood this long ago. "To gather scattered peoples in hostels, to build cities, build temples and ships, to take up arms against the enemy and other necessary, allied forces that require work to be done, as it would be possible if they did not have a way to communicate their thoughts to each other." This was written by MV Lomonosov in the middle of the 17th century in his "Brief Guide to Eloquence". Two most important features of language, more precisely, two of its functions, were indicated here by Lomonosov: the function of communication between people and the function of forming thoughts.
Language is defined as a means of human communication. This one of the possible definitions of language is the main thing, because it characterizes the language not from the point of view of its organization, structure, etc., but from the point of view of what it is intended for. But why is it important? Are there other means of communication? Yes, there are. An engineer can communicate with a colleague without knowing his native language, but they will understand each other if they use blueprints. Drawing is usually defined as the international language of technology. The musician conveys his feelings with the help of a melody, and listeners understand him. The artist thinks in images and expresses this through lines and color. And all these are "languages", as they often speak "the language of the poster", the "language of music". But this is a different meaning of the word language.
Let's take a look at the modern four-volume Dictionary of the Russian Language. It gives 8 meanings of the word language, among them:
1. The organ in the oral cavity.
2. This human organ participating in the formation of speech sounds and thus in the verbal reproduction of thoughts; organ of speech.
3. The system of verbal expression of thoughts, which has a certain sound and grammatical structure and serves as a means of communication between people .
4. A kind of speech that has certain characteristic features; style, syllable.
5. A means of wordless communication.
6. Outdated. People.
The fifth meaning refers to the language of music, the language of flowers, etc.
And the sixth, obsolete, means people. As you can see, the most important ethnographic feature is taken to define a people - its language. Remember, in Pushkin:
The rumor about me will spread throughout the great Russia,
And every tongue in her will call me,
And the proud grandson of the Slavs, and the Finn, and now the wild
Tungus, and a Kalmyk friend of the steppes.
But all these "languages" do not replace the main thing - the verbal language of a person. And Lomonosov wrote about this at one time: “True, apart from our words, thoughts could be depicted through different movements of the eyes, face, hands and other parts of the body, they somehow represent pantomimes in theaters, but in this way it would be impossible to speak without light , and other human exercises, especially the work of our hands, were a great insanity to such a conversation. "
Indeed, we are now convinced that with the help of the "movement of body parts" it is possible, for example, to tell "Anna Karenina" by L. N. Tolstoy. We are happy to watch a ballet on this topic, but only those who have read the novel understand it. It is impossible to reveal the rich content of Tolstoy's work in the ballet. The language of words cannot be replaced by any other.
So, language is the most important means of communication. What qualities must he possess in order to become just such?
First of all, everyone who speaks it must know the language. There is, as it were, some general agreement that the table will be called the word table, and running - in a word run. How it happened is impossible to decide now, because the paths are very different. For example, the word satellite in our time has acquired a new meaning - "a device launched with the help of rocket devices." The date of birth of this value can be indicated absolutely precisely - October 4, 1957, when the radio announced the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite in our country. "This word immediately became known in this sense and entered into the use of all the peoples of the world.
So much for the "agreement." Everything is simple here, although such a meaning itself was already prepared in the Russian language: in the 11th-13th centuries it meant “companion on the road” and “accompanying in life”, then - “satellite of the planets”. And it is not far from here to the new meaning - “the device accompanying the Earth”.
But often not all words are known to speakers of a given language. And then normal communication is disrupted. Most of all it is connected with foreign words. But the misunderstanding can also be associated with the original Russian words, known only in a certain territory, or with words that are already rarely used, are outdated.
But if there are many such words, it makes it difficult to read the text. Therefore, critics oppose such a heap of dialectisms. This is also ridiculed by satirists.
Professional words, known only to people of this profession, make it difficult to communicate. However, professional vocabulary is a very important part of a language's vocabulary. It promotes more accurate and fruitful communication between people of a certain profession, which is extremely necessary. The larger and more precise the dictionary, the more detailed it allows to talk about the processes, the higher the quality of work.
The comprehensibility of the language ensures his role in organizing people. The language, which was born as a product of collective labor, is still called upon to unite people in labor activity, in the field of culture, etc.
The second quality on which communication depends is that the language should cover everything that surrounds a person, including his inner world. This, however, does not mean at all that the language must exactly repeat the structure of the world. We do have “words for every essence,” as A. Tvardovsky said. But even that which does not have a one-word name can be successfully expressed by combinations of words.
It is much more important that one and the same concept in a language can have, and very often does, have several names. Moreover, it is believed that the richer such series of words - synonyms, the richer the language is recognized. This is an important point; language reflects the external world, but is not absolutely adequate to it.
For example, here is the color spectrum. Several primary colors of the spectrum stand out. This is now based on accurate physical indicators. As you know, light of different wavelengths excites different color sensations. It is difficult to separate exactly "by eye", for example, red and purple, therefore we usually combine them into one color - red. And how many words are there for this color: red, scarlet, crimson, bloody, red, red, ruby, pomegranate, red, and you could also add - cherry, raspberry etc.! Try to differentiate these words by the wavelengths of light. This will fail because they are filled with their own special shades of significance.
The fact that language does not blindly copy the surrounding reality, but somehow in its own way, highlighting something more, attaching importance to something less, and is one of the amazing mysteries that have not yet been fully explored.
The two most important functions of the language that we have considered do not exhaust all its advantages and characteristics. Some will be discussed later. Now let's think about how, by what criteria we can evaluate a person. Of course, you say, there are many reasons for this: its appearance, attitude to other people, to work, etc. All this, of course, is true. But language also helps us to characterize a person.
They say: they are greeted by their clothes, they are escorted by their minds. And how do they learn about the mind? Of course, from a person's speech, from how and what he says. A person is characterized by his vocabulary, that is, how many words he knows - a little or a lot. Thus, the writers I. Ilf and E. Petrov, having decided to create the image of a primitive bourgeois woman Ellochka Shchukina, first of all told about her dictionary: “The dictionary of William Shakespeare, according to researchers, is twelve thousand words. The dictionary of a Negro from the cannibalistic Mumbo-Yumbo tribe is three hundred words. Ellochka Shchukina easily and freely got along with thirty ... "The image of Ellochka the Cannibal became a symbol of an extremely primitive person and one sign contributed to this - her language.
How many words does the average person know? Scientists believe that the vocabulary of an ordinary person, i.e. those who do not study language specifically (not a writer, linguist, literary critic, journalist, etc.) is about five thousand. And against this background, the quantitative indicator of the genius of outstanding people looks very expressive. The "Dictionary of Pushkin's Language", compiled by scientists on the basis of Pushkin's texts, contains 21,290 words.
Thus, language can be defined as a means of knowing the human personality, as well as a means of knowing the people as a whole.
That's what it is - a miracle of language! But that's not all. Each national language is also a storehouse of the people who speak it, and its memory.
LANGUAGE IS THE STOREROUS OF THE PEOPLE, ITS MEMORY.
When the historian seeks to restore and describe the events of the distant past, he turns to various sources available to him, which are the objects of that time, eyewitness accounts (if they are recorded), oral folk art. But among these sources there is one most reliable - language. The famous historian of the last century, professor L. K. Kotlyarevsky remarked: "Language is the most faithful, and sometimes the only witness of the past life of the people."
The words and their meanings reflected and survived to this day echoes of very distant times, the facts of the life of our distant ancestors, the conditions of their work and relationships, the struggle for freedom and independence, etc.
Let's take a specific example. Before us is a series of words, seemingly unremarkable, but connected by a common meaning: share, fate, destiny, happiness, luck. They are analyzed in his work “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” by academician B. A. Rybakov: “This group of words can even go back to the hunting era, to the division of prey between hunters who divided the prey, gave each one an appropriate share, partly giving something to women and children, - "happiness" was the right to participate in this division and receive their share (part). Everything here is quite concrete, "weighty, rough, visible."
These words could have retained exactly the same meaning in an agricultural society with a primitive collective economy: share and part meant that share of the total harvest that fell on a given family. But under the conditions of agriculture, the old words could acquire a new dual-opposite meaning: when a large primitive zadruga distributed work between plowmen and divided arable land into plots, one could get a good "lot", and the other a bad one. In these conditions, the words demanded a qualitative definition: "good lot" (site), "bad lot". It was here that the birth of abstract concepts took place ... "
This is what the historian saw in our modern words. It turns out that the deepest memory of the past is hidden in them. And one more similar example.
In one of his works, N. G. Chernyshevsky noted: "The composition of the vocabulary corresponds to the knowledge of the people, testifies ... of his everyday pursuits and way of life, and partly of his relations with other peoples."
Indeed, the language of each era contains the knowledge of the people in that era. Trace the meaning of the word atom in different dictionaries of different times, and you will see the process of comprehending the structure of the atom: first - "further indivisible", then - "split". At the same time, the dictionaries of past years serve as reference books for us about the life of those times, about the attitude of people to the world, the environment. It is not for nothing that VI Dal's "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language" is considered an "encyclopedia of Russian life." In this amazing dictionary we find information about beliefs and superstitions, about the life of people.
And this is no coincidence. If you try to reveal the content of a word, you will inevitably have to touch on the phenomena of life that words denote. Thus, we have come to the second feature, called by N. G. Chernyshevsky "everyday activities and way of life." The everyday activities of Russian people are reflected in numerous words that directly name these activities, for example: beekeeping - obtaining honey from wild bees, tarry - forcing tar out of a tree, carriage - winter transportation of goods by peasants, when there was no work in agriculture, etc. Russian folk cuisine is reflected in the words kvass, cabbage soup (shti), pancakes, porridge and many others; monetary units of monetary systems that have existed for a long time are reflected in the words penny, altyn, dime. It should be noted that metric, monetary and some other systems, as a rule, were expressed by different peoples in their own words, and this is precisely what constitutes the national characteristics of the vocabulary of the folk language.
The relations between people, moral commandments, as well as customs and ceremonies were reflected in the stable combinations of the Russian language. MA Sholokhov in the preface to the collection of V. I. Dahl "Proverbs of the Russian people" wrote: "The immense variety of human relations, which are imprinted in chased folk sayings and aphorisms. Joy and human suffering, laughter and tears, love and anger, faith and unbelief, truth and falsehood, honesty and deceit, diligence and laziness, the beauty of truths and the ugliness of prejudices, have come down to us from the abyss of times in these clots of reason and knowledge of life.
The third point, noted by N. G. Chernyshevsky, is also important - "relations with other peoples." These relationships were not always kind. Here and the invasion of enemy hordes, and peaceful trade relations. As a rule, the Russian language borrowed from other languages only what was good in them. It is curious about this statement of AS Pushkin: “... An alien language was spread not by saber and fires, but by its own abundance and superiority. What new concepts, requiring new words, could a nomadic tribe of barbarians bring to us, who had no literature, no trade, no legislation? Their invasion did not leave any traces in the language of the educated Chinese, and our ancestors, groaning under the Tatar yoke for two centuries, prayed to the Russian god in their native language, cursed the formidable rulers and conveyed their laments to each other. Be that as it may, hardly fifty Tatar words passed into the Russian language. "
Indeed, the language as the basis of the nation was preserved very carefully. The Nekrasov Cossacks can serve as an excellent example of how people value their language. The descendants of the participants in the Bulavin uprising, who underwent religious persecution in Russia, went to Turkey. They lived there for two or three centuries, but kept their language, customs, rituals pure. Only concepts that were new to them were borrowed in the form of words from the Turkish language. The basic language was completely preserved.
The formation of the Russian language took place in difficult conditions: there was a secular language - Old Russian, and Church Slavonic, which was used for services in churches, and spiritual literature was printed. AS Pushkin wrote; “Were we convinced that the Slavic language is not the Russian language, and that we cannot mix them capriciously, that if many words, many phrases can happily be borrowed from church books, then it still does not follow that we can write and lobby kiss me instead of kissing me. "
And yet, the role of borrowing as a result of communication between peoples cannot be discounted. Borrowing was the result of important events. One of such events was the baptism in Russia in the X-XI centuries and the adoption of Christianity of the Byzantine model. Of course, this had to be reflected in the language. I. was reflected. Let's start with the fact that we needed books that would set out the church canons. Such books appeared, they were translated from Greek. But the service in the church was in the Old Church Slavonic language (also known as Church Slavonic). Therefore, the translations were made into Old Church Slavonic.
And the people in Russia spoke the secular - Old Russian language. It was used both for chronicles and for other literature. The existence of two languages in parallel could not but affect the influence of Old Church Slavonic on Old Russian. That is why many Old Slavonic words have survived in our modern Russian language.
And the further history of our country can be traced to the outbreaks of foreign language borrowings. Peter I began to carry out his reforms, build a fleet - and Dutch and German words appeared in the language. The Russian aristocracy showed interest in France - French borrowings invaded. They came mainly not from the war with the French, but from cultural ties.
It is curious what all the best was borrowed from each nation. What, for example, did we borrow from French? These are words associated with cuisine (famous French cuisine), fashion, clothing, theater, ballet. The Germans borrowed words of a technical and military sense, from the Italians - musical and kitchen words.
However, the Russian language has not lost its national identity. The poet Y. Smelyakov said very well about this:
... You, our great-grandfathers, are in short supply,
Powdered my face with flour,
at the Russian mill they ground
visiting Tatar language.
You took a little German,
at least they could have more,
so that they are not alone
the scientific importance of the earth.
You who smelled like rotten sheepskin
and grandfather's spicy kvask,
was written with a black torch,
And a white swan feather.
You are above the price and the rate -
in the forty-first year, then,
was written in a German dungeon
on weak lime with a nail.
Lords and those disappeared,
instantly and for sure
when accidentally encroached on
into the Russian essence of the language.
And it is also worth remembering here the words of Academician V.V. Vinogradov: "The power and greatness of the Russian language are indisputable evidence of the great vitality of the Russian people, its original and high national culture and its great and glorious historical destiny."
HOW THE LANGUAGE IS BUILT.
Language can successfully fulfill its main purpose (that is, serve as a means of communication) because it is "composed" of a huge number of different units connected with each other by linguistic laws. This fact is borne in mind when they say that a language has a special structure (structure). Learning the structure of a language helps people improve their speech.
In order to present the linguistic structure in the most general terms, let us think about the content and construction of a single phrase, for example, this: (Pushkin). This phrase (utterance) expresses a definite, more or less independent meaning and is perceived by the speaker and listener (reader) as an integral unit of speech. But does this mean that it is not divided into smaller segments, parts? No, of course it doesn't. Such segments, parts of a whole statement, we can find very easily. However, not all of them are the same in their characteristics. To be convinced of this, we will try to select, for a start, the smallest audio segments of our utterance. To do this, we will divide it into parts until there is nothing more to divide. What will happen? The resulting vowels and consonants are:
D-l-a b-and-r-e-g-o-f a-t-h-i-z-n-s d-a-l-n-o-th T-s p-a-k -and-d-a-l-a to-r-a-th h-u-w-o-th.
This is how our utterance looks if we divide it into separate sounds (the literal representation of these sounds here is not very accurate, because the sound of speech cannot be accurately conveyed by ordinary means of writing). Thus, we can say that the sound of speech is one of those linguistic units that, in their totality, form a language, its structure. But, of course, this is not the only unit of the language.
Let's ask ourselves: what are the sounds of speech used for in the language? The answer to this question is not immediately found. But nevertheless, apparently, one can notice that the sound shells of words are built from the sounds of speech: after all, there is not a single word that would not be composed of sounds. Further, it turns out that the sounds of speech have the ability to distinguish the meanings of words, that is, they reveal some, albeit very fragile, connection with meaning. Let's take a series of words: house - ladies - gave - small - ball - was - howling - ox... How does each subsequent word differ in this row from its predecessor? By the change of only one sound. But this is enough for us to perceive the words of our series as different from each other and in meaning. Therefore, in linguistics, it is customary to say that the sounds of speech are used to distinguish between the meanings of words and their grammatical modifications (forms). If two different words are pronounced in the same way, that is, their sound shells are composed of the same sounds, then such words do not differ by us, and in order for their semantic differences to be perceived by us, we need to put these words in connection with other words, i.e. that is, substitute it into a statement. These are the words scythe"tool of labor" and scythe(maiden), key"spring" and key(lock), start(hours) and start(puppy). These and similar words are called homonyms.
The sounds of speech are used to distinguish the meanings of words, but by themselves they are insignificant: neither the sound a, nor the sound y, nor the sound, nor any other separate sound are associated in the language with any definite meaning. As part of a word, sounds jointly express its meaning, but not directly, but through other units of the language, called morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest semantic parts of a language used to form words and to change them (these are prefixes, suffixes, endings, roots). Our statement is divided into morphemes as follows:
For the coast-s ot-izn-y far-n-oh You are in-kid-a-l-a foreign land.
Sound, speech is not associated, as we have seen, with any definite meaning. The morpheme is significant: with each root, suffix, ending, with each prefix, one or another meaning is associated in the language. Therefore, we must call the morpheme the smallest structural and semantic unit of the language. How can you justify such a complex term? This can be done: the morpheme is, indeed, the smallest semantic unit of the language, it participates in the construction of words, is a particle of the structure of the language.
Having recognized the morpheme as a semantic unit of language, we should not, however, lose sight of the fact that this unit of language is devoid of independence: outside of the word it has no concrete meaning, it is impossible to construct a statement from morphemes. Only by comparing a number of words that have a similarity in meaning and sound, we find that the morpheme turns out to be the carrier of a certain meaning. For example, the suffix -nik in the words hunter, season-nick, carpenter, balalaika, high-nick, defender, worker-nick has the same meaning - informs about the actor, the character; the prefix in words ran, no-played, sat, no-read, ooiled, no-thought informs about the short duration and limited action.
So, the sounds of speech only distinguish the meaning, morphemes express it: each individual sound of speech is not associated in the language with any specific meaning, each individual morpheme is connected, although this connection is found only in the composition of a whole word (or a series of words), which and forces us to recognize the morpheme as a dependent semantic and structural unit of language.
Let's go back to saying For the shores of the fatherland, you left a foreign land... We have already identified two kinds of linguistic units in it: the shortest sound units, or the sounds of speech, and the shortest structural-semantic units, or morphemes. Are there units in it that are larger than morphemes? Of course there is. These are well-known (at least by their name) words. If a morpheme, as a rule, is built from a combination of sounds, then a word, as a rule, is formed from a combination of morphemes. Does this mean that the difference between a word and a morpheme is purely quantitative? Not at all. There are also words that contain one single morpheme: you, cinema, just what, how, where. Then - and this is the main thing! - the word has a definite and independent meaning, the morpheme, as already mentioned, is dependent in its meaning. The main difference between a word and a morpheme is created not by the amount of "sounding matter", but by the quality, ability or inability of a linguistic unit to independently express a certain content. The word, due to its independence, is directly involved in the construction of sentences, which are divided into words. The word is the shortest independent structural and semantic unit of the language.
The role of words in speech is very great: our thoughts, experiences, feelings are expressed in words, combined statements. The semantic independence of words is explained by the fact that each of them designates a certain "object", a phenomenon of life and expresses a certain concept. Tree, city, cloud, blue, lively, honest, sing, think, believe - behind each of these sounds there are objects, their properties, actions and phenomena, each of these words expresses a concept, a "piece" of thought. However, the meaning of a word is not reducible to a concept. The meaning reflects not only the objects themselves, things, qualities, properties, actions and states, but also our attitude towards them. In addition, the meaning of a word usually reflects various semantic connections of this word with other words. Hearing the word native, we perceive not only the concept, but also the feeling that colors it; in our minds, albeit very weakened, ideas about other meanings, historically associated in Russian with this word, will arise. These ideas will be different for different people, and the very word native will cause some differences in its interpretation and assessment. One, hearing this word, will think about relatives, the other - about his beloved, the third - about friends, the fourth - about the Motherland ...
This means that both sound units (speech sounds) and semantic units, but not independent ones (morphemes), are needed, in the end, in order for words to appear - these shortest independent carriers of a certain meaning, these smallest parts of utterances.
All words of a given language call it vocabulary (from the Greek lexis "word") or vocabulary. The development of language unites words and separates them. On the basis of their historical association, various vocabulary groups are formed. These groups cannot be "lined up" in one row for the reason that they are distinguished in the language on the basis of not one, but several different features. So, in a language there are vocabulary groups formed as a result of the interaction of languages. For example, in the vocabulary of the modern Russian literary language there are many words of foreign origin - French, German, Italian, Ancient Greek, Latin, Old Bulgarian and others.
By the way, there is a very good guide for mastering foreign language vocabulary - "Dictionary of Foreign Words".
There are also vocabulary groups of a completely different nature in the language, for example, active and passive words, synonyms and antonyms, local and general literary words, terms and non-terms.
It is curious that among the most active words in our language are the conjunctions and, a; prepositions в, na; pronouns he, me, you; nouns year, day, eye, hand, time; adjectives big, different, new, good, young; the verbs to be, to be able, to speak, to know, to go; adverbs are very, now, now, possible, good, etc. Such words are most commonly used in speech, that is, they are most often needed by speakers and writers.
Now we will be interested in a new, important question in the study of the structure of language: it turns out that by themselves, individual words, no matter how active they are in our speech, cannot express coherent thoughts - judgments and inferences. But people need a means of communication that could express coherent thoughts. This means that the language must have some kind of "device" with the help of which words could be combined to form utterances capable of conveying a person's thought.
Let's return to the proposal For the shores of the fatherland, you left a foreign land. Let's take a closer look at what happens to words when they are included in a statement. It is relatively easy to notice that one and the same word can change not only its appearance, but also its grammatical form, and hence its grammatical features and characteristics. Thus, the word shore is put in our sentence in the genitive plural; the word motherland - in the genitive singular; the word distant is also in the form of the genitive singular; the word you appeared in its "initial" form; the word to leave "adapted" to the word you and the expressed meaning and received signs of the past tense, singular, feminine; the word edge has signs of the accusative singular; the word “alien” is endowed with the same signs of case and number and has acquired the masculine form, since the word “requires” from the adjective this particular generic form.
Thus, observing the "behavior" of words in various utterances, we can establish some schemes (or rules) according to which words naturally change their form and connect with each other to build utterances. These schemes of the regular alternation of grammatical forms of a word when constructing statements are studied at school: declension of nouns, adjectives, conjugation of verbs, etc.
But we know that declension, conjugation, and various rules for linking words into sentences and constructing sentences are no longer vocabulary, but something else, what is called the grammatical structure of the language, or its grammar. One should not think that grammar is a collection of information about a language, compiled by scientists. No, grammar is, first of all, schemes characteristic of the language itself, rules (patterns), which are subject to the change in the grammatical form of words and the construction of sentences.
However, the concept of "grammar" cannot be clearly explained if the question of the duality of the very nature of the word is not considered, at least schematically, incompletely: for example, the word spring is an element of the vocabulary of the language and it is also an element of the grammar of the language. What does it mean?
This means that each word, in addition to the individual characteristics inherent only to it, has general characteristics that are the same for large groups of words. The words window, sky and tree, for example, are different words, and each of them has its own, special sound and meaning. However, they all have common features for them: they all denote an object in the broadest sense of this term, they all belong to the so-called middle gender, they all can change in cases and numbers and will receive the same endings. And by its individual features, each word is included in the vocabulary, and by its common features, the same word is included in the grammatical structure of the language.
All the words of a language that coincide in their common features make up one large group called a part of speech. Each part of speech has its own grammatical properties. For example, a verb differs from a numeral name both in meaning (a verb denotes an action, a numeral - a quantity), and in formal signs (the verb changes in moods, tenses, persons, numbers, gender - in the past tense and the subjunctive mood; all verb forms have a pledged and specific characteristics; and the numeral changes in cases, genders - only three numerals have genus forms: two, one and a half, both). Parts of speech refer to the morphology of the language, which, in turn, is an integral part of its grammatical structure. The word enters into morphology, as already mentioned, by its common features, namely: 1) by its common meanings, which are called grammatical; 2) their general formal signs - endings, less often - suffixes, prefixes, etc.; 3) the general laws (rules) of its change.
Let's take a closer look at these signs of words. Do words have common grammatical meanings? Of course: walking, thinking, talking, writing, meeting, loving - these are words with the general meaning of action; walked, thought, spoke, wrote, met, loved - here the same words reveal two more general meanings: they indicate that actions were performed in the past, and that they were performed by one person of the "masculine gender"; below, in the distance, in front, above - these words have the general meaning of a sign of certain actions. It is enough to look at the verbs just given to make sure that the words are also inherent in general formal signs: in the indefinite form, the verbs of the Russian language usually end with the suffix -т, in the past tense they have the suffix -л, when changing in the present tense they get the same endings, etc. Adverbs also have a kind of general formal sign: they do not change.
It is also easy to see that words have general patterns (rules) for changing them. Forms I read - I read - I will read do not differ, if we bear in mind the general rules for changing words, from forms I play - I played - I will play, I meet - I met - I will meet, I know - I knew - I will know... At the same time, it is important that grammatical changes in a word affect not only its "shell", external form, but also its general meaning: I read, play, meet, know denote an action carried out by one person at 1 moment of speech; read, played, met, knew indicate an action taken by one person in the past; a I will read, I will play, I will meet, I will know express the concepts of actions that will be carried out by one person after the moment of speech, that is, in the future. If the word does not change, then this feature - immutability - turns out to be common to many words, that is, grammatical (remember the adverbs).
Finally, the morphological "nature" of a word is revealed in its ability to enter into a relationship of domination or subordination with other words in a sentence, to require the addition of a dependent word in the desired case form, or to take one or another case form itself. So, nouns easily obey verbs and just as easily subjugate adjectives: read (what?) A book, a new book (what?). Adjectives, obeying nouns, almost cannot come into contact with verbs, relatively rarely subjugate nouns and adverbs. Words belonging to different parts of speech are involved in different ways in the construction of a phrase, that is, a combination of two significant words related by the method of subordination. But, having started talking about phrases, we are moving from the area of morphology to the area of syntax, to the area of constructing sentences. So, what did we manage to establish by looking at how the language works? Its structure includes the shortest sound units - the sounds of speech, as well as the shortest non-independent structural-semantic units - morphemes. A particularly prominent place in the structure of the language is occupied by words - the shortest independent semantic units capable of participating in the construction of a sentence. Words reveal the duality (and even trinity) of their linguistic nature: they are the most important units of the vocabulary of the language, they are components of a special mechanism that creates new words, word formation, they are also units of the grammatical structure, in particular morphology, of language. The morphology of a language is a set of parts of speech in which common grammatical meanings of words, common formal signs of these meanings, general properties of compatibility and general patterns (rules) of change are revealed.
But morphology is one of the two constituent parts of the grammatical structure of a language. The second part is called the syntax of the language. Having met this term, we begin to remember what it is. In our minds emerge not very clear ideas about simple and complex sentences, about composition and submission, about coordination, management and adherence. We will try to make these representations clearer.
Once again, we call on our offer to help. For the shores of the distant fatherland, you left a foreign land, In its composition, phrases are easily distinguished: For the shores (what? Whose?) Of the homeland (what?), You left (what?) The land (what?) Alien. Each of the four marked phrases contains two words - one main, dominant, the other subordinate, dependent. But none of the phrases individually, nor all of them together, could express a coherent thought if there was not a special pair of words in the sentence that makes up the grammatical center of the utterance. This pair: you left. This is the subject and predicate known to us. Combining them with each other gives a new, most important from the point of view of expressing thought, unit of language - a sentence. The word in the composition of the sentence acquires signs that are temporarily new for it: it can become completely independent, dominate is the subject; a word can express such a sign that will tell us about the existence of an object designated by the subject - this is a predicate. A word in a sentence can act as an addition, in this case it will denote an object and will be in a position dependent on another word. Etc.
The members of the sentence are the same words and their combinations, but included in the statement and expressing different attitudes towards each other based on its content. In different sentences, we will find the same members of the sentence, because parts of statements that are different in meaning can be linked by the same relationship. The sun lit up the earth and Boy read a book- these are very far from each other statements, if we bear in mind their specific meaning. But at the same time, these are the same statements, if we bear in mind their general, grammatical features, semantic and formal. The sun and the boy alike denote an independent object, illuminated and read alike indicate such signs that tell us about the existence of an object; the land and the book equally express the concept of the subject to which the action is directed and extended.
The sentence by its specific meaning is not included in the syntax of the language. The specific meaning of the sentence is included in various areas of human knowledge about the world, therefore it interests science, journalism, literature, it interests people in the process of work and everyday life, but linguistics is cold to it. Why? Simply because the concrete content is, after all, the very thoughts, feelings, experiences for the expression of which both the language as a whole and its most important unit - the sentence - exist.
A sentence is included in the syntax by its general meaning, general, grammatical features: narrative meanings of interrogation, urgency, etc., general formal signs (intonation, word order, unions and union words, etc.), general patterns (rules) of its construction.
All the infinite set of already created and newly created statements on grammatical grounds can be reduced to a relatively few types of sentences. They differ depending on the purpose of the statement (narrative, interrogative and motivational) and on the structure (simple and complex - complex and complex). Sentences of one type (say, declarative) differ from sentences of another type (say, incentive) both by their grammatical meanings, and by their formal signs (means), for example, intonation, and, of course, by the patterns of their construction.
Therefore, we can say that the syntax of a language is a collection of different types of sentences, each having its own general grammatical meanings, general formal signs, general patterns (rules) of its construction, necessary to express a specific meaning.
Thus, what in science is called the structure of language turns out to be a very complex “mechanism” consisting of many different component “parts” connected into a single whole according to certain rules and jointly performing large and important work for people. The success or failure of this "work" In each case does not depend on the language "mechanism", but on the people who use it, on their ability or inability, desire or unwillingness to use its mighty power.
ROLE OF LANGUAGE.
Language was created and develops because the need for communication constantly accompanies the work and life of people, and its satisfaction turns out to be necessary. Therefore, language, being a means of communication, has been and remains a constant ally and helper of man in his work, in his life.
The labor activity of people, no matter how complex or simple it may be, is carried out with the obligatory participation of the language. Even in automatic factories that are run by a few workers and where the need for language is seemingly small, it is still necessary. Indeed, in order to establish and maintain the smooth operation of such an enterprise, it is necessary to build perfect mechanisms and prepare people capable of managing them. But for this you need to master knowledge, technical experience, you need deep and intense work of thought. And it is clear that neither the mastery of work experience nor the work of thought is possible without the use of a language that allows you to read books, listen to lectures, talk, exchange advice, etc.
The role of language in the development of science, fiction, educational activities of society is even more obvious, more accessible for understanding. It is impossible to develop science without relying on what has already been achieved by it, without expressing and consolidating the work of thought in words. The poor language of essays, which set out certain scientific results, very noticeably complicates the mastery of science. It is no less obvious that serious flaws in the speech, with the help of which the achievements of science are popularized, can erect a "Chinese wall" between the author of a scientific work and its readers.
The development of fiction is inextricably linked with language, which, in the words of M. Gorky, serves as the "primary element" of literature. The more fully and deeply the writer reflects life in his works, the more perfect their language should be. This simple truth is often forgotten by writers. M. Gorky was able to convincingly remind it in time: “The main material of literature is the word that forms all our impressions, feelings, thoughts. Literature is the art of plastic representation through words. The classics teach us that the simpler, clear, clearly semantic and figurative content of a word, the more firmly, truthfully and steadily the depiction of the landscape and its influence on a person, the depiction of a person's character and his relationship to people. "
The role of language in agitation and propaganda work is also very noticeable. Improving the language of our newspapers, radio broadcasts, television programs, our lectures and conversations on political and scientific topics is a very important task. Indeed, back in 1906, V. I. Lenin wrote that we must “be able to speak simply and clearly, in a language accessible to the masses, casting aside the heavy artillery of tricky terms, foreign words, memorized, ready-made, but still incomprehensible to the masses, unfamiliar her slogans, definitions, conclusions ”. Now the tasks of propaganda and agitation have become more complex. The political and cultural level of our readers and listeners has grown, therefore the content and form of our propaganda and agitation should be deeper, more diverse and effective.
It is difficult to imagine even approximately how peculiar and significant the role of language in the work of the school is. The teacher will not be able to give a good lesson, to inform the children of knowledge, to interest them, to discipline their will and mind, if he speaks inaccurately, inconsistently, dryly and stereotyped. But language is not only a means of transferring knowledge from teacher to student: it is also a tool for assimilating knowledge that the student constantly uses. KD Ushinsky said that the native word is the basis of all mental development and the treasury of all knowledge. A student needs a good command of the language in order to assimilate knowledge, quickly and correctly understand the teacher's word, the book. The level of a student's speech culture directly affects his academic performance.
Native speech, skillfully applied, is an excellent tool for educating the younger generation. Language connects a person with his native people, strengthens and develops a sense of the Motherland. According to Ushinsky, “the whole people and their whole homeland are spiritualized in the language,” it “reflects not only the nature of the native country, but the entire history of the spiritual life of the people ... living and future generations of the people into one great, historical living whole. It not only expresses the vitality of the people, but it is this very life. "
PANTRY LANGUAGES.
Writers are always on the lookout. They are looking for new, fresh words: it seems to them that ordinary words can no longer evoke the necessary feelings in the reader. But where to look? Of course, first of all, in the speech of the common people. The classics also aimed at this.
N. V. Gogol: “... Our extraordinary language is still a mystery ... it is unlimited and can, living like life, be enriched every minute, drawing, on the one hand, lofty words from the language of the Church-Biblical, and on the other hand, choosing apt names from their countless dialects scattered across our provinces. "
The appeal of writers to colloquial folk speech, to dialects is a reliable way of developing vocabulary. How happy the writer is with the found apt, figurative word, as if rediscovered for himself!
A. N. Tolstoy once remarked: “The language of the people is unusually rich, much richer than ours. True, there is not a whole series of words, phrases, but the manner of expression, the richness of shades is greater than ours. " The writer compares the literary Russian language (“with us”) and the “folk language”. But we agreed that there are two varieties of this "folk language". However, there is another point. Actually, dialectal vocabulary does not allow people to communicate only with its help: it serves as an addition to the main vocabulary fund, to well-known words. It’s like a local “spice” to the well-known vocabulary.
However, popular dialects as a source of replenishment of the language are now being questioned. Young people living in different localities, under the influence of the media - radio, television - forget local words, are embarrassed to use them in speech. Is it good or bad?
This question is of interest not only to us, Russian people. American writer John Steinbeck expresses concern about this in his book Traveling with Charlie in Search of America: “The language of radio and television takes standard forms, and we probably never speak so cleanly and correctly. Our speech will soon become the same everywhere, like our bread ... Following the local accent, the local rate of speech will also die. The idiomaticness and imagery that so enrich it and, testifying to the time and place of their origin, give it such poetry, will disappear from the language. And in return we will get a national language, prepackaged and packaged, standard and tasteless. "
Sad prognosis, isn't it? However, it must be remembered that scientists are not asleep. In various localities, the collection of dialectal material was carried out, regional dictionaries of local dialects were created. And now work is underway to publish issues of the "Dictionary of Russian Folk Dialects", more than 20 books of which have already been published. This is a wonderful pantry that writers and scientists alike will look into, a pantry that can be used in the future. This dictionary summarizes the work of all regional dictionaries, the existence of each word with its individual meanings will be indicated.
Our classic writers dreamed of such a dictionary of the "folk language". "And really, it would not be bad to take up the lexicon, or at least criticize the lexicon!" - exclaimed A.S. Pushkin.
NV Gogol even began work on "Materials for the Dictionary of the Russian Language", and it was on the dictionary of the "People's Language", because the dictionaries of the literary language had already been created by the Russian Academy. Gogol wrote: “Over the course of many years studying the Russian language, being more and more amazed at the accuracy and intelligence of his words, I became more and more convinced of the essential need for such an explanatory dictionary, which would put, so to speak, the face of the Russian word in its direct meaning, illuminate would have it, would have shown more tangibly its dignity, so often unnoticed, and would have discovered partly the very origin ”.
To a certain extent, this problem was solved by the Dictionary of V. I. Dahl, but it did not satisfy the needs of the writers either.
LANGUAGE IN ACTION - SPEECH.
Usually they say not “culture of language”, but “culture of speech”. In special linguistic works, the terms "language" and "speech" are in great use. What is meant when the words "language" and "speech" are deliberately distinguished by scientists?
In the science of language, the term "speech" denotes language in action, that is, the language used to express specific thoughts, feelings, moods and experiences.
Language is the property of everyone. He has the means necessary and sufficient to express any specific content - from the naive thoughts of a child to the most complex philosophical generalizations and artistic images. Language norms are national. However, the use of the language is very individual. Each person, expressing his thoughts and feelings, selects from the entire stock of linguistic means only those that he can find and that are needed in each individual case of communication. Each person must combine the means selected from the language into a coherent whole - into a statement, a text.
The possibilities available to various means of language are realized, realized in speech. The introduction of the term "speech" recognizes the obvious fact that the general (language) and the particular (speech) in the system of means of communication are one and at the same time different. Means of communication, taken in abstraction from any specific content, we are accustomed to call language, and the same means of communication in connection with specific content - speech. The general (language) is expressed and realized in the particular (in speech). The particular (speech) is one of the many specific forms of the general (language).
It is clear that language and speech cannot be opposed to each other, but one must not forget about their difference. When we speak or write, we do a certain physiological work: the "second signaling system" is acting, therefore, certain physiological processes are carried out in the cerebral cortex, new and new neuro-cerebral connections are established, the speech apparatus works, etc. What does it turn out to be a product of this activity? These are the very statements, texts that have an inner side, that is, meaning, and an outer side, that is, speech.
The role of the individual in the formation of speech is very significant, although it is far from unlimited. Since speech is built from units of language, and the language is national. The role of an individual in the development of a language is, as a rule, insignificant: the language changes in the process of verbal communication of the people.
Definitions such as "correct", "incorrect", "exact", "imprecise", "simple", "heavy", "light", etc. are inapplicable to the language of the people. But these same definitions are quite applicable to speech. In speech, more or less compliance with the norms of the common language of a particular era is manifested. In speech, deviations from these norms and even distortions and violations of them can be allowed. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about the culture of the language in the usual sense of these words, but to talk about the culture of speech can and should.
Language in grammars, dictionaries, scientific literature is described, as a rule, in abstraction from the specific content. Speech is studied in its relation to one or another specific content. And one of the most important problems of speech culture is the most expedient selection of language means in accordance with the expressed content, goals and conditions of communication.
Distinguishing the terms "language" and "speech", we will have to establish the differences between the terms "language style" and "speech style". In comparison with the styles of the language (they were mentioned above), the styles of speech are its typical varieties, depending on the style of language used, and on the conditions and goals of communication, and on the genre of the work, and on the attitude of the author of the statement to the language; styles of speech differ from each other in the features of the use of linguistic material in certain specific verbal works.
But what does it mean - attitude to language? This means that not all people are equally familiar with their native language, its styles. This means, further, that not all people evaluate the meaning of words in the same way, not everyone approaches words with the same aesthetic and moral requirements. This means, finally, that not all people are equally "sensitive" to the subtle nuances of meaning that words and their combinations reveal in concrete utterances. Due to all these reasons, different people select linguistic material in different ways and organize this material in different ways within the limits of a speech work. In addition, the styles of speech also reflect differences in people's attitudes towards the world and a person, their tastes, habits and inclinations, their thinking skills and other circumstances that are not related to the facts and phenomena studied by the science of language.
CONCLUSION.
The struggle for a culture of speech, for a correct, accessible and vivid language is an urgent social task, which is perceived especially clearly in the light of the Marxist understanding of language. After all, the language, while working, constantly participates in the activity of consciousness, expresses this activity, actively influences it. Hence - the colossal power of the influence of the word on thoughts, feelings, moods, desires, behavior of people ...
We need constant protection of the word from damage and distortion, it is necessary to declare war on the distortion of the Russian language, the war that Lenin spoke about. We still too often hear sloppy (and sometimes just illiterate), "some" speech. There are people who do not know well and do not value our social wealth - the Russian language. So there is someone from whom and from what to protect this property. We urgently need everyday, intelligent, demanding defense of Russian speech - its correctness, accessibility, purity, expressiveness, and effectiveness. We need a clear understanding that "a word can kill a person and bring him back to life." It is unacceptable to look at the word as something tertiary in the life of people: it is one of human deeds.
LIST OF USED LITERATURE:
- A. A. Leontiev What is language. M .: Pedagogy - 1976.
- Grekov V.F. and other Manual for classes in the Russian language. M., Education, 1968.
- Oganesyan S.S. Culture of speech communication / Russian language at school. No. 5 - 1998.
- Skvortsov L.I. Language, communication and culture / Russian language at school. No. 1 - 1994.
- Formanovskaya N.I. Communication culture and speech etiquette / Russian language at school. No. 5 - 1993.
- B.N. Golovin How to speak correctly / Notes on the culture of Russian speech. M .: Higher school - 1988.
- Gvozdarev Yu.A. Language is the confession of the people ... M .: Enlightenment - 1993.
Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below
Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.
LANGUAGE AS THE MOST IMPORTANT MEANS OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION
Language as the most important means of human communication is closely related to society, its culture and people who live and work in society, using the language widely and in a variety of ways.
Communication (or communication ) is the transmission from one person to another of a message for one purpose or another. Communication occurs as a result of the communicative activity of two or more persons in a certain situation and in the presence of a common means of communication.
The most important means of human communication is language ... The purpose of language to be an instrument of communication is called it communicative function ... Communicating with each other, people convey their thoughts, expressions of will, feelings and emotional experiences, influence each other in a certain direction, and achieve a common understanding. Language gives people the opportunity to understand each other and to establish joint work in all spheres of human activity. Language was and remains one of the forces that ensure the existence and development of human society.
The communicative function is the main social language function. As its further development, complication and specialization of the language, expressive and accumulative functions appear.
Expressive function language is its ability to express information, transmit it and influence the interlocutor. The expressive function is considered as the unity of the expression and transmission of a message (informative function), feelings and emotions (emotive function), the will of the speaker (voluntary function).
According to the matter that is used to build communication units, language can be sound and written ... The main form of the language is sound, since there are unwritten languages, while written fixation (without sounding it) makes the language dead.
Additional means of communication are sound and graphic ... So, along with ordinary conversational speech, various sound signals are used, for example, calls, beeps, telephone, radio, etc.
The graphical additional means of communication are more varied. All of them are characterized by the fact that they translate the sound form of the language into the graphic - in whole or in part. Among the graphic forms of speech, in addition to the main form - the general writing of a given people, it is necessary to distinguish:
1. Subsidiary languages - manual alphabet (fingerprinting) and Braille; they were created to help people with hearing or sight loss use language. The manual alphabet is based on drawing letters with the fingers; cues are added to the finger marks to help distinguish similar sounds; for example, a hand on the chest means a voiced sound, a hand far from the chest means a dull sound. The dotted font of the blind was created by Louis Braille; letters are depicted using a combination of six dots.
2. Specialized alarm systems , for example: telegraphic alphabets (Morse code), road signs, signaling with flags, rockets, etc.
3. Scientific Symbols - mathematical, chemical, logical, etc.
All these systems of signaling, symbolism, means of language, being different sign systems, are used as a means of communication. Language is a comprehensive and universal historically established system of communication means, serving society in all spheres of its activity.
LANGUAGE AS A PUBLIC PHENOMENON
Language is not an individual or biological phenomenon. The social essence of language is clearly visible when comparing it with the sound signaling of animals.
Being a special social phenomenon , language differs from other social phenomena of a superstructure and basic character. The type of language is not an expression of a developing spirit, as Hegel and Humboldt thought; the type of language does not reflect the types of farms, as M. Müller and N.Ya. Marr. Language and economy, language and production have no direct connection.
The social nature of the language is manifested primarily in its connections with the people - the creator and bearer of a given language, its norms, in particular literary and written. The presence of a common language is the highest manifestation of the sociality of a language. The sociality of the language is also manifested in the presence dialects - territorial and social.
The dialect does not form a language by itself: it part one or another language . Local dialect is a set of phonetic, lexical and grammatical features common in a particular territory. Phonetic and lexical features are more varied than grammatical ones. Phonetic dialectal features cover both the composition of phonemes and their pronunciation.
Local dialects exist in the form of dialects and adverbs. Speaking covers one or more villages; adverb covers a number of dialects combined into dialect groups. For example, in the Kazakh language there are no pronounced dialects, but there are small dialects that exist mainly on the borders of the settlement of Kazakhs with neighboring Turkic peoples. There are two dialects in Russian - northern and southern; they oppose each other with a number of features. The northern and southern dialects of the Russian language are separated by Central Russian dialects, which combine, to varying degrees, the features of the two dialects.
Dialectal features are outside the literary norm. They, however, can occur in the speech of characters in fiction. Dialectal features used in works of art play a special role. Given the unusual use of dialect words and a special aesthetic load, they are called a special word - dialectisms.
From local dialects, although they prove the influence on the language of social and territorial factors, it is necessary to distinguish jargon and professional speech ... Local dialects serve the population of a given area; under favorable conditions, they can be used as the basis for a newly emerging language. Jargons, being primarily and mainly deviations from the common language, have a narrow scope - social and territorial (they are characteristic, first of all, of urban speech). Jargon phenomena are characteristic, on the one hand, of the top of the ruling class (noble jargon), and on the other hand, of declassed elements of society (for example, thieves' argo).
Jargon as a speech phenomenon is a set of a certain number of specific words and expressions, foreign words and rethought general words, some deviations in their pronunciation.
A special social type of speech is formed by the conventional languages (argos) of artisans (tailors, stove-makers, glaziers, etc.) and merchants (peddlers). Having arisen under feudalism as a reflection of the guild isolation of professions, conventional languages under capitalism become a surviving category of socio-territorial formation. Argotic vocabulary arises as a result of rethinking and transforming native and borrowed words, as well as the formation of new words ( light- day, willow- eye, vechelo- person, etc.). Forcing argot words makes the phrase a secret, understandable only to people of a certain profession.
A manifestation of the sociality of a language is the presence of professional vocabulary and terminology, which characterizes not only the speech of social groups, but also becomes an integral component of a common language, its literary-written norm.
The presence of territorial and social dialects, the narrowly social and professional purpose of entire groups and categories of vocabulary does not destroy the unity of the language, its common basis, does not turn the language into a narrowly social phenomenon.
Language is national in its essence ... Now in Europe there are about 20 single-national countries - Austria, Albania, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Iceland, Norway and others. They are also Korea and Japan. Countries where the main nationality is more than 90% of the population are considered to be mono-nationalities. However, even in this case, the problem of national minorities arises, which is solved not only as a linguistic and cultural problem, but also as a political problem.
The desire to harmonize language and statehood is the recognition of two or more state languages. In Canada, where two main peoples live (Anglo-Canadians and French-Canadians), the two official languages are English and French. In Switzerland, 4 official languages are officially recognized: German, French, Italian and Romansh. There are several official languages in India: Hindi and English; Sanskrit and Urdu are recognized as official.
The multinational countries are Great Britain, Spain, Yugoslavia, India, China. There are almost 150 tribes and peoples in Indonesia, although all of them have not yet acquired independence.
Asia and Africa are especially multilingual. So, in Asia, settled several hundred peoples, standing at different stages of historical development and belonging to different linguistic families. Most countries are multinational. More than 50 peoples live in each of the countries such as India, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, more than 20 peoples live in Burma, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and a number of other countries.
Much more difficult is the linguistic situation when the state and, in general, literary-written language turns out to be a language that is not native to the bulk of the country's population. It was so in the past, it is so now. For example, on the island of Haiti, now inhabited by blacks and mulattos, the state language is French, while Creole is spoken. In Mexico, the official and spoken language is Spanish, although there are about 3 million Indians living in the country who speak their own languages (Aztec, Maya, Otomi, etc.), and about 1 million North Americans.
Consequently, the facts show that language, being the most important means of communication and a form of national culture, is closely related to society, its categories and institutions. However, a special social purpose and a special structure make the language an independent social category .
LITERARY LANGUAGES
At certain stages of development of society and people, there are and function literary languages ... The literary language is a historically developed processed form of the language of a nationality or national language. Literary language as the highest form of language is characterized by a rich vocabulary, an orderly grammatical structure, a developed system of styles.
Literary language literally means "written language." Literary language really has written fixation, and this is its essential feature. However, it is impossible to identify the concepts of "written language" and "literary language". Firstly, not every written fixation is literary speech, and, secondly, the literary language appears not only in writing, but also in oral form. There are two forms of the literary language.
Literary language is not only the language of writing (fiction, scientific research, newspapers and magazines), but also the spoken language of government and public institutions, schools and theaters, radio and television. People use the literary language in everyday and family communication.
There are differences between written and oral speech. stylistic and structural ... In cases where only a stylistic and functional difference is observed between the written and oral speech of the literary language, written speech is characterized by greater rigor, more careful selection of words and polished constructions.
The difference between the oral and written forms of a common language can lead to the fact that in the study of the native language (as is observed in China and Japan) they use anthologies with two variants - in written-literary and colloquial. The discrepancy between the vernacular and written language takes place in India, in the countries of the Arab East. This discrepancy concerns not only vocabulary but also grammar.
The norm of the literary language is based on linguistic usus and the approval of this word usage by the educated part of society. As a concrete historical phenomenon, the norm of the literary language changes, moves from the old to the new quality.
Writers play an important role in the establishment and dissemination of the literary norm. Writers, masters of the artistic word, show how to process the language of their people, how to use the wealth of the literary language.
The language of a work of art, firstly, contains not only literary-normalized speech, but also the individual style of the author and the speech of the characters that are created by the author. Stylized literary texts and the speech of characters suggest a departure from the norm, the creation of an individual syllable and expressive text.
The second difference between fiction and literary language is that the latter is not only a means of artistic reflection of reality and emotional impact. The literary language is also an instrument of communication in the sphere of social and political life and science. Literary language is semi-functional, and this creates styles of literary language designed for different areas of communication and expression of different types of message.
The book type of language, in addition to the language of fiction, includes a business style and a scientific style. At the junction of scientific and artistic styles, a popular science style is formed. At the junction of business and artistic styles, a journalistic style is formed.
LEXICOLOGY
The word is central unit of language: language is, first of all, a system of words. The word as a nominative unit is called token .
The word as a grammatical unit is called word form .
The very science of the nominative means of language has several names. More often than others use terms lexicology and onomasiology, using them broadly, as a designation of a generic concept. However, these same terms also have a narrower meaning, denoting only sections of the science of nominative means of languages. Hereinafter, the term lexicology will be used to denote the science of the nominative means of language.
Lexicology as a science about the nominative means of a language, about its vocabulary, is primarily divided into onomasiology and semasiology.
Onomasiology - this is a section of lexicology that studies the vocabulary of a language, its nominative means, types of vocabulary units of the language, ways of nomination.
Semasiology - a section of lexicology that studies the meaning of the vocabulary units of the language, types of lexical meanings, the semantic structure of the lexeme.
LEXICOGRAPHY
Lexicography is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries (lexicons). Central to lexicographic theory is the teaching about the types of vocabulary, the composition of the vocabulary(i.e. the composition of interpreted and translated words) and structure of a dictionary entry.
Dictionary is a book whose articles are arranged in alphabetical order. In a broad sense, encyclopedias, linguistic dictionaries, vocabularies are called dictionaries. In the narrow sense, only linguistic reference books are called dictionaries.
The main difference between encyclopedic reference books and dictionaries is that linguistic dictionaries characterize words and only along the way the objects and concepts they denote, while encyclopedias reveal scientific concepts, provide information about objects and phenomena of nature and society, etc.
All linguistic dictionaries are divided into two main types - general and special. General dictionaries capture commonly used words and give them a comprehensive description. By the coverage of languages, general dictionaries are one-, bi- and multilingual... Special dictionaries are subdivided into sectoral and linguistic.
BASIC LANGUAGE CLASSIFICATIONS
There are 2,500-3,000 languages on earth. These languages differ both in prevalence and social functions, as well as in the peculiarities of the phonetic structure and vocabulary, morphological and syntactic characteristics. In linguistics, there are a number of classifications of languages. The main ones are four: areal (geographical), genealogical, typological and functional.
Areal classification is to study the language map of the world, the linguistic characteristics of different countries, as well as the spread of individual languages or groups of languages.
Functional classification languages is multidimensional. It takes into account three main divisions:
1) the connection of the language with the people to which it belongs,
2) the functions that the language performs in society,
3) the prevalence of the language outside the main ethnic area.
According to the connection of the language with the people, there are three main social types of language - tribal tongue, tongue nationalities, National language. The social type of language is determined by the social community of people.
According to the reach of people, languages are divided into languages narrow and wide use. The languages of narrow USE ARE the tribal and minority languages. National LANGUAGES are used not only as languages of interethnic, but also INTERNATIONAL communication. In this case, the use of the language goes beyond the limits of its ethnic area, and it becomes not only a means of communication, but also a means of fixing the data of science and art.
Along with the areal and functional classification of languages in linguistics, there are also classifications of languages based on the peculiarities of their phonetic and grammatical structure, typological and genealogical. Typological classification identifies the types of languages and gives their typological characteristics, genealogical classification examines languages from the point of view of their material community as a result of development from one common source.
Morphological classification of languages
There are three morphological types - isolating (root), agglutinating and flexing. The structure of the language is synthetic and analytical.
KIND OF LANGUAGES AND COMPARATIVE- HISTORICAL METHOD
Related call such languages, which, having arisen from the same source, reveal ancient common roots and affixes, regular phonetic correspondences. The kinship of languages is not a complete identity, but a natural development from one and the same proto-language.
Family the whole set of languages of a given relationship is called. The family of languages is formed by Indo-European, Semitic, Turkic and many other languages.
Groupings within a family of languages are called branches or groups of related languages. The branches of the linguistic family unite languages that show great material closeness to each other. This can be observed, for example, between the languages of the Slavic and Baltic groups.
The Indo-European family of languages is the most widespread. Indo-European languages are spoken for the most part in Europe, but they are now used in Asia (for example, in India) and America, and even in Australia and Africa. Among the Indo-European languages, we know not only the living, but also the dead - unwritten and written. Modern Indo-European languages are written and non-written. They are classified into 10 groups. Groups of related languages cover modern peoples in different ways, namely:
1.Indian (24)
2.Romanesque (10)
3.German (10)
4.Slavic (11)
5.Iranian (31)
6.Greek (1)
7.Celtic (4)
8.Baltic (2)
9.Armenian (1)
10.albanian (1)
A total of 95 languages.
Slavic languages .
The Slavic group of languages belongs to the Indo-European family. Slavic languages are now spoken by Slavs and non-Slavs, especially in Russian, which acts as the language of interethnic and international communication.
According to genetic proximity, modern Slavic languages are divided into three subgroups:
1. East Slavic(Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian),
2. West Slavic(Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbolic),
3. South Slavic(Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian).
The following language families exist:
1.Indo-European,
2.Sino-Tibetan,
3.Austronesian,
4. Semitic-Hamitic,
5. Dravidian,
6. Japanese,
7.bantu languages,
8. Altai,
9.korean,
10.guinean,
11.Viet Muong,
12.bantoid,
13.Native American,
14.Finno-Ugric,
15.hausa-kotoko languages,
16.Mon Khmer,
17.Nilotic,
18. Sudanese,
19.Mandé languages,
20.mund languages,
21. Caucasian,
22. Kanuri languages,
23. Papuan,
24. other families and languages.
Similar documents
The study of the historical development of languages in different historical epochs, the main differences in communication between people and animals. Analysis of the communicative and cognitive functions of the language, the social stratification of the language. Review of the features of monologue and dialogical speech.
abstract, added 01/18/2012
Language is the most important means of human communication. A few words about linguistics. Language from the point of view of the theory of signs. The letter and its meaning. Properties of signs. Types of sign systems. Specificity of language as a sign system.
term paper, added 04/25/2006
Language is the most important means of human communication, with the help of which people exchange thoughts and achieve mutual understanding. The main types of translation: word-for-word, word-for-word, literary. Acquaintance with the gerund, its basic forms and the translation algorithm.
term paper, added 09/30/2011
The theory of eloquence, speakers of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Model of verbal communication, methods or types of reading. Language as the most important means of human communication, the ratio of language and speech. Varieties of the national language. Types and techniques of listening.
course of lectures added on 10/13/2010
Russian is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Russian as the language of interethnic communication between the peoples of the USSR and the language of international communication. Features of the origin of the Russian language. The role of the Old Church Slavonic language in the development of the Russian language.
abstract, added 04/26/2011
Family tree of languages and how it is composed. Inserting languages and isolating languages. Indo-European group of languages. Chukotka-Kamchatka and other languages of the Far East. The Chinese language and its neighbors. Dravidian and other languages of continental Asia.
abstract, added 01/31/2011
Assessment category in linguistics. Phraseology as the most important means of expressing estimated values. Comparative analysis of the criteria for evaluating the metaphors of the German and Russian languages. Metaphorical rethinking of the designations of different thematic groups.
thesis, added 11/21/2010
Language as the most important means of human communication. Linguistics is the science of language, its nature and functions, its internal structure, laws of development. The connection of linguistics with the humanities, medical, physical and mathematical and technical sciences.
presentation added 01/19/2013
Language as a means of human communication and an instrument of artistic creativity. Written and colloquial form of expression of the Russian literary language. Features of colloquial speech in phonetics, vocabulary, phraseology, word formation, morphology, syntax.
abstract, added 12/17/2009
The essence of the concept of "language", the stages of its development on the example of the European language family. Study of the conditions, principles, factors and features of the historical process of education and the mutual influence of languages. The concept of communication and international language communication.
The function of language as a scientific concept is a practical manifestation of the essence of language, the realization of its purpose in the system of social phenomena, the specific action of language, conditioned by its very nature, something without which language cannot exist, just as matter does not exist without motion. The communicative and cognitive functions are basic. They are almost always present in speech activity, therefore they are sometimes called the functions of the language, in contrast to the other, not so obligatory, functions of speech.
Austrian psychologist, philosopher and linguist Karl Buhler, describing in his book "Theory of Language" the various directions of language signs, defines 3 main functions of the language:
- - The function of expression, or expressive function, when the state of the speaker is expressed;
- - The function of calling, addressing the listener, or appellative function;
- - The function of presentation, or representative, when one says or tells something to another.
Functions of the language according to the Reformed.
There are other points of view on the functions performed by the language, for example, as A.A. Reformatsky understood them:
- 1) Nominative, that is, words of the language can name things and phenomena of reality;
- 2) Communicative, sentences serve this purpose;
- 3) Expressive, thanks to her the emotional state of the speaker is expressed.
Within the framework of the expressive function, one can also single out the pointing function, which combines some elements of the language with gestures.
The communicative function of language is associated with the fact that language is primarily a means of communication between people. It allows one individual - the speaker - to express their thoughts, and the other - the perceiver - to understand them, that is, to somehow react, take note, and accordingly change their behavior or their mental attitudes. The act of communication would not be possible without language.
Communication means communication, exchange of information. In other words, language arose and exists primarily to enable people to communicate. The communicative function of the language is carried out due to the fact that the language itself is a system of signs: there is simply no other way to communicate. And signs, in turn, are intended to convey information from person to person.
Linguistic scientists, following the prominent researcher of the Russian language, Academician Viktor Vladimirovich Vinogradov (1895-1969), sometimes define the main functions of the language in a slightly different way.
They distinguish:
- - a message, that is, a statement of some thought or information;
- - impact, that is, an attempt to change the behavior of the perceiving person with the help of verbal persuasion;
- - communication, that is, messaging.
Communication and impact refer to monologue speech, and communication - to dialogical speech. Strictly speaking, these are, indeed, the functions of speech. If we talk about the functions of the language, then the message, and the impact, and communication are the implementation of the communicative function of the language. The communicative function of language is more comprehensive in relation to these functions of speech.
Linguistic scholars also emphasize sometimes, and not without reason, the emotional function of language. In other words, the signs, sounds of the language often serve people to convey emotions, feelings, states.
As a matter of fact, it was with this function that the human language most likely began. Moreover, in many social or herd animals, it is the transmission of emotions or states (anxiety, fear, pacification) that is the main signaling method. With emotionally colored sounds and exclamations, animals notify their fellow tribesmen about the found food or the approaching danger. In this case, it is not information about food or danger that is transmitted, but the emotional state of the animal, corresponding to satisfaction or fright.
And even we understand this emotional language of animals - we can quite understand the alarmed barking of a dog or the rumbling of a satisfied cat.
Of course, the emotional function of the human language is much more complex, emotions are conveyed not so much by sounds as by the meaning of words and sentences. Nevertheless, this most ancient function of language probably dates back to the symbolic state of human language, when sounds did not symbolize, did not replace emotions, but were their direct manifestation. However, any manifestation of feelings, direct or symbolic, also serves to communicate, transmit it to fellow tribesmen. In this sense, the emotional function of the language is also one of the ways to implement the more comprehensive communicative function of the language. So, different types of implementation of the communicative function of language are message, impact, communication, as well as the expression of feelings, emotions, states.
The cognitive, or cognitive, function of language (from the Latin cognition - knowledge, cognition) is associated with the fact that human consciousness is realized or fixed in the signs of the language.
Language is an instrument of consciousness, reflects the results of a person's mental activity.
Scientists have not yet come to an unambiguous conclusion about what is primary - language or thinking. Perhaps the very formulation of the question is incorrect. After all, words not only express our thoughts, but the thoughts themselves exist in the form of words, verbal formulations, even before they are spoken orally. At least, no one has yet succeeded in fixing 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 a linguistic form. Hence the idea of the inextricable connection between thinking and language.
The connection between language and thinking has been established even with the help of physiometric evidence.
The person being tested was asked to think over some difficult task, and while he was thinking, special sensors took data from the speech apparatus of a silent person (from the larynx, tongue) and detected the nervous 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 is provided by observations of the mental activity of polyglots - people who can speak well in many languages. They admit that in each specific case they "think" in one language or another. An illustrative example is the scout Stirlitz from the famous film - 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 explore the world. A person's thinking develops in the categories of language: realizing new concepts, things and phenomena, a person calls them. And thus he puts his world in order. This function of language is called nominative (naming objects, concepts, phenomena).
The nominative function of language is directly derived from the cognitive one. The cognized must be named, given a name. The nominative function is associated with the ability of the signs of a language to symbolically designate things.
The ability of words to symbolically replace objects helps us create our second world - separate from the first, physical world. The physical world does not lend itself well to our manipulations. You can't move mountains with your hands. But the second, symbolic world - it is completely ours. We take it with us wherever we want and do whatever we want with it.
There is an important difference between the world of physical realities and our symbolic world, which reflected the physical world in the words of the language. The world, symbolically reflected in words, is a cognized, mastered world.
The world is known and mastered only when it is named. The world without our names is alien, like a distant unknown planet, there is no man in it, human life is impossible in it.
The name allows you to fix what has already been learned. Without a name, any known fact of reality, any thing would remain in our minds as a one-time accident. By naming words, we create our own - understandable and convenient picture of the world. Language gives us canvas and paint. It is worth noting, however, that not everything even in the known world has a name. For example, our body - we “encounter” it every day. Every part of our body has a name. And what is the name of the part of the face between the lip and the nose, if there is no mustache? No way. There is no such name. What is the name of the top of the pear? What is the name of the pin on the belt buckle that fixes the length of the belt? Many objects or phenomena seem to have been mastered by us, used by us, but do not have names. Why is the nominative function of the language not implemented in these cases?
This is the wrong question. The nominative function of the language is still implemented, just in a more sophisticated way - through description, not naming. In words, we can describe anything we want, even if there are no separate words for it. Well, those things or phenomena that do not have their own names, simply do not deserve such names. This means that such things or phenomena are not so significant in everyday life for the people that they were given their own name (like the same collet pencil). In order for an object to receive a name, it is necessary for it to enter public use, to 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 then on it is no longer possible - you need a separate name. The act of naming is of great importance in a person's life. When we meet with something, we first of all call it. Otherwise, we can neither comprehend what we have encountered ourselves, nor convey a message about it to other people. It was with inventing names that the biblical Adam began. Robinson Crusoe first of all called the rescued savage Friday. Travelers, botanists, zoologists of the times of great discoveries were looking for something new and gave this new name and description. The innovation manager does about the same by occupation. On the other hand, the name also determines the fate of the named thing.
The accumulative function of language is associated with the most important purpose of language - to collect and store information, evidence of human cultural activity. A language lives much longer than a person, and sometimes even longer than entire nations.
There are so-called dead languages that survived the peoples who spoke these languages. No one speaks these languages, except for the specialists who study them. The most famous "dead" language is Latin. Due to the fact that for a long time it was the language of science (and earlier it was the language of a great culture), Latin is well preserved and quite widespread - even a person with secondary education knows several Latin sayings. Living or dead languages keep the memory of many generations of people, testimonies of centuries.
Even when the oral tradition is forgotten, archaeologists can discover ancient writings and use them to reconstruct the events of bygone days. Over the centuries and millennia of mankind, a huge amount of information has been accumulated, produced and recorded by man in different languages of the world. All the gigantic volumes of information produced by humanity exist in linguistic form.
In other words, any piece of this information can in principle be uttered and perceived by both contemporaries and descendants. This is the accumulative function of language, with the help of which mankind accumulates and transmits information both in modern times and in the historical perspective - along the baton of generations.
Various researchers identify many more important functions of the language. For example, language plays an interesting role in establishing or maintaining contacts between people. Returning after work with a neighbor in the elevator, you can tell him: "Something has started to play out of season today, eh, Arkady Petrovich?" In fact, both you and Arkady Petrovich have just been outside and are well aware of the state of the weather. Therefore, your question has absolutely no information content, it is informationally empty. It performs a completely different function - the actual, that is, contact-establishing.
With this rhetorical question, you actually once again confirm to Arkady Petrovich the good-neighborly status of your relations and your intention to preserve this status. If you write down all your remarks for the day, then you will see that a considerable part of them are pronounced precisely for this purpose - not to convey information, but to certify the nature of your relationship with the interlocutor. And what words are spoken at the same time is the second thing. This is the most important function of the language - to certify the mutual status of interlocutors, to maintain certain relations between them.
For a person, a social being, the actual function of language is very important - it not only stabilizes the attitude of people towards the speaker, but also allows the speaker himself to feel “his own” in society. It is very interesting and revealing to analyze the implementation of the main functions of language on the example of such a specific type of human activity as innovation.
Of course, innovative activity is impossible without the implementation of the communicative function of the language. Setting research tasks, working in a team, checking research results, setting implementation tasks and monitoring their implementation, simple communication in order to coordinate the actions of participants in the creative and work process - all these actions are unthinkable without the communicative function of the language.
And it is in these actions that it is realized. The cognitive function of language is of particular importance for innovation. Thinking work, highlighting key concepts, abstracting technological principles, analyzing oppositions and contiguity phenomena, fixing and analyzing an experiment, translating engineering tasks into a technological and implementation plane - all these intellectual actions are impossible without the participation of language, without the implementation of its cognitive function.
And the language solves special problems when it comes to fundamentally new technologies that have no precedent, that is, do not have, respectively, operational, conceptual names. In this case, the innovator acts as the Demiurge, the mythical creator of the Universe, who establishes connections between objects and comes up with completely new names for both objects and connections. In this work, the nominative function of the language is realized. And the future life of his innovations depends on how literate and skillful the innovator will be. Will his followers understand and are implemented or not? If new names and descriptions of new technologies do not take root, then it is highly likely that the technologies themselves will not take root. No less important is the accumulative function of the language, which ensures the work of the innovator twice: firstly, it provides him with the knowledge and information accumulated by his predecessors, and secondly, it accumulates his own results in the form of knowledge, experience and information.
Actually, in a global sense, the accumulative function of language ensures the scientific, technical and cultural progress of mankind, since it is thanks to it that every new knowledge, every bit of information is firmly established on a broad foundation of knowledge gained by its predecessors. And this grandiose process does not stop for a minute.
