Abstract on the topic:
"Language. Origin of language. Classification of languages"
Introduction
2. Origin of language
3. Classification of languages
Conclusion
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
Language is a multifaceted phenomenon. To understand how it works, it is necessary to consider it in different aspects. It is necessary to evaluate the elements that it includes, how these elements interact with each other, and how this interaction changes depending on social conditions society that uses the language. It is also necessary to consider what changes occur in a language in the process of its historical development.
This work examines what language is, considers its origin and classification.
1. LANGUAGE
Before understanding what a language is, you need to define its main functions. First of all language is a means of expressing human thought, a means of communication.This leads to the main functions of language - communicative and thought-forming.These functions determine the essence of the language, its main purpose.
Communication, however, in our world exists not only between people. There is also communication between animals, and in modern world we can talk about communication between man and machine. How do these types of communication differ from each other?
Animal communication is primarily associated with instincts and occurs only when it is necessary to transmit signals (danger, readiness to reproduce, protect territory, etc.).
Human communication is an order of magnitude higher. Language communicationimplies not only the instinctive transmission of information (expressed mainly non-verbally - facial expressions, gestures), but also the exchange of thoughts. Such an exchange can be expressed both through the transmission of sounds (orally) and without (writing, deaf-mute language). It is also worth noting languages whose alphabets are adapted for transmission by certain means (Morse code, naval flag).
Language is a system, in which the unity of meaning and sound (gesture, sign, movement) is essential. It is defined and can be studied in isolation from speech. An example of this is dead languages (Latin, Hebrew) - we can easily master them, despite the fact that there are no groups of people in the world who use these languages to communicate. This also includes artificially created languages (Esperanto, universal).
According to Yu. S. Maslov, language as a linguistic system can be divided into two parts:
· inventory (system of language units);
· grammar (a system of rules for the interaction of language units with each other).
Such a system serves as the basis for speech activity, expressed in acts of speaking and understanding, which, in turn, form texts. The system is cyclical, and texts can change the inventory and grammar of the language: the appearance/disappearance of words in the language, change grammatical structures and so on. (see Fig. 1).
Picture 1
2. ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE
Human speech as a means of communication and expression of human thought could only arise under certain conditions.
"Not a single living creature, with the exception of humans, has speech. This fact in itself suggests that the most important condition the emergence of speech is the presence of a certain physiological substrate or a certain physiological organization, most clearly embodied in man."
The question of the origin of language was already raised by the ancient Greeks, and controversy continues to this day.
There are several theories about the origin of language:
1. The theory of onomatopoeia.Its meaning lies in the fact that a person, without a language, but hearing the sounds of nature and imitating them, gradually developed a system thanks to which he was able to communicate.
It is absolutely impossible to deny onomatopoeia - every language has sounds of nature (oink-oink - piggy, cuckoo - cuckoo, etc.), but it cannot be argued that a person could, based on such elementary sounds, develop a complex language system and call objects that do not make sounds (stone, wood).
2. The theory of interjections.Developed by epicureans and supported by J.-J. Rousseau in the 18th century Supporters of this theory believe that language originated from interjections - sounds accompanying the emotions of primitive man (oh - groan, hee-hee - giggle, etc.).
There are even fewer such words in languages than onomatopoeic words, and besides, there are many words in the language that are not associated with emotions (proper names of objects - table, chair, spoon, etc.). For the sake of these words to a greater extent a language had to arise rather than express the emotional state of a person, which is quite easily conveyed by facial expressions and gestures.
3. The theory of labor cries.Developed in the works of vulgar materialists and contains the position that language arose from cries produced at the moment of labor. These shouts did not carry any meaning, they did not express anything and were used only as a means of rhythmizing work. Without carrying any function (communicative, nominative, expressive), it is difficult to talk about these cries as the ancestors of language in general. The theory should not be confused with the theory of Engels, who believes that communication arose in labor relations to make work easier.
4. Labor theory.Developed by Engels. Primitive society had to unite into groups to survive. It was the group nature of the work that forced them to establish communication with their relatives. Language was the most convenient means for this. The more complex the work became, the more complex the language became. This theory can be clearly seen in modern society, where technology is rapidly developing (neologisms appear, outdated words take on a new meaning).
5. Theory social contract. Developed by Adam Smith and says that language arose at the time of the emergence of society, as a means necessary to reach an agreement.
The theory takes place at later stages of language development. An example of this is the agreement of the world community on international designations of terms. In the ancient world, rather, it was first necessary to have a language and only then to negotiate.
5. Divine theory.It is found among all peoples and suggests that the language was created by God, gods or divine sages.
At the moment, scientists do not have consensus Regarding the origin of language, however, it can be assumed that language arose under the influence of several processes, which makes several theories true.
6. Anthropological theory.This theory explains the appearance of language by the physiological evolution of man. A change in the structure of the larynx and vocal cords, according to supporters of this theory, led to the appearance of speech. It is impossible to say that any of these theories is absolutely correct. However, it can be assumed that the emergence of language is immediately associated with a combination of factors, including several theories at once. For example, one can imagine that a person evolved in the process of work and the emergence of language is not only a consequence of changes in his vocal cords, but also the need for group communication.
3. CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES
There is a huge variety of classifications of languages - they can be divided into groups according to the number of speakers, the presence of cases in the language, and the number of vowels or consonants.
Perhaps most often, linguists distinguish the following classifications:
1. Genetic or genealogical classification.It is based on the concept of linguistic kinship, i.e. common origin languages.
One of the main difficulties that arises in the classification of languages is related to the name various degrees classifications. Typically, languages are classified into families and groups. Intermediate associations are also possible: between a family and a group - a branch, or subfamily, between a group and separate languages- subgroup. Several families related by genetic kinship can be united into a higher-level linguistic group - a superfamily (otherwise - a macrofamily, or phylum). Finally, within the language there are various dialects, and within the dialect - dialects (see Table 1).
Table 1.
In linguistics, a term for the level of classification. An example of the unification of languages superfamily (macrofamily, phyla) Nostratic languages family Indo-European languages subfamily (branch) Baltoslavic languages group Slavic languages subgroup East Slavic languages language Russian language dialect (dialect) South Russian dialects
2. Typological classification of languages.Based on the similarities and differences of languages, regardless of their historical development or territorial proximity. This classification is based primarily on grammar, uniting languages according to their common structure.
Best known morphological classification of languages, according to which languages are divided into types according to the following criteria:
) insulating, or amorphous ( Chinese, most languages South-East Asia). They are characterized by the absence of inflection, the grammatical significance of word order, and weak opposition between significant and function words;
) agglutinative, or agglutinating (Turkic and Bantu languages). They are characterized by a developed system of word-formation and inflectional affixation, a single type of declension and conjugation, grammatical unambiguity of affixes, and the absence of significant alternations;
) incorporating, or polysynthetic (Chukchi-Kamchatka, many languages of the Indians of North America). They are characterized by the possibility of including other members of the sentence (most often a direct object) in the predicate verb, sometimes with an accompanying morphonological change in the stems (the term “polysynthetic languages” more often designates languages in which the verb can agree simultaneously with several members of the sentence);
) inflected languages (Slavic, Baltic). They are characterized by the multifunctionality of grammatical morphemes, the presence of fusion, phonetically unconditional root changes, and a large number of phonetically and semantically unmotivated types of declension and conjugation.
Many languages occupy an intermediate position on the scale morphological classification, combining the characteristics different types; for example, the languages of Oceania can be characterized as amorphous-agglutinative.
3. Areal classification of languages.Based on territorial characteristics (East Slavic languages, Carpathian languages, etc.).
Such a classification can be applied both independently ((for example, the Carpathian area of Hungarian-Slavic dialects) and within a genealogical classification (for example, the Polesie area, covering Belarusian-Ukrainian dialects).
Classification also applies to dialects of the same language and forms the basis of linguistic geography.
Classifications of languages can intersect and complement each other. Thus, for example, genealogical classification, due to the lack of other characteristics, can divide languages using their typological and areal classification. This happens when a language according to genealogical classification is conditionally assigned to one or another group due to insufficient knowledge of a particular language.
CONCLUSION
Thus, language is a system that serves as the basis for verbal communication and inherent in all living beings only to man. It, as a system, lends itself to research and classification.
The origin of language is the subject of centuries-old debate among scientists. There are several main theories of the origin of language: onomatopoeia, interjections, labor cries, social contract, anthropological, divine.
One can only assume that initially man learned to imitate the sounds of nature and express his emotions with sounds, and only later, when the need arose for more expanded group communication, did he begin to create a language.
Language classification is also a rather controversial issue. There are many principles by which languages can be divided into groups. Linguistic scientists distinguish three main classifications: genealogical, typological and areal. These classifications can intersect and interact with each other, mix.
All this suggests that language is a very complex phenomenon and requires long and detailed research. It should be understood that each language is a unique phenomenon and can be assessed by science from different angles. Only thanks to its versatility can it fully perform the thought-forming function, and therefore carry out the communicative function between people as accurately as possible.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
language onomatopoeia areal genetic
1. Maslov, Yu. S. Introduction to linguistics [Text]: textbook / Yu. S. Maslov. - 2nd edition; reworked and additional - M.; graduate School, 1987. - 272 p.
General linguistics: forms of existence, functions, history of language / Ed. B. A. Serebrennikova. - M.: Nauka, 1970. - 597 p.
Dyachok, M. T., Shapoval, V. V. Genealogical classification of languages / M. T. Dyachok, V. V. Shapoval. - Novosibirsk, 2002. - 32 p.
Linguistic encyclopedic Dictionary/ Ch. ed. V. N. Yartseva. - M.; Soviet encyclopedia, 1990.
Reformatsky A. A. Introduction to linguistics / A. A. Reformatsky; under. ed. V. A. Vinogradova. - M.: Aspect Press, 1996. - 536 p.
Benveniste, E. Classification of languages / E. Benveniste // New in linguistics. Vol. III. - M., 1963. - P. 36-55.
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The definition of language as a system of systems, most fully developed by the Prague School functional linguistics, is undoubtedly justified, but it should not be given the absolute character that we observe in in this case. Separate "circles or tiers" language structure"Act from A. A. Reformatsky as self-contained systems, which, if they interact with each other (forming a system of systems or a system of language), then only as separate and integral unities. It turns out something like a coalition of allied nations whose troops are united common task military operations against a common enemy, but are under the separate command of their national military commanders.
In the life of a language, things are, of course, different, and the individual “tiers or systems” of a language interact with each other not only frontally, but to a large extent, so to speak, with their individual representatives “one on one.” So, for example, as a result of the fact that the series English words during the period of the Scandinavian conquest had Scandinavian parallels, a splitting of the sound form of some words of common origin occurred. This is how doublet forms were created, separated by natural processes V phonetic system Old English, which ended before the Scandinavian conquest. These doublet forms also created the basis for differentiating their meanings.
Thus, the difference arose between skirt and shirt (<др.-англ. scirt) — «рубашка», а также такие дублетные пары, как egg — «яйцо» и edge (
In a similar way, the German Rappe - “black horse” and Rabe - “raven” (both from the Middle High German form of garre), Knappe - “squire” and Knabe - “boy”, etc., split into two; Russian ashes - gunpowder, harm - vered, having a genetically common basis. An even more striking example of the natural interaction of elements of different “tiers” is the phonetic process of reduction of final elements, well known from the history of Germanic languages (which in turn is associated with the nature and position of the Germanic force stress in a word), which caused extremely important changes in their grammatical system.
It is known that the stimulation of analytical tendencies in the English language and the deviation of this language from the synthetic structure is directly related to the fact that reduced endings turned out to be unable to express with the necessary clarity the grammatical relationships of words. Thus, a purely concrete and purely phonetic process gave rise to new not only morphological, but also syntactic phenomena.
This kind of mutual influence of elements included in different “tiers” or “homogeneous systems” can be multidirectional and go both along an ascending (i.e., from phonemes to elements of morphology and vocabulary) and descending line. Thus, according to J. Vahek, the different fate of paired voiced final consonants in Czech (as well as Slovak, Russian, etc.), on the one hand, and in English, on the other hand, is determined by the needs of the higher planes of the respective languages. IN Slavic languages they, due to neutralization, became deafened, but in English the contrast p - b, v - f, etc. was preserved, although the contrast in sonority was replaced by a contrast in tension.
In Slavic languages (Czech, etc.), the appearance of new homonymous pairs of words, due to the deafening of final voiced consonants, did not introduce any significant difficulties in understanding, since in the sentence they received a clear grammatical characteristic and the sentence model in these languages was not functionally overloaded . And in the English language, precisely because of the functional overload of the sentence model, the destruction of the opposition of final consonants and the resulting emergence of a large number of homonyms would lead to significant difficulties in the communication process.
In all such cases, we are dealing with the establishment of individual connections between elements of different “tiers” - phonetic and lexical.
Regular relationships are thus established not only between homogeneous members of the language system, but also between heterogeneous ones. This means that systemic connections of linguistic elements are formed not only within one “tier” (for example, only between phonemes), but also separately between representatives of different “tiers” (for example, phonetic and lexical units). In other words, the natural connections of the elements of a language system can be multidirectional, which does not exclude, of course, special forms of systemic relationships of language elements within the same “tier”.
V.A. Zvegintsev. Essays on general linguistics - Moscow, 1962.
1. The concept of the system and structure of language
The preservation of the language is explained by the stability of its sound and grammatical structure. In other words, the stability of a language rests on its consistency And structure.
Terms system And structure often replace each other, but they do not coincide in all meanings.
In the Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language: word system(Greek origin, lit. “whole of component parts”), word structure(Latin origin, “structure, location”)
System And structure language imply that language has internal order, organizing parts into whole.
Systematicity and structure characterize language and its units as a single whole with different sides. Under structure the unity of heterogeneous elements within the whole is understood. System is a unity of homogeneous interdependent elements.
Language is characterized by a complex structure of interconnected and heterogeneous elements. The structure of a language includes different elements and their inherent functions. It is formed by the following levels (tiers):
Ø phonetic,
Ø morphological,
Ø lexical,
Ø syntactic,
Ø ( text),
Ø ( cultural).
The idea of the last two levels/tiers was introduced into scientific use relatively recently, but not all scientists are of the opinion that these levels should be considered within the framework of linguistic analysis of the language system. Indeed, these two levels/tiers take us beyond the boundaries of the language system itself in the traditional linguistic sense and connect language directly with the society and culture in which the language functions.
2. Units of language (elements of levels) and their functions
Units phonetic tiers are phonemes (sounds) – material embodiments of language; they implement two main functions: perceptual(perception function) and significative, or distinctive(the ability to distinguish significant elements of language - morphemes, words, sentences, cf.: that, mouth, cat, steel, table, etc.).
Units morphological tiers – morphemes – express concepts:
A) root(real), cf.: [-table-] [-ground-], etc.;
b) non-root 2 types: values signs, cf.: [-ost], [without-], [re-], and meanings relations, cf.: [-u], [-ish], etc., for example, sit-u, sit-ish, table-a, table-at.
This - semasiological function expressions concepts, but not naming. Morpheme doesn't name, just word has nominative function. By naming something, we turn a morpheme into a word. For example, the root red- expresses the concept of a specific color, but redness (noun) names a phenomenon. Therefore, it is believed that a morpheme, as the smallest meaningful unit of language, has a meaning, but this meaning is connected, it is realized only in combination with other morphemes. True, this statement is fully true for affixes, and only partially true for root morphemes (see the example above).
Units lexical level – lexemes (words) – name things and phenomena of reality, they perform a nominative function. The lexical level of a language system is special in the sense that its units are considered the basic units of language. At the lexical level, it is most fully represented semantics. A number of linguistic disciplines study the lexical composition of a language: lexicology, phraseology, semantics, semasiology, onomastics and etc.
Units syntactic level – phrases And offers – perform communicative function, that is, necessary for communication. This level is also called constructive-syntactic or communicative-syntactic. We can say that the basic unit of this level is proposal model. Deals with issues of studying the proposal syntax.
Elements of all levels in language form a unity, which is expressed in the fact that each lower level is potentially the next highest and, conversely, each higher level consists of at least one lower one. For example, a sentence may consist of one or more words, a word may consist of one or more morphemes, and a morpheme may consist of one or more phonemes.
Linguistic units are formed at a lower level and function at a higher level.
For example, a phoneme is constructed at the phonemic level, but functions at the morphemic level as a meaningful unit.
This property of linguistic units connects the levels of language into a single system.
Within each level/tier of the language structure (phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic), its units form their own separate system, that is, all elements of a given level act as members of the system. Systems of individual tiers of linguistic structure form a common system of this language.
3. Basic types of relationships between language units.
To talk about the relationships between language units, it is necessary to introduce and define the following concepts: language units, language category, level/tier, language relations.
Units of language– its permanent elements, differing from each other in structure, purpose and place in the language system.
According to their purpose, language units are divided into:
Ø Nominative – word (lexeme)
Ø Communicative – proposal
Ø Drilling – phonemes and morphemes, forms of words and forms of phrases
Language categories– groups of homogeneous language units; categories are combined based on a common categorical feature, usually semantic. For example, in the Russian language there are categories of tense and aspect of the verb, case and gender, categories of collectiveness, animacy, etc.
Level (tier ) language – a set of similar units and categories of language: phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic.
Language relations– relationships between tiers and categories of language, its units and their parts.
Main types of relationships between language units: paradigmatic, syntagmatic And hierarchical.
Paradigmatic relations (Greek paradigm - example, sample) are relations that unite language units into groups, categories, categories. Elements that are in paradigmatic relationships constitute a class of similar phenomena. Paradigmatic relationships are relationships of choice.
For example, the system of consonants, the system of declension, and the synonymic series rely on paradigmatics. When using language, paradigmatic relations allow you to select the desired unit, as well as form words and their forms by analogy with those already existing in the language, for example, case forms one word, synonymous series.
Syntagmatic relations unite units in their simultaneous sequence. These are relationships of units arranged linearly, for example, in a stream of speech. Syntagmatic relationships are used to build morphemes as combinations of phonemes, words as collections of morphemes and syllables, phrases and sentences as collections of words, complex sentences as collections of simple sentences.
Hierarchical relations connect the levels of language with each other, these are relations of structurally simpler units to more complex ones (remember: units are formed at a lower level, and function at a higher one).
All these types of relations in the language system are not isolated; they determine each other to one degree or another.
4. Phonology. Basic concepts of phonology
Initially, speech sounds were defined as sound formations that corresponded to letters: letters were “pronounced,” they were “hard” and “soft,” “vowels” and “consonants.” With the development of linguistics in the 19th century, it became possible to take a different look at the relationship between letters and sounds, since by this time sufficient material had accumulated on comparing the sounds of modern and ancient languages, as well as the sounds of related languages.
Speech sounds have a complex nature, therefore, within the framework of linguistics, over time, separate phonetic disciplines emerged that study various aspects of speech sounds: phonetics phonology(functional phonetics).
Phonetics studies the sound structure of a language: speech sounds and the rules for combining them into words in a stream of speech, an inventory of language sounds, their systemic properties, sound laws. The area of interest of phonetics also includes syllable, stress, and intonation.
As a natural phenomenon, the sound of speech can be considered in three aspects:
Ø acoustic(being studied speech acoustics);
Ø articulatory (articulatory phonetics);
Ø functional (phonology).
Phonology studies speech sounds in their functional or social aspect. What is important here is not the physical quality of speech sounds. But their functions are in the language system.
From this point of view, speech sounds are a way of materializing morphemes and word forms, acting as a unity of sound and meaning.
The multifaceted nature of speech sound has caused ambiguity in basic phonetic terms speech sound And phoneme.
Sound of speech– an acoustic phenomenon, an articulatory complex necessary to pronounce a specific sound, a unit of the sound system of a language.
Phoneme- the smallest unit of language, it does not have its own meaning and serves only to distinguish the sound shells of words. This is the sound unit of the language, i.e. the sound of speech in the phoneme system of a given language. The number of phonemes in a language is small; in any language in the world it is limited to a two-digit number.
The description of units at the phonetic level began a long time ago, even before the formation of linguistics as a science. By now, this level of the language system can be considered extremely described. As already mentioned, the characteristics of units of the phonetic level are dealt with phonetics(acoustic and articulatory) and phonology(functional phonetics).
The creator of the doctrine of the phoneme is Ivan Aleksandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay. He laid the foundations of phonology. His teaching is based on two basic principles:
Ø phoneme – a set of articulatory and acoustic representations;
Ø phonemes themselves have no meaning, but they also perform a semantic-distinguishing function (significative).
The idea of the phoneme was taken up by other scientists. A representative of the Prague linguistic school, Russian scientist Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy wrote the book “Fundamentals of Phonology” in 1939. From this point on, phonology becomes a separate linguistic discipline.
For Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy and other scientists of the Prague linguistic school, the phoneme is a unit oppositions, capable of distinguishing morphemes or words.
The core of Trubetskoy’s phonological concept is meaningful phoneme function. Sounds are combined into phonemes not by articulatory or acoustic proximity, but by functional community. If, depending on their position in a word, sounds are pronounced differently, but perform the same function and form the same words, they are considered as varieties of the same phoneme. Hence:
Ø phoneme – the shortest linguistic unit that serves to distinguish the material shell of a word and morphemes;
Ø phoneme is a complex sound unit, a set of different acoustic and articulatory properties, which manifests itself differently in the sound chain and performs a significative function in different ways.
The central concept of the teachings of Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy is phonological oppositions , sound contrasts that can differentiate the meaning of words of a given language. For example, the contrast of consonants based on voicedness/voicelessness in the Russian language.
Phonological oppositions form the phonological systems of specific languages.
In all the languages of the world there are only 12 pairs of differential features (DP). Different types of sounds are characterized by different pairs of DP. For example, vowels are characterized by rise, row, and labialization. In different languages, pairs of DPs are different; there is a certain set of DPs for the phonemes of a given national language. For example, in the Russian language DP, the longness/shortness of vowels does not “work”, i.e. is not essential, but in English this feature distinguishes meanings, i.e. is essential, cf.:
Ø Russian: voiced/voiceless, noisy/sonorant, hard/soft, front-lingual/back-lingual;
Ø English: long/short, labial/non-labial;
Ø French: nasal/non-nasal, etc.
Each phoneme is a bundle differential features , which distinguish phonemes from each other and facilitate the recognition of words and morphemes. Phonemes also have non-essentials ( non-integral) features that are not used to distinguish phonemes of a language.
The conditions under which phonemes are pronounced are called positions .
The concept of phoneme is closely related to the concept positions, i.e. the position of the sound in a word or morpheme. There are strong positions in which the phoneme realizes all its differential features, and weak positions in which some of these features are lost. The system of strong and weak positions in the Russian language can be presented as follows.
In strong position the phoneme realizes All its differential features; in a weak one, it neutralizes (loses) some of them.
Phonemes appear in options And variations.
Variation is a positional variation of the same phoneme ( m And r – f And R).
Options – these are common positional varieties of different phonemes ( ro h– ro With ).
Only in strong positions is the system of phonemes of a given language revealed.
All phonemes of a particular language form it phonological system , that is, they are interconnected, interdependent and united by a common semantic-distinguishing function.
The phonetic systems of different languages differ:
Ø number of phonemes (English – 44, Russian – 41, French – 35, German – 36);
Ø the ratio of vowels and consonants (Russian – 6 vowels: 35 consonants; English – 12 vowels: 8 diphthongs: 17 consonants; French – 18 vowels: 17 consonants; German – 15 vowels: 3 diphthongs: 18 consonants) ;
Ø specific laws of compatibility of phonemes in the flow of speech (in different languages (in Russian, despite the small number of vowel phonemes, their occurrence in speech accounts for almost half of the phonemic composition).
5. Main phonological schools
Further development of the ideas of Ivan Aleksandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay and Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy in Russia led to the formation of the main phonological schools: Moscow (MFS) and Leningrad (LFS).
Representatives of the IMF (R.I. Avanesov, P.S. Kuznetsov, A.A. Reformatsky, V.N. Sidorov, etc.) consider the phoneme as the shortest sound unit, which is an element of the sound shell of significant language units (lexemes and morphemes). The concept of the IFS is based on the concept positions, i.e., the conditions for the use and implementation of phonemes in speech (see above). Here, a strong position is considered as favorable for identifying the functions of phonemes, and a weak position as unfavorable. Phonemes perform two functions: recognition (perceptual) and discrimination (significative). Depending on the function, completely different results will appear in the same weak positions: a perceptually weak position gives variations, and a significatively weak position gives variations.
LFS (L.V. Shcherba, L.R. Zinder, N.I. Matushevich, etc.) considers the phoneme as sound type, associated with specific phonetic representations. According to the LFS, a phoneme is not only a bundle of differential features, but a specific sound unit.
The theoretical disagreements between the MFS and LFS are associated precisely with this difference in the understanding of the phoneme. So, in the words oak, roses, pond, etc. Representatives of the first school will see variants of the phonemes [b], [z], [d], and representatives of the second – phonemes [p], [s], [t]. From the point of view of the MPS, soft sounds , , are not independent phonemes, since they never occur in the same positions as hard sounds, and from the point of view of the LPS, these are phonemes that are acoustically different from hard sounds.
However, what these two schools of phonology have in common is that they
Ø recognize the social nature of the phoneme;
Ø rely on the connection between phonetics and phonology;
Ø consider the phoneme as a unit of language;
Ø based on the presence of a phonological system of a particular language and its historical variability.
6. Grammar. Basic grammatical traditions
Morphology And syntax are parts grammar – science of grammatical structure of the language , which means:
Ø ways and means of changing lexical units (morphology);
Ø constructing sentences from lexical units in speech according to the thought being expressed.
Morphology is the study of the grammatical form of a word and its structure. Morphology deals with the study of units at the morphological level. It offers classifications of morphemes, describes their characteristics and laws of functioning in language.
Syntax– the study of the rules of compatibility of units in a sentence and the relationships between them. Studying ways of constructing phrases and sentences.
Modern provisions of grammatical theory have been greatly influenced by the Greco-Latin tradition, since ancient scientists made a great contribution to the development of grammatical problems.
Plato tried to classify parts of speech on a logical basis; he identified the noun and the verb. A verb is something that refers to actions, a name is a designation of the one who performs this action.
Aristotle studied the structure of sentences. He believed that a sentence expresses a thought. In addition, Aristotle analyzed the parts of speech: noun, verb and conjunction. He introduced the concept of case of a name or verb, by which he understood the indirect forms of these parts of speech.
In the 2nd century BC. In ancient Greece, the Alexandrian grammar school was created, whose representatives are Aristarchus of Samothrace, Apollonius Discolus, Dionysius the Thracian. The Alexandrians define a word as the smallest significant part of coherent speech, and a sentence as a combination of words expressing a complete thought. This school developed in detail the doctrine of parts of speech. Dionysius identified 8 parts of speech: name, verb, adverb, participle, pronoun, article, preposition, conjunction. Apollonius studied the syntactic properties and functions of parts of speech. But the Alexandrians had not yet come to understand the need to analyze the morphological structure of the word.
Roman grammar generally followed the rules of Greek grammar, using them for analysis Latin language. The development of a Latin grammar became very important in the Middle Ages, when Latin became the language of religion, science and education.
In the 17th-18th centuries, developments appeared in the field of grammatical differences in European languages (English, French, German, Russian). “Russian Grammar” by Mikhailo Vasilyevich Lomonosov appeared in 1757.
In the development of linguistic thought of the 17th century, a special position is occupied by the so-called “General and Rational Grammar”, or the grammar of Port-Royal, written by the abbots of the Port-Royal monastery A. Arnaud and C. Lanslot. The philosophical basis of this grammar is the ideas of Rene Descartes, who emphasized the omnipotence of the human mind, which should serve as a criterion of truth.
The purpose of the Port-Royal Grammar was to study logical principles, which underlie all the languages of the world, i.e. the existence of language was examined from the point of view of the ability to express logically correct thoughts. The authors proceeded from the identification of logical and linguistic categories and set as their task the identification of universal categories found in all languages.
Universal grammars, created using material from different languages, are essentially an attempt to comprehend the structure of language.
Grammar as a linguistic science studies the form and content, structure and functioning of grammatical units and categories. The complex nature of grammatical units and categories has led to the emergence of different approaches to their study. These approaches underlie the classification of grammar types. Main types of grammars:
Ø formal grammar studies, first of all, grammatical forms, their structure, groupings by parts of speech and rules of inflection (paradigms), combinations (syntactic connections). The basic units of grammar are the word-formation and inflectional model, the form of words and phrases;
Ø functional grammar studies the potential functions of linguistic units and categories and their functioning within one modern state of the language. Functional grammar is characterized by the consideration of linguistic units in the interaction of grammatical and lexical units of a language within a schematic and real context;
Ø Abstract linguistic grammars are contrasted with speech, communicative grammars, in which the object of study is speech communication and speech activity.
7. Grammatical categories
The set of grammatical forms expressing the same or mutually opposed meanings constitutes grammatical category . For example, all cases constitute a category of cases. The sets of grammatical categories do not coincide in different languages.
Grammatical form- this is the unity of grammatical meaning and grammatical means expressing this meaning. Grammatical forms are varieties of words that, while having the same lexical meaning, differ in grammatical meaning. Grammatical forms form paradigms , representing a set of grammatical forms, established in a certain order.
8. Properties of a word. Lexicology
The vocabulary of a language is called vocabulary(gr.: lexicos - vocabulary, logos - teaching).
Lexicology- a branch of linguistics that studies the patterns inherent in the entire vocabulary of a language, as well as the characteristics of various groups of words. Since a word has many different sides, a number of branches of lexicology are distinguished.
Ø Semasiology – studies the meanings of words (structure of meaning, semantic oppositions, semantic features, etc.).
Ø Onomasiology – studies the process of naming.
Ø Onomastics – proper names. It is divided into anthroponymy (the study of people’s names), toponymy (the study of geographical names), ethnonymy, etc.
Ø Phraseology – stable phrases.
Ø Etymology – the origin of words.
Ø Lexicography is the science of methods for describing vocabulary and principles of compiling dictionaries, etc.
Lexicology can be synchronic and diachronic (historical), as well as general and specific.
The totality of all the words of a language - its vocabulary (vocabulary). In developed languages there are hundreds of thousands of words. Dictionary V.I. Dahl contains 200,000 words, the Large Academic Dictionary (BAS) - 120 thousand, the Modern Dictionary of the Russian Language - 500 thousand. Not a single person uses all the words: it stands out in the vocabulary fixed assets words (words active use ). Varies for a specific person active And passive dictionary. The child's vocabulary is approx. 3 thousand words, teenager – approx. 9 thousand words, and an adult – 11-13 thousand.
The word is one of the basic units of language. Unlike other units, it has nominative function – naming function.
Many definitions of a word can be formulated, but none of them can be exhaustive. All definitions will differ depending on the aspect in which the word is considered (for example, from a graphical point of view, a word is a chain of graphemes between two spaces). In order to define a word, it is necessary to highlight its main features.
Word- This:
Ø sound unity according to the laws of phonetics of a given language;
Ø grammatical unity according to the laws of grammar of a given language;
Ø a significant unit of language that has a nominative function;
Ø has positional independence (that is, it is characterized by the absence of a rigid linear connection with neighboring words, cf.: The weather is warm today – The weather is warm today);
Ø has syntactic independence (i.e. the ability to obtain the syntactic function of a member of a sentence or an individual sentence).
Thus, a word is a phonetic, grammatical and lexical unity. Please note that these characteristics represent different aspects of the word from the point of view of different levels of the language system.
Not all words have the same ratio of these characteristics.
You can give working definition words : This a minimal relatively independent unit of language that has lexico-grammatical relevance and is freely reproduced in speech to construct a statement .
The word as a unit of language (in the system) is called lexeme . A lexeme is an “ideal word”. In speech we deal with allolexes(options for implementing a separate token), or word forms, Wed Man is man's friend(3 words, but 2 lexemes).
Every word is a unity of sound and meaning. The connection between sound and meaning is arbitrary; it is reinforced by social practice. The meaning of a word reveals the connection between language and the outside world. However, lexicology describes words, but not items the surrounding world.
Lexical meaning- this is what a given word means, this meaning correlates with the concept and relates the word to a certain section of the lexical-semantic system of the language. Grammatical meaning - this is the belonging of a word to a certain grammatical category, determines the compatibility of the word and the ways of its modification.
The core of lexical meaning is a mental reflection of a particular phenomenon of reality, an object or a class of objects. The object denoted by the word is called denotation .
Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya spoke about the immediate and further meaning of the word, and also pointed to the dialectical unity of the linguistic and extra-linguistic content of the word.
Distinguish denotative And connotative meaning of the word. Denotative meanings are specific ( dog, green), abstract ( joy, honestly), imaginary ( mermaid). Connotative meaning is the emotional, expressive, evaluative and stylistic characteristics of a word (cf.: dog – little dog).
Lexical meanings are specific and individual, i.e. each lexical meaning belongs to one word, but in relation to the subject, each lexical meaning turns out to be generalized.
Lexical meanings are classified depending on their relationship to objects and phenomena of reality:
Ø Nominative ( house, birch) signal ( this one, he)
Ø Straight ( head, hand) portable (time runs)
Ø concrete abstract
According to the nature of the subject relevance, the meanings are own(single) and common nouns(are common).
The basis of lexical meaning is concept: a generalized thought about a given object or phenomenon. Different types of words relate to a concept in different ways, although each concept can be expressed by a word or phrase. But the word is not the same as the concept. A concept is a category logic. We can say that the meaning is broader, and the concept is deeper. For example, one word can have several meanings, i.e. relate to several concepts; one concept can be denoted by several words; the concept can be expressed by a compound name.
The relationship between sound and meaning arises by chance, but, once established, it becomes binding on all speakers of a given language.
The lexical meaning may contain internal shape (motivation , i.e. an indication of the reason why a given meaning turned out to be expressed by a particular combination of sounds (for example, onomatopoeic words, or such Lunokhod, airplane and so on.).
Not all words have the motivation preserved. Each language has its own reasons for motivation. Wed: windowsill, airplane. Over time, the word undergoes a process de-etymologization (i.e. forgetting motivation; cf. cabbage from caput– head). In the case of conjecture of motivation, a phenomenon arises such as false (folk) etymology; compare: semi-clinic, half-over, caterpillar and so on.
The entire vocabulary of a language can be considered as a system, the structure of which is determined by the types of lexical meanings and lexico-grammatical categories of words. So, all words can be classified into categories parts of speech in accordance with their lexico-grammatical relevance. Depending on the relationship of lexical meaning, they can be distinguished polysemantic words, homonyms , synonyms , antonyms , paronyms etc. From the point of view of language changes in the lexical composition, the following are distinguished: neologisms (new words that appear in the language are the result various kinds borrowings or changes in the semantic structure of words existing in the language – computer, dealer), historicisms (words naming realities that have gone out of use - chain mail, bast shoes), archaisms (obsolete words - eyes, cheeks).
The concept of the systematic nature of language and its structure came to the science of language at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. In this way, linguistics to some extent reflected the general trend in the formation of scientific knowledge (cf. the emergence of ideas about systematicity in other sciences: Charles Darwin’s theory of the origin of species, Dmitry Mendeleev’s system of chemical elements, etc.).
It should be added that the language system is in a process of constant change. True, different levels of language change differently, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The lexical level turns out to be the most mobile: new words and new meanings appear, some words fall out of use, etc.
Thus, the language system, on the one hand, strives for change, and on the other hand, it must maintain integrity, otherwise the language will cease to fulfill its functions, since people will no longer understand each other. These are two opposite processes that affect the system, so it is customary to say that the language system is always in a state relative equilibrium.
ASSIGNMENTS ON TOPIC 5
Questions and practice tasks
1. Why do you think people came from understanding the connections between objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality to describing these connections in accordance with the principle of systematicity in the 19th century?
2. What examples of system description from other sciences can you give?
3. Why do they say that language is a “system of systems”?
A. Draw a diagram of the language system. Try to show in this diagram all types of relationships between language units.
B. Solve the problem.
Suggestions given
· The elephant surprises everyone with its big ears.
· He was driving the car on a dusty road.
· I knew her as a little boy.
· He was reading a book on a warm evening.
· The rocket pierced the clouds with black lightning.
· He dug up the bed with a sharp shovel
· I knew him as a little boy.
· I thought he was a total fool.
· He left Kursk by the evening train.
In these sentences, the instrumental case of the last noun has different meanings. To find out this difference, it is enough to redo (transform) these sentences so that their meaning is preserved, but instead of a phrase with the instrumental case, they contain some other grammatical construction (it is allowed to transform the entire sentence, and not just a phrase with the instrumental case).
Using these transformations, try to distinguish as many (all?) of these sentences from each other as possible.
Come up with your own suggestions for a similar task.
IN. Solve the problem.
Words given Same And Also. Find: a) a sentence with the word too, where instead of Same cannot be consumed Also(the sentence will become incorrect); b) a sentence where instead of Also cannot be consumed Same; c) a sentence where these words are interchangeable.
G. Comment on Jean Aitchison's statement. What does the author want to draw our attention to?
LITERATURE
1. Rozhdestvensky V.S. Lectures on general linguistics.
2. Khrolenko A.T. General linguistics.
3. Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary.
4. Stepanov Yu.S. Fundamentals of linguistics.
A system should be understood as a set of interdependent elements that form something whole. When studying a system, the researcher identifies the relationships that exist between the elements of the system. Through these relationships, he determines those elements that enter the system.
If one or another element does not show any relationship to others, it is outside the system. So, if we take for example a system of road signs consisting of red, green, and yellow, we can say that each of these signs has a certain meaning only by virtue of the fact that it is compared with another sign. And in its totality, this three-member system represents something whole. If we try to attach a sign with a different color, for example purple, to it, then it will be outside the system, since it has no relation to the named elements of the system. But it can also be made an element of the system if we endow it with certain relationships to other elements: for example, if through yellow we denote the transition from red (with the value “Stop”) to green (with the value “The path is clear”), and through purple - transition from green to red.
All of the above also applies to the elements of language, if we consider it as a system. Thus, each language uses a certain number of phonemes. Sounds that are outside the phonetic system of a given language have no meaning for the speaker of that language. We can say that he “does not hear” them. It is for this reason that the linguistic representation of the crow of a rooster, the bark of a dog or the meow of a cat is different in different languages: according to the phonetic systems of these languages.
The systemic relationships that exist in vocabulary can be clearly illustrated by the example of academic performance assessments, which were used at different times in schools and universities in our country. In the 20s Only two ratings were used: satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Nowadays a four-part grading scale is used (for example, in universities): excellent, good, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Both scales include “satisfactory”, but in these two systems it has a different “weight”. Each system determines the value of this assessment differently.
Sometimes a language is defined as a system of systems - a phonetic system, a morphological system, a lexical system. It would be wrong, however, to assume that each of these systems is independent of the others. Although each of these systems has its own internal laws, they are also interconnected and interdependent. Thus, replacing one phoneme with another can lead to a change in the meaning of words, or, more precisely, to characterize different words. If in Russian the hard consonant phonemes are replaced by soft ones, we get different words: kon - horse, mole - moth, blood - blood, etc. (Moreover, this very ability to characterize different words is used to determine which phonemes are included in phonetic system of a given language.)
Based on the examples given, we can assert that the Russian language has two rows of consonants, differing in the qualities of hardness and softness. And for English and German, for example, the difference in hardness and softness of consonants does not matter at all. But the longness and shortness of the vowels have semantic-distinguishing qualities (identifying the corresponding phonemes) in these languages: German. ihm - “to him” and im - preposition in; English sit - “sit” and seat - “chair” - which is completely unusual for the Russian phonetic system.
The systemic relationships existing in a language make it possible to identify meaningful elements that do not receive direct expression in the language. An example of such unexpressed elements is the so-called zero morpheme or the significant absence of an article (zero article). In the declension system of the Russian word river, its form rivers, contrasted with other forms - with a pronounced case meaning (river, rivers, river, river, etc.), the very absence of a case morpheme (zero morpheme) indicates the genitive plural. In the English language, where there are definite and indefinite articles, the use of a name without any article gives it the meaning of abstraction: water - “water” in general, snow - “snow” in general, beauty - “beauty” in general, in contrast, for example, to the snow , i.e. snow, which is in question in this case, or a snow - some kind of snow (see Zero units in language).
The principle of systematic language also determines hidden categories, the discovery of which is associated with deeper structural features of the language. Thus, in contrast to the English, German and French languages, which have appropriate means for expressing definiteness and uncertainty (definite and indefinite articles), it is believed that in the Russian language there are no categories of definiteness and uncertainty. However, they are still present in the Russian language in a “hidden form”, sometimes receiving their own special expression. If we compare the following expressions: The lamp is on the table and There is a lamp on the table, Please close the door and Every house has a door, then the lamp and the door in the first case have a certain meaning (when, for example, we ask someone to close the door, then it is assumed that it is known which door we are talking about), and in the second case - an indefinite meaning (see Actual division of the sentence).
The concept of systematic language penetrated into linguistics and gradually became stronger in it. Perhaps for the first time this concept was most clearly formulated by the outstanding German linguist W. Humboldt, who wrote back in 1820:
“In order for a person to understand even one single word not simply as a mental impulse, but as an articulate sound denoting a concept, the entire language must already be embedded in it completely and in all its connections. There is nothing singular in language; each individual element manifests itself only as a part of the whole.” However, a complete theoretical concept, based entirely on the concept of systematic language, was created much later by the Swiss scientist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913). The scientific work of F. de Saussure served as the basis for the emergence of many trends in modern linguistics.
The emergence of language
The emergence of language is the most important component of human evolution on the path from the ape to Homo sapiens. Without language, man simply would not exist. At the same time, the emergence of language in the process of human evolution remains one of the biggest mysteries in the science of human origins.
There are several traditional hypotheses about the origin of language.
Onomatopoeic hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, language arose as a result of man’s imitation of various sounds of nature, the cries of animals, the sounds of actions performed by man himself, etc.
Interjection hypothesis. This hypothesis is based on the fact that sound language arose from the involuntary cries of a person in the process of work, hunting, gathering under the influence of external circumstances or internal states.
Sound-symbolic hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, sound symbolism played a leading role in the emergence of language - the connection of sounds with certain qualities or characteristics of objects unconsciously captured by people. Thus, it has been noticed that the names of small objects or concepts such as “close”, “here” usually contain the sounds I, E, and the names of large objects and concepts such as “far” contain U, O.
Social contract hypothesis. This hypothesis belongs to J.J. Rousseau - people agreed on what they would call objects.
Pole hypothesis. This hypothesis is based on the fact that the sound language was preceded by a developed manual language - sign language, and only then the gestures began to be accompanied by sound exclamations.
Labor hypothesis. This hypothesis is known as the hypothesis of L. Noiret and F. Engels and is based on the fact that the first actually human words arise in the process of joint activity of people as a designation of labor processes.
All these hypotheses have the right to exist, and all of them are partially confirmed by the facts of language, research by anthropologists, and observations of the development of child speech in ontogenesis. Only the social contract hypothesis does not stand up to criticism, since it is unclear how, without a language, people could agree on their language.
It is curious, however, that all of the above hypotheses proceed from the fact that primitive man had no language at all, and try to explain how language suddenly appeared. This does not take into account the fact that primitive man already had a fairly developed communication system, inherited from his ape ancestors. This communication system has not disappeared anywhere, just as the brain of the ape has not disappeared anywhere: the human brain did not arise out of nowhere, it evolved from the brain of the ape. The ideas about the communicative system of great apes obtained by modern anthropologists and ethologists allow us to put forward natural hypothesis of the origin of language- language was formed from the communicative system of the great ape in an evolutionary way, through its complication and development, adaptation to the growing needs of a developing person.
The ape's communication system includes gestures, facial cues and sounds, many of which are affective in nature. All these communicative means are found in the language of modern man. In addition, observations of the formation of speech in a child show that at first the child’s speech is dominated by gestures, facial signals and affective verbalizations, and
then they gradually give way to more and more articulate verbalizations, and the role of gestures and facial expressions, very high at the initial stage of development of speech ability, gradually decreases and takes a place that corresponds to the norms of “adult” language. Gesticulation played a role in the preparation of sound language; Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov suggests that the principles of constructing sequences of hand gestures, which served in the “sign language” of hominids (the family of primates, including Homo sapiens) as the main way to convey complex meanings, were later transferred to sound sequences.
Analyzing from this point of view the other hypotheses of the origin of language mentioned above, we can state that all of them do not contradict the natural hypothesis, but complement it, revealing possible ways of development of the sound side of the language.
However, all of the above hypotheses in one way or another explain the mechanism of the emergence of sound language, explain the ways in which sound designations of objects arise, but they do not answer the most important question - and why language arises in man, why was man not satisfied with the communicative means at his disposal, but created a developed language with numerous designations for objects and processes of the external and internal world?
The creation of language was a consequence of the improvement of human labor activity, the result of a person’s accumulation of knowledge, and a consequence of the development of his thinking. The underlying needs of the development of civilization to transfer and accumulate over time a growing amount of knowledge, to preserve the accumulated experience of production activities came into conflict with the possibilities of visually transferring knowledge and experience by demonstrating methods and techniques of activity on the principle “from person to person.” This required the creation of an extensive system of signs that could record experience and knowledge and transmit them from generation to generation.
On the other hand, observations of many tribes show that these tribes describe the hunt in the form of a pantomime with a descriptive song, and the pantomime gradually gives way to a sound accompaniment with an imperative intonation, which is of a managerial nature and comes from leaders and dominant individuals. The complication of regulatory functions in society is the second reason for the emergence of sound language. The decisive role in the formation of sound language was apparently played by the communication of dominant individuals with other members of the community - sound signals were “invented” by leaders and dominant individuals.
The gestural and facial components of the communicative system of primitive man as a means of communication revealed their limitations in the process of evolution - they presuppose the need to look at the person speaking, gestures distract hands from work, gestures and facial expressions are not visible at night, are not visible behind an obstacle. Sound signals are free from all these disadvantages, which is why sound language turned out to be the most suitable for communication and began to develop intensively. Subsequently, writing was also invented, which meant further significant improvement in the means of effective transmission of knowledge in society.
The process of language emergence in chronology
The process of formation of a person’s natural sound language is called glotto-genesis. Glottogenesis can be presented in the form of conditional stages in the development of human language - conditional because these stages, as evidenced by modern science, often overlap each other, which is associated with the characteristics of human development - in certain historical periods, for example, Pithecanthropus coexisted with Homo habilis , and Neanderthal - with Cro-Magnon.
Schematically, the process of glottogenesis can be represented as follows.
1st stage. Australopithecus.
Lived 3-5 million years ago - 600 thousand years ago. He walked on the ground, grabbed objects with his hands, did not make tools, used stones and clubs. The brain is 420-650 cm 3, the jaw is shortened. Australopithecines - still monkeys, the last link
in the evolution of the animal world.
Used the animal communication system.
2nd stage. Primitive
A skilled man(homo habilis). Discovered by L. Leakey in 1959 in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Lived about 2 million years ago. He walked upright and made tools.
Pithecanthropus.
Lived 1.3-0.8 million years ago. He made tools; the brain volume was about 900 cm 3 . The forehead is sloping and narrow. Average life expectancy is 20 years.
Homo habilis and Pithecanthropus used the communication system of animals. Speech is slurred. 10-15 beeps, no more.
Sinanthropus.
Lived 800 thousand-300 thousand years ago, found in China. He began to warm himself with fire.
Heidelberg Man.
Lived 300-40 thousand years ago. Found in Europe.
Sinanthropus and Heidelberg man, who lived at the same time as Neanderthal man, have slurred speech, like Pithecanthropus. The communication system of animals is used. The number of beeps may be increasing.
3rd stage.
Neanderthal(ancient man).
Lived 500 thousand - 40 thousand years ago. Large body size, large muscle mass. He began making specialized tools from bone and stone. Brain volume is 1300-1400 cm3.
About 200 thousand years ago, Neanderthals began to develop the rudiments of language. The vocal muscle begins to form, thanks to which the tension of the vocal cords becomes independent of the work of the walls of the larynx. This muscle was designed to transmit commands from the brain to the vocal cords, but there was no dedicated speech center in the brain yet, and the vocal muscle could not be used correctly. This means that for Neanderthals, pronouncing any sound caused vibration of the vocal cords (that is, a vowel sound) and these vowels could not be differentiated, they were all similar to each other. The sounds of the Neanderthal were disharmonious, shrill, accompanied by squealing, squeaking, and there were many nasal vowels, since the velum of the Neanderthal was further from the wall of the larynx than that of modern humans.
The lower jaw of the Neanderthal was controlled by powerful but inactive masticatory muscles and could not move quickly. The absence of a formed chin narrowed the possibilities for differentiated movements of the tongue in the mouth, which did not allow articulate sounds to be pronounced.
The late Neanderthal already has the rudiments of articulate speech - the vocal muscle has begun to work, and the lower jaw becomes more mobile.
Speech centers are gradually formed in the cerebral cortex, a restructuring of interhemispheric connections occurs, which changes the human psyche. In different individuals the process developed unevenly, and more striking individualities began to emerge.
4th stage.
Cro-Magnon(modern man).
Appears approximately 100 thousand years ago, coexists with Neanderthals.
Brain volume 1500 cm 3, 17 billion nerve cells. Small height, small muscle mass. The chin has taken shape, allowing for articulate articulation. Pitch hearing develops, and speech centers appear in the brain.
In ontogenesis and phylogenesis of brain development, the zones of the right hemisphere responsible for the semantics of hieroglyphic gestures are formed first, and later the posterior zones of the left hemisphere, which are responsible for the verbal naming of individual objects. The temporofrontal zones of the left hemisphere, which are occupied with the construction of syntactically complex structures, are the last to form.
The Cro-Magnon language was monovocalic, using one vowel sound. Slo-
gi differed in consonants, monosyllabic words appeared. Monovocalic syllables differed in tone; tone was used to distinguish meaning.
Approximately 30-50 thousand years ago, articulate oral language in its modern sense appears.
In 8-6 thousand BC. pictography appears - pictorial writing (a series of drawings convey a coherent story), 6 thousand years ago the first writing appears - Sumerian cuneiform writing, 5 thousand years ago - Chinese hieroglyphic writing, 4-3 thousand years ago phonetic writing appears - first syllabic ( India, Persia, Ethiopia), then, at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC - alphabetic (Egypt, Phoenicians, Greeks).
Formation of the language system in phylogenesis
It is possible to reconstruct a certain sequence in which different parts of the language system arose.
Important material for such a description is provided by observations of the formation of speech in children, since it is known that a person in his intrauterine and infant development in ontogenesis repeats the main stages of phylogenesis. In addition, researchers have found that higher primates and children under 2 years of age have a lot in common in behavior and means of communication: they operate with the categories of subject and object, place, direction, existentiality and belonging. They have common forms of primary communication - volitional signals, word-sentences, two-part categorical binary sentences. This allows us to build hypotheses about the sequence of formation of various parts of the language system based on observations of the sequence of formation of the native language system in a newborn child.
First, emotions arise - commands, signals of a favorable or unfavorable state. Thus, in a child from 0 to 8 months, 5 types of signals are distinguished: a call to communicate with the mother, a signal of discomfort, a signal of a safe stay in a dream, a signal of normal feeding, a signal of a safe stay in the mother’s arms.
Further, from 9 months to 1 year 8 months, word-sentences are formed, which are accompanied by gestures. There are two main types of such offers: requirement (dats- give; poppy- give me milk) and ascertaining the presence of the item (mu- here's a cow, Mother- here's mom). During the same period, two-word, grammatically unformed sentences begin to form (mi bang- the bear fell, mommy sister- mom is a brush, that is, mom sweeps). The vocabulary during this period is small - 10-15 units.
From 1 year 9 months verbose, unsyntaxed utterances of 3-4 words appear and the vocabulary begins to grow sharply and quickly - 80, 100, 200 words (lexical explosion). Similar formations begin to appear.
The grammatical form of a statement is mastered by 5, sometimes by 7 years.
The formation of a system of parts of speech in the child’s linguistic consciousness is as follows:
nouns- appear before everyone else; after mastering approximately 100 nouns, the child begins to form them by analogy;
Verbs- appear after the subject dictionary and are omitted for a long time. After mastering 50 verbs, the first verb categories appear;
adjectives- appear late, after nouns; are placed after nouns for a long time - small goat; after mastering about 30 adjectives, their grammatical forms appear;
pronouns - appear among the first and are used correctly from the very beginning;
individual adverbs - appear early, among the first words (adverbs of place, time and temperature);
function words - appear after all significant parts of speech, prepositions appear first.
The available data obtained by Indo-Europeanists, language historians, specialists in linguistic universals, and researchers of child speech and aphasia allow us to hypothetically imagine the appearance of the ancient language as follows.
First, consonants with a vocal overtone appear; the phoneme includes an entire syllable, structurally indivisible. Vowels appear later.
In this language there were three types of syllables: type TA, type A, type S-S-S, L-L-L, M-M-M (with a fricative or sonorant consonant). These syllables were combined in speech. The place of articulation of the sound and its pitch, then the nasal overtone, played a meaningful role.
The first consonants that emerged were sonorants as opposed to noisy ones, then they were joined by fricatives, and then the opposition between voiceless and voiced arose.
The first lexemes were, apparently, names of objects and personal pronouns, as well as some adverbs. Later, verbs and other parts of speech, function words and, finally, in some languages, morphemes appear, formally securing certain lexical and syntactic meanings. The composition of morphemes gradually increases, and their functions become more complex.
Analogy played an important role in replenishing vocabulary and the emergence of new words.
The development of syntax went from the designation of emotions-commands and emotions-states to sentences-demands and statements of the presence of an object. The language was “unsyntaxed” for a long time; the syntax was based on simple two-part sentences; complex sentences were formed in the language already in the modern period.
All sentences were initially simple, and connections between words were not formally expressed. This can be clearly seen in examples from children’s speech (my mother reads a book) and from the speech of patients with aphasia (Sasha drinks milk, I live in the city). The appearance of grammatically expressed connections was a later event in the development of language. From simple sentences juxtaposed with each other to the development of special means and block diagrams complex sentence is a universal human movement in the syntactic subsystem of language.
The development of a complex sentence is associated with the advent of writing and especially printing. Infant written languages, as a rule, do not have a developed inventory of complex sentences.
The basis of primitive society was a tribe - a group of people related by blood. Men and women performed different jobs - men hunted and fished, women collected fruits and roots. This determined the important role of genderlects in primitive language - the languages of men and women had significant differences.
The ancient tribal language was characterized by rapid updating of its vocabulary. Among a number of modern peoples leading a tribal way of life, this has been preserved to this day: in the 20s. A researcher of the Eskimo language described their language, and when he returned a few years later, he found numerous new words, even the needle was renamed.
There was a large territorial fragmentation of languages. Miklouho-Maclay in New Guinea in the second half of the 19th century described a situation when he visited neighboring villages one after another, and he needed several translators to translate for each other. This feature of the ancient language is designated by the term “primary linguistic continuity” - each language is similar to the neighboring one, but less so to the next one.
These are today's ideas about the ancient, pre-literate state of human language.
The language of the written period also underwent significant changes on the way to its modern state. Each language has its own destiny, but many changes were common to most languages that functioned under similar social conditions. Thus, during the slaveholding period of the development of society in a painful
Most cultures have concepts language norm And language style, the concept of correct and incorrect speech, good speech arises, numerous synonyms arise that provide a choice of expressive means.
During the period of feudalism, caste languages appeared, serving individual social strata. In Indonesia, until the 15th century, the nobility spoke Sanskrit, and the peasants spoke Malay dialects; in Ireland, the peasants used the Celtic language, and the nobility spoke English. In England, during the period of French rule, the people spoke English, and the nobility spoke French, etc. However, caste languages gradually disappear, and by the end of the feudal period, vernacular languages prevail. Literary and written languages appear, book and folk subsystems of the language are formed.
During the period of developing capitalism, nations are formed, and therefore national languages. There is a clear differentiation of language styles. Social dialects and jargons are developing widely while the influence of territorial dialects is weakening. In multinational states, languages of interethnic communication arise.
Basic patterns of evolution and development of the language system Synchrony and diachrony of the system, language
It always seems to a person that the language he speaks throughout his life remains the same. Indeed, time human life not enough to notice any significant changes in the language system. This explains the fact that the science of language rose to the realization of the changeability of language over time only in the 19th century, after linguists compared different Indo-European languages. It became obvious that the common ancient Indo-European paradigm of declension and conjugation was transformed in divergent related languages in a variety of ways. An appeal to the written monuments of past eras also showed that the language system, while preserving many stable elements and structures, at the same time is constantly changing, differently in different parts.
This discovery so amazed linguists that for almost a hundred years all their thoughts and interests were riveted to the study of the changes that occurred in the Indo-European languages throughout their history. But by the end of the 19th century. The wave of historical study of languages began to subside, and the ratio of works on modern languages and their history began to come into balance.
Saussure demarcated the history of languages (diachrony), and their current state - (synchrony). From his works, which made a huge impression on contemporary linguists and linguists of subsequent generations, it was concluded that the opposition between diachrony and synchrony is absolute and does not tolerate compromise, and the study of the modern language system can be carried out without historical knowledge. This attitude was taken to its logical conclusion by the American linguist Bloomfield. He believed that knowledge of the history of a language when describing its modern state is not only unnecessary, but also harmful, since it prevents the researcher from impartially determining the relationships in the system of modern language.
The question of the relationship between synchrony and diachrony in Russian linguistics was resolved differently. I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and his students believed that diachronic study is important and necessary for understanding and explaining the phenomena of synchrony. A.A. Potebnya wrote that the surface of the tongue is always more or less replete with samples of different types of layers. Without knowing the history of a language, it is impossible to understand the relationship between old and new elements in a modern language, and it is impossible to identify trends in their development.
Knowledge of systemic relations in modern language allows us to more deeply and fully understand historical changes in language systems, to understand the dialectical relationship of shifts in different subsystems of the language. Academician A. Chikobava notes that linguistics as an explanatory and humanitarian science is impossible without historicism. Not the opposition and rupture of synchronic and diachronic language learning, but their dialectical unification for the knowledge of the language system and laws.
its functioning is new - this is the way to resolve the issue of the relationship between diachrony and synchrony in domestic theoretical linguistics.
Trends in the development of the language system
The main driving force behind the development of language is the thinking of the people, reflecting more and more new phenomena of the objective world, identifying and establishing increasingly deeper and more significant connections between them. Through thinking, the development of language is affected by numerous circumstances in the life of human society, social processes, and extralinguistic circumstances. But many changes in the language system also have strictly linguistic reasons, caused by the peculiarities of articulation and auditory perception of sounds, the patterns of development of the language itself as an objectively existing social phenomenon.
Trends in changes in language under the influence of the circumstances of human society are called external laws and trends caused by linguistic reasons themselves - internal laws language development. The action of internal laws is determined by the essence of language, its mechanism, and the specific features of its structure; they are panchronic, that is, they always operate. External laws are historical, operating in certain specific historical social conditions. External and internal laws lead to changes that represent either evolution or development of language.
Evolution is changes within a language that occur under the influence of its own internal laws.
Language development is changes associated with the impact on the language of society, the adaptation of language to the changing and increasingly complex conditions of its functioning.
An analogy can be drawn with a person: a person ages, his organs change, weight increases or decreases, wrinkles appear - this is the evolution of his body. At the same time, a person becomes smarter, becomes educated, knows and can do more and more - this is his development.
Evolution and development equally determine changes in language.
Among internal laws, one can distinguish between general and particular laws. General laws are inherent in all languages and arise from the properties of language, which serves as a means of communication between people. Such laws include the stability of the language system and the gradualness of its change, the variability of linguistic means, the operation of the law of analogy and others.
Particular laws are manifested in specific changes occurring either in one language or in a group of related languages, and relate to a specific sound change, specific rearrangements in declension and conjugation systems, changes in the composition of lexical-semantic groups, etc.
Let us give some examples illustrating changes in different subsystems of the language.
Changes in the phoneme subsystem
Changes in the pronunciation of sounds occur continuously in the language. They are caused by the natural variation in the pronunciation of different people, which is also supported by various speech defects, such as, for example, a lisp, nasal tone, burr and many others.
In the conditions of a developed literary language with well-developed and fixed pronunciation norms (spelling rules), such deviations are assessed as errors. They are corrected, sometimes ignored, often ridiculed. In general language system phonemes, such variation in pronunciation is not reflected.
Things were different in the preliterate period, when the norm of pronunciation developed spontaneously and was not fixed in any way. The change of generation was enough that...
if this or that deviation in the speech of children from the speech of their parents was accepted as the norm. The deviation, recognized as the norm, gave rise to a new phonemic image and led to the loss of the old phonemic image. Where they used to say ke, ge, he, appeared what, same, she; on site yes, bah appeared ta, pa, and in place of the old ones ta, pa pronounced tha, pha etc. Changes in the composition and structural connections of phonemes in the linguistic consciousness of speakers manifest themselves immediately in all lexemes of a given language that have identical phoneme positions. Wherever you've heard it before k, g, x before front vowels, they begin to hear h, f, w or z, c, s, as it was in the Slavic languages after the first and second palatalization.
The sequence in the change in the phonemic appearance of all lexemes with an identical position for the changing phoneme was discovered by neogrammarians, who understood this phenomenon as a result of the action of sound laws. The neogrammarians created a cult of sound laws and at first attributed to them the same inevitability and immutability with which the forces of nature act. Further research showed that “sound laws” are not always consistent, the results of changes may be lost; what changed in one century does not change in another; what changed in one language does not change in another, etc. For example, a change in the sound j in zh or j was noted in Italian, Iranian, and Turkic languages, but it did not occur in Slavic languages. The appearance of p between vowels in place of z is noted in Latin, Germanic, and Turkic languages. But it didn’t exist in Slavic languages either.
Sound changes often involve shifts in the place of articulation of sounds that are very close in position to the tongue or lips. For example, in many languages exchanges were noted r/l, agricultural, l/u(non-syllabic), h/c etc. Such changes find parallels in pronunciation disorders. Burr R- widespread deviation from the usual front-lingual r, but, for example, in French it has received recognition as a normative pronunciation. Whistling, that is, pronounced through teeth T, possible in any language, but, for example, in English it has become established as an independent phonemic image, denoted by letters th, and so on.
Sound changes can be unidirectional or multidirectional. Ancient non-Slavic diphthongs he, om, en, eats, becoming vowels u, a, can no longer return to their original state. Doesn't return to original sound j from y, x from s, p from h and a number of others.
Changes from voiced to voiceless and back are multidirectional (p- >b-"tg, With-m->s, etc.); changes are reversible s-^sh^s, a^>o^>a, i^e-i and a number of others.
The source of sound changes in all languages of the world is the same: natural variation in articulation. The trends of change are also the same: a shift in the articulation of similar sounds in place and method of formation. But exactly what sound changes will lead to shifts in phonemic images, what old phonemes will disappear, what new phonemes will be formed in the language system - this will be decided for each language separately.
A specific set of restructurings of the phoneme system that took place in the history of a given language constitutes its unique phonological history. Exact knowledge This history allows us to scientifically determine the relationship of languages, contacts of languages, the origin of words and word forms of a language and other events in the history of a given language.
Changes in the lexical subsystem of the language
Semantic changes in words can occur without phonological changes, and vice versa. We already know that people’s expanding mental horizons push them to develop the lexical subsystem of a language. V.G. Gak points out four fundamental possibilities for changing the composition of verbal signs of a language.
1. Using an old sign for a new denotation.
2. Introduction of a new sign for an old, already designated denotation.
3. Introduction of a new sign for a new denotation.
4. Stop using the sign.
Let's consider the selected V.G. Here's a look at the trends using some examples.
1. In the field of semantic word formation, i.e. in the field of using an old sign for a new denotation, the following most important trends can be traced: 1) Sperber’s law, 2) anthropomorphism, 3) the transition from the concrete to the abstract, 4) synesthesia (lit. co-feeling).
Sperber's law is that the main source of metaphorical transfers of the meaning of a word in each era is a set of ideas that are important and of general interest in a given society. In the Middle Ages, such a complex of ideas was generated by hunting, with the advent of sports games Football is of general interest, and in the USA - baseball; at the beginning of the 20th century attention was drawn to cars, during the First and Second World War - military operations, in the 60s - space exploration (cf. in Russian phraseology: go into orbit, put into orbit, leave orbit, soft landing, state of weightlessness, docking, etc.).
Cockfighting, popular in England, left its mark on English phraseology: that cock won"t fight (lit.: this rooster will not fight) - this number will not work; to live like a fighting cock (lit.: live like a fighting cock) - ride like cheese in butter; to feel like a fighting cock (lit.: to feel like a fighting cock) - to be in shape for fighting, etc.
In the post-war period in Russia, over several decades, there was a wide expansion of military vocabulary (battle for the harvest, harvesting headquarters, production commanders, seize a bridgehead, attack along the entire front, be in the vanguard (rearguard), direct the fire of criticism at something, reach the lines, make a breakthrough, command construction and many others).
In the 90s of the 20th century, there was a gradual weakening of the use of military vocabulary and an expansion of sports vocabulary (play your own game, false start of the election campaign, long-distance run of candidates, make a two-move, play on the opponent’s field, political heavyweights, one-goal game, set the rules of the game, key player, take the heights, build up political biceps, consider the bargaining chip pawn, equal starting opportunities, playing on the verge of a foul, leaving the race, kicking the ball, election campaign starts, election race, castling in the administration, key person on the political board, move the ball to the opponent's side and many others).
The principle of anthropomorphism lies in the fact that a person begins to understand the world with himself; in the center of the subjective world of people they stand. Everything around us is interpreted depending on the degree of proximity/distance from people’s vital interests. In particular, the names of parts of the human body, clothing, household utensils, parts of the home, etc. are widely used to nominate objects that are more distant from a person. Compare, for example, in the names of plants: bear ears, snapdragons, cuckoo tears, or names of body parts in names of objects: kettle handle, doors, chairs; a head of sugar, a head of onion, the neck of a bottle, a jug; board edge, river elbow, bell tongue, key bit and many more etc.
Transition from concrete to abstract concepts reflected in the semantic development of many words. From Lat. pensare (to weigh) developed from French. penser (to think). From Greek basis (step) leads to the beginning modern basis- foundation, initial postulates of theory, social structure, etc. Lat. aevum (procession) developed meaning time, age. From the image put before (oneself) the word was born performance, denoting a mental image. Worry(to rise with waves, about the sea, the surface of the water) has become the name of a person’s restless psychological state. From Lat. matrix (root trunk of a tree) formed by lat. materia (wood, construction material), and then matter - the most abstract philosophical concept.
Synesthesia- the ability of a person to simultaneously perceive objects in the external world with several senses. Thanks to this, the same phenomenon can be called words related to different areas perceptions: olfactory and gustatory, visual and auditory or tactile, experienced as pleasant or unpleasant.
Delicious they name not only food, but also smells, beautiful things, and pleasant experiences. Wed: velvet voice and cutting voice, bright sound and dull sound, bright mind and dark man, hard work and easy work, a hard man and an easy smile, a sharp tongue and honeyed speeches etc. The phenomenon of synesthesia is based on the use of names of strong emotions (fear, horror, madness, etc.) to denote expression, high degree sign. Wed: Russian terribly much, terribly pleased, French. terriblement bien (terribly wonderful), German. toll, verruckt(lit.: mad, crazy) meaning chic, magnificent. Researchers have noted similar transfers of meaning explained by synesthesia in a variety of languages: Russian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Uzbek, Greek, etc.
2. Introduction of a new sign for an old, already designated denotation, May be
illustrated like this language process as a euphemization.
Euphemization- the process of creating euphemisms for taboo words and expressions: if a particular word or concept is taboo, then a softened form is created to name it - a euphemism.
Many words in different languages are euphemisms in origin. So, in Russian these are words like bear(options - owner, himself, toptygin), snake(from earth, earthen), blessed(in sign. crazy) and etc.
In English, an undertaker is called undertaker - literally, entrepreneur; they say: desease (disease) - lit., inconvenience, imbecile (crazy) - from lat. imbecillus “weak”, silly (stupid) - letters, happy. The Greek word idiot etymologically means “private person, layman”, fr. cretin comes from the dialect form chretien (Christian), French. benet (fool) - from lat. benedictus "blessed", etc.
In the modern Western world, especially in the United States, the campaign for so-called political correctness leads to the emergence of numerous euphemistic nominations: African American instead of black, person with disabilities- instead of disabled, “horizontally burdened” instead of fat and under.
Euphemisms replenish the vocabulary of a language and enrich it.
3. Introduction of a new sign for a new denotation carried out by means of word formation
calling and borrowing.
In the Middle Ages in Russia there was a word interpreter- translator (borrowing from the German language), but this was only an oral translator, and when the need arose to translate written texts, government documents, was formed modern word translator, which means “translator of oral and written texts.” The new denotation received a new designation.
In the first years of Soviet power, many new institutions, organizations and positions arose that had to be named. Arose advice people's commissars, people's commissariats, people's commissars, party committee, party bureau, trade union committee, trade union bureau, party organizer, trade union organizer, sports organizer, regional committee, district committee, local committee, committee of the poor etc. These were new names that had a high frequency in speech, as a result of which, due to the law of economy, they were abbreviated, which led to the massive emergence of abbreviations - Council of People's Commissars, People's Commissar, People's Commissariat, Trade Union Committee, Regional Committee, District Committee, Party Organizer, Trade Union Organizer, Local Committee etc.
Borrowing- a universal trend in the development of lexical systems of the world's languages. The most functionally developed languages are basically vocabulary fund contain at least 30-40% of borrowed vocabulary. In English, up to 60% of borrowings come from Romance languages, in the Korean language - up to 75% of vocabulary is of Chinese origin. In the Russian language, only words starting with the letter A are natively Russian ABC, aha, agu, ay, maybe, avoska, tacky, the rest are borrowed; starting with the letter E - only uh, hey, eh, like, like, that way, the rest are borrowed, and in the Russian language there is not a single original word for the letter F, all words are borrowed.
Borrowed words are quickly adapted, mastered by the people, adjusted in pronunciation to national pronunciation norms, and most of them are no longer perceived as borrowings by the consciousness of the people - often native speakers do not know about the borrowed nature of the words they use (cf. Russian. sailor, boat, opera, aria, match, champion, goal, symbol, Olympics, pharmacy, broth, taxi, cream, sidewalk, briefcase, album, corkscrew, mechanic, plow, flag, fine, artel, bazaar, hut, stocking, chest, bun, flask, admiral and many more etc.)
Borrowing cannot be considered as a contamination of the language - it is an objective process that is regulated by society itself: words are borrowed that denote objects, phenomena and concepts borrowed by the people. A language regulates the replenishment of its composition by borrowings - borrowed words can compete with “native” words that are close in meaning, and the unit that turns out to be more convenient in linguistic and semantic terms wins. For example, at the beginning of the century in the Russian language, words competed to denote a person piloting an airplane aviator, flyer, flyer And pilot, and the Russian lexeme won pilot.
In the 70-80s in the Russian language only a few competed computer, electronic computer, computer, and the borrowed word won computer. Borrowed words are either mastered by the language (or a separate professional dialect - for example, the sublanguage of politics, the sublanguage of finance, the musical sublanguage, etc.) or are not allowed into it and quickly fall out of use.
IN modern era the number of borrowings is growing rapidly in all languages, which reflects the processes of globalization in the world. Borrowing leads to the enrichment of the vocabulary of a language, its quantitative and qualitative growth.
4. Stop using the sign.
Words that have fallen out of use due to the disappearance of the object they call from social practice (historicisms) leave active word usage, from the modern lexical system, but remain in the written monuments of the corresponding era.
The historicisms of the Russian lexical system are such units as altyn, boyar, visor, chain mail, tower, plow, thousand, veche, club, slash; later period - solicitor, policeman, constable, footman, shopkeeper, merchant, sexton, king, clerk; historicisms of the Soviet era - NEP, industrial financial plan, five-year plan, Comintern, promoter, disenfranchised, committee of the poor, Red Guard, White Guard, collectivization, secretary general, Politburo, dude, dissident and etc.
The following units can be considered historicisms of the perestroika period in Russia: perestroika, new thinking, acceleration, glasnost, pan-European home, stagnation, administrative command system, leveling, zone of silence, closed zone, blind spots of history, inhibition, informals, cold war, peaceful coexistence, cooperator and etc.
Words in a language can fall out of use, and while the corresponding object is preserved in social practice, the word is simply replaced with a more modern one. Such units, as is known, are called archaisms, and they are preserved in written sources, as well as historicisms.
Distinguish lexical archaisms- words displaced by words of another root (neck instead of neck, helmsman instead of helmsman, plowman instead of ratay, actor instead of performer, witness instead of listen, student instead of schoolboy, killer instead of head), lexical and word-forming- supplanted by single-root synonyms (disaster instead of disaster, warrior instead of warrior, feeling instead of feeling, fantasy instead of phantasm, difference instead of diversity), lexical-phonetic- displaced by options that differ separate sounds as part of a word (heroism instead of ironism, station instead of voxal).
There are also semantic archaisms- outdated meanings in the semantics of a word used today. Yes, in a word art previously there was a meaning of “art”, malignant- “possessing bad, evil qualities”, nativity scene- “cave”, thief- "rebel" bastard- “those who were dragged down were gathered in one place from different sides”, scoundrel- “unfit for military service”,
idol- "statue", stomach- "life", vegetate- "grow" a shame- "spectacle" social activist- “community member”, etc.
Possible in language and reactivation vocabulary. Reactivation of vocabulary represents a return to active use of lexemes that for some historical period became historicisms. Thus, in the Russian language during the period of perestroika, some lexemes and stable phrases related to the sphere of politics and market relations were reactivated: Duma, Duma faction, Duma committee, jury trial, strike, unemployment benefits, hunger strike, stock exchange, auction, excise tax, bill of exchange, entrepreneur, bankrupt, police, commercial Bank, real estate trade.
The emergence of new lexemes and the development of semantemes in old lexemes, the withdrawal of lexemes and sememes from active use inevitably lead to restructuring of the structural relationships between words and the complication of the system.
Changes in the syntactic subsystem of the language
Changes in the syntactic subsystem of a language occur much more slowly than in the lexical one. Awareness of changes in the relationships of objects usually occurs after objects are cognized and their place in a given situation is understood. The accumulation of changes in the lexical subsystem of a language leads to restructuring of syntactic structures. New structural schemes and new word forms are formed, new function words and other means appear.
Cognition begins with the relationship between the actor and the object of action, with spatial relationships; later, more abstract relationships of time, causes, goals, conditions, etc. are comprehended. We have already noted that the development of a child’s speech (ontogenesis) largely goes through the same stages that humanity went through during the creation of language (in phylogenesis). A study of a group of children - American, Finnish, Samoan and Luo aged from 18 to 31 months, carried out by foreign psycholinguists, showed that children master structural patterns in the following order: actor - action, action - object of action, pointer - object of indication, owner - object of possession.
Later, structural diagrams appear to express the relationship between the defined and the determining, the action and the place of action. Even later, children master special questions and passive constructions. Mastering the structural patterns of complex sentences occurs in school age as the thinking of a growing person becomes capable of drawing conclusions and comprehending the connections of events.
Studying the history of syntactic constructions in different languages of the world shows that the development of syntactic semantics follows precisely these stages. Simple syntactic structures, the parts of which are arranged in accordance with the order of action in time, appear earlier than structures with shifted relations, which A.R. Luria calls distant sentences. For example, the sequence Winter has come, it's snowing, it's getting cold consists of simple structures. And what is distant is the structure If I hadn't been late for the train, I wouldn't have met you. Such a statement requires mental restructuring so that it becomes clear whether the speaker is late or not, whether he met you or not. Distant sentences reflect peculiar mental codes that arose in the last century, after the formation and consolidation of the norms of literary languages.
Human cognition moves from a reflection of relationships observed in everyday work activity to a reflection of abstract, speculative relationships; Accordingly, syntactic constructions of varying degrees of complexity and abstraction gradually emerge.
Changes in the composition of morphological types and categories
Formal morphological indicators, serving the lexical and syntactic subsystems of the language, are restructured to better correspond to changes in the semantics of the language. According to A.A. Potebny, language easily parted with formal signs, behind which there are no longer semantic differences.
All Indo-European languages have lost the dual forms, retaining the singular and plural forms. There have been significant changes in the types of declination and conjugation. In most Slavic languages, the distinction between the four past tense forms of verbs has been lost.
The emergence of new lexical and syntactic meanings can stimulate the creation of new formal and morphological indicators for their designation. For example, in Slavic languages new prefixes and suffixes constantly appear to express species values and modes of action in verbs. The number of word-formation morphemes is increasing to create new word-formation models. New service morphemes are always created from lexical means, which lose lexical and acquire grammatical sememes. For example, the Russian affix -sya was in the past an enclitic form accusative case pronouns themselves, and the particle would be one of the aorist forms of the verb be. Franz. homme (person) gave indefinite pronoun on, from the nouns pas (step), point (point) we got negative particles pass, point. The adverb formant -ment goes back to the word mens (mind). The English man (person) is included as a morpheme in the words seaman (sailor), airman (pilot), tankman (tanker), etc.
Morphemes can be borrowed from other languages. For example, words satellite And lunar, Once in the French language, they were interpreted as words with the morpheme -ik. When the rocket was launched towards Venus and towards Mars, Venusik and Marsik appeared in the French language. The suffix -ik has become a formal indicator for designating artificial cosmic bodies.
As language develops, new prepositions and conjunctions are formed that help express more and more complex syntactic relations reasons, time, concessions, etc.
Losses and gains in the composition of morphemes inevitably lead to changes in the word-formation subsystem and morphological paradigmatics of the language. These changes occur very slowly, over several centuries. Forms that have lost semantics are preserved according to tradition (for example, forms grammatical gender in Russian inanimate nouns). Reorganizations are facilitated by sound changes affecting inflections and prefixes, as well as the operation of the law of analogy.
How analogy “works” in the field, for example, of word formation, is shown by the inventions of children: dresser And dresser(children who love to dress up) king And queen(by analogy with the king and queen), speed skater(cf. hockey player), rowing(cf. oar), cinematograph(cf. binoculars) and many more. etc.
Analogy both creates paradigmatic series and destroys them, and translates speech phenomena into the language system and removes it from it. Isolated forms always gravitate toward mass forms. The analogy reduces the theoretically possible infinite variety of inflection, form and word formation to relatively few types of paradigms of declension, conjugation, and word-formation models. This allows you to better remember and retain in your memory the stock of word forms necessary for communication.
In languages without morphemes, changes occur in the sphere of phonemes and prosodemes, in the sphere of compatibility of lexemes and structural syntactic constructions.
Driving forces of changes in the language system The problem of a leap in the development of the language system
The development of language, like the development of any other object of nature and society, is subject to the basic laws of dialectics, according to which constant movement, change and development are integral properties of all things. In universal continuous movement, everything is interconnected and interdependent, a change in one leads to a change in the other. Dialectics sees the source continuous development in the unity and struggle of opposites. All laws of dialectics are manifested in the development of language and are analyzed by linguists based on a variety of facts.
The study of the law of the transition of quantity into quality, i.e., the transition from minor and imperceptible quantitative changes to qualitative, fundamental changes, sparked heated controversy. The moment of transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones was understood by some philosophers only as a leap, that is, a rapid, sudden change.
Regulations on horse racing N.Ya. Marr applied a straightforward, vulgarizing approach to explaining the development of language. He argued that a leap in the development of language occurs like an explosion, which with one blow throws away old language and introduces a new one. Marr also directly links moments of leaps with moments of social revolutions in the life of society. The history of language in Marr’s “new doctrine of language” is a sequential change of stages that occurs through a chain of explosions and leaps.
The evidence does not support this understanding of leaps in language. No language gives an example of a sudden change in its system. Transitions from one qualitative state of the system to another last for centuries. The transition of a language from an old quality to a new one occurs not through an explosion, not through the destruction of an existing language and the creation of a new one, but through the gradual accumulation of elements of a new quality and the gradual withering away of elements of the old quality.
Linguistic data show that a qualitative change in a language system takes two to three centuries. The Old Russian language split into Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian during the 12th-13th centuries. The Old Russian language changed into modern Russian during the period from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century. In place of the Latin language, a family of Romance languages arose during the period from the 6th to the 9th centuries. English language developed as a result of the interaction of the Norman and Anglo-Saxon dialects from the 8th to the 11th centuries.
In fact, for a society to transition to a new language, it is necessary for two or three generations of people to change: after all, a language acquired by a person in childhood is retained in memory for a lifetime. In order to accept a new language system as their native one, speakers must acquire it in childhood, that is, they must already belong to the generation of grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a society experiencing a transition to a new language system.
Over time, philosophers began to distinguish between a leap with an explosion (an acute form that appears suddenly) and a leap without an explosion (a peaceful form that develops gradually), that is, they recognized the relativity of the period of time occupied by the leap. Not every “leap” fits within the limits of human life, but if you look at cosmic phenomena, - then within the limits of the life of all humanity. Therefore, “horses” have different shapes, depending on the nature of the object and the conditions in which the “leap” occurs. But this fact does not negate the existence of qualitative changes in every phenomenon of the material world and, in particular, in language.
The rate of accumulation of elements of a new quality can be very slow if the life of society does not experience serious changes, and very intense during periods of social revolutions and strengthening scientific and technological progress. The rapid accumulation of new elements (for example, in the era of Peter I, in the Soviet era after the October Revolution, during the period of social changes in Russia in the 80-90s of the XX century) leads to serious restructuring in the organization of lexical paradigmatics, and behind it in the development of syntactic structures of various kinds. To one degree or another, these shifts may affect the restructuring of morphological paradigms.
In relation to the period of existence of the language before and after the “leap”, the time occupied by the restructuring of the language system is relatively small. It should also be taken into account that there remains a living connection between the old and new quality of language in the form of many common elements. But, having entered into different relationships with each other and with new elements than before, they form new system. This is very clearly seen in the example of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, which were born at the dawn of our history from a single Old Russian language. The essence of a leap is a radical displacement of the sides of a contradiction. However, the mechanisms of a leap in language, the processes of fundamental changes in the structure of the language system, have not yet been studied in detail and clarified.
Factors causing changes in the language system
The question of the causes of linguistic changes has long occupied linguists of various theoretical schools; only extreme structuralists considered this question a pseudo-question unworthy of discussion.
W. Humboldt saw the reason for linguistic changes in the activity of the Spirit. Neogrammarians believed that the source of language changes is in the “dark sphere of the subconscious in the human soul,” and all changes in language that take place are subject to rigid sound laws and the principle of analogy.
I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay gave great importance problem of the causes of language changes, he wrote that one cannot seriously study a language without identifying the reasons for its development. He, unlike neogrammarians, put forward the idea of a plurality of causes of language changes: habit (“unconscious memory”), unconscious oblivion, desire for convenience, unconscious generalization, unconscious abstraction, etc.
N.V. Krushevsky believed that the process language development is due to the eternal antagonism between the progressive force caused by associations of units by similarity, and the conservative force caused by associations by contiguity.
J. Vandries believed that the development of language is determined by the struggle between tendencies towards unification and differentiation.
S. Bally believed that changes in language arise in the process of struggle between tendencies towards expressiveness and standardization of the expression of thought.
Most scientists took into account the internal and external factors changes in language, but there were also one-sided concepts. Thus, A. Schleicher, who considered language a natural phenomenon, believed that a person cannot influence his language in any way, just as a nightingale cannot sing like a lark; his like-minded person K. Muller wrote that language is not subject to human influence, just as its growth or blood circulation is not subject to human influence, and, therefore, there are only internal laws of language development.
G. Schuchardt expressed the opposite point point of view - all changes in language are the result of borrowing or crossing languages, everything is determined by external factors.
Currently, linguists proceed from the position that the development of language is not determined by any one trend or cause; several trends, both external and internal, are at work.
There are several theories that linguists use to explain the causes and mechanisms of internal historical changes in language.
System Pressure Theory
The concept of "system pressure" was introduced to explain language changes by neogrammarians. The content of this concept among neogrammarians was exhausted by the action of analogy. As the concept of “language system” was developed, the understanding of the principle of “system pressure” on changes in the composition and relationships of its elements deepened.
Russian linguist Nikita Ilyich Tolstoy believes that the pressure of the system is maximum in phonology, less felt in morphology and minimal in vocabulary. Enver Akhmedovich Makaev explains this by saying that for greater pressure the system needs a simpler structure, fewer elements, fewer options. The greater the variability in the system, the less its pressure on the elements.
An example of system pressure is the processes of assimilation foreign words. French word coat in Russian literary language refers to indeclinable nouns, but in common speech under the pressure of paradigms of inflection of neuter words into -o (like village) coat acquired almost all Russian case forms: no coat, came in a coat, they are lying, no coat etc. The pressure of the system is manifested in the inclusion of each new word in any part of speech, if there are parts of speech in the language system, and in the assignment to the word of all word forms inherent in this system. If a language does not have morphemes, then each new meaning, lexical or syntactic, will, under pressure from the system, find a lexeme way of expression.
While recognizing "system pressure" as one of the factors influencing the direction of linguistic change, most linguists do not consider this factor to be decisive. “System pressure” regulates and limits the possibilities of certain changes.
Theory of probabilistic language development
The natural variability of language creates the basis for many possible changes in each unit of language. Thus, in one experiment, children under the age of five were offered six educational options comparative degree from adjective sweet: sweeter, sweeter, sweeter, sweeter, sweeter, sweeter; four options from adjective tall: high, tall, height, higher; five options from an adjective deep: deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper.
Based on the phenomenon of variability, Timofey Petrovich Lomtev built a theory of probabilistic language development. In his opinion, each of the possibilities of changing a linguistic unit has its own measure of probability for implementation. The language system at any point in its development contains many possible transformations, one of which is realized. For example, in Old Russian language There were variant forms to express the meaning of the final destination of movement: To+ date case, in + wine case, before+ gen. case, on+ wine case Initially, these forms were used after verbs of movement that had corresponding prefixes in, on, before, at. After the divergence of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, the interaction between these four prepositional-case forms occurred in each of the East Slavic languages separately and led to different results.
In the Russian language, all forms were differentiated by meaning. K+ Dat. the case denotes the final point of movement without direct contact with it (go to the table); to + genus. the case denotes the final point of movement, ending in contact with the specified point (reach the wall); in + wine the case indicates the final point within which the movement ends (arrive in the city); to + wine the case denotes the end of the movement on the surface of the final destination (arriving at the square).
This process was carried out differently in Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. Form k + date the case in them is practically lost, the form to + genus. the case is used as an indication of the final destination of movement without distinguishing such semantic features as touching an object or its absence: Ukrainian. sent to Sheva, arrived to Mktechka, Bel. padbegla da voza, paishou da azer. Forms are also actively being repressed in + wine case, to + wine case, although they are still used in a number of expressions. In some Ukrainian dialects, another possibility of eliminating doublet forms has been implemented; addition and contamination of these prepositions have been developed: ide dov school, shi id cows1 (do + k = d, id).
As can be seen from this example, three possibilities to get rid of the doublet of forms, namely: differentiation by meaning, displacement of unnecessary forms and combination of a number of forms in one, have found their implementation in different language systems.
The sound [g] based on the characteristics of articulation has the following possibilities of variation: transformation into fricative Y, transformation into pharyngeal h, transformation into soft G"(cf. gee - gee), stunning VK. In different languages and dialects of the Slavs in different historical eras, all these possibilities were actually realized. The question is which of the possibilities has highly the probability of implementation at the moment of interest to us in the development of a given language. However, the answer to this question can hardly be accurate, since the shifts that have emerged in the language system can be suppressed by conscious efforts to preserve cultural tradition, by any unexpected influence of another language, and by other social factors.
There are no mandatory deadlines for implementing the proposed changes. An intensive process such as the fall of reduced ones in Slavic languages or the movement of consonants in Germanic languages takes 200-300 years. But there are also processes that proceed very sluggishly, stretching out for thousands of years. For example, the displacement of the genitive case with verbs of perception (such as: see smoke) accusative (like: see smoke) occurred from the Indo-European era to the 19th century. in Russian until the 20th century. in Ukrainian and Belarusian. Genitive when negated (like: I don't see the sea) was replaced by the accusative (such as: I don't see the sea) already in Old Slavonic language; in the Russian language this process began in the 17th century. and continues to this day; The furthest he went in the Slavic world was in the Serbo-Croatian language.