Reconstruction in comparative studies and cognitively oriented linguistics

The article raises the issue of need of interdisciplinary interaction of comparative studies and cognitively oriented linguistics with their common interest in reconstruction of historical-cultural, cognitive character through reconstruction of language information. The study of the problem of the concept as a diachronic phenomenon, the definition of the key methods and means of modern diachronic analysis, the allocation of points of their contact and sufficiency to model historical-cultural and cognitive schemes are a priority. Diachronic semantics of the cognitively oriented researches is generally based on the analysis of the mechanism of metaphorical world-modelling, on interpretation of spatial, force-dynamic and other image-forming systems in language (Talmy, Sweetser, etc.). In comparative studies the modern diachronic analysis is based on the integrative method (O.N. Trubachev); the kernel is the comparative-historical method, its tools have been actively upgraded since the middle of the 20th century; judgments about parent language also underwent essential changes. Application of the system-structural approach to the facts of language in comparative-historical researches led to an essentially new stage in development of comparative studies. Modern comparative-historical linguistics came to a conclusion about the need to lead reconstruction of a certain language phenomenon in the context of the available knowledge of the evolution of the parent language, the dynamics of its dialect division, the disintegration of the parent language community, and the formation of separate Indo-European languages of different chronological levels. In parallel with reconstruction of the inner structure of the parent language and the course of its evolution a certain dynamic socio-linguistic model is created, too. Both reconstructions are connected, supporting and complementing each other. The need of creation of a socio-linguistic correlate of parent language processes arises as the historical consideration of language assumes not only creation of abstract models, but also learning the historical reality of the language, which is a combination of the general and the unique, and is therefore inseparably linked with the specific conditions of existence of the language. Only such a reconstruction can help achieve a cognitively precise description of the semantic structure of language units in dynamics, and check the psychological reality of language prototypes. The fruitfulness of interaction of the comparative-historical diachronic research and the cognitive analysis is defined, first of all, at level of its verification significance. In the article examples of the analysis of semantics ''in different aspects'' are given, which show that the results received by methods and means of the analysis, belonging to different scientific paradigms, can and should serve to mutual verification of the resulting constructions: in some examples no essential divergences are observed in the logical-semantic models generated by the introspection method or by constructing a force-dynamic image-scheme and comparative-historical analysis; other examples show excessive straightforwardness, simplification in interpretation of the complexity of the semantic organization of a lexical unit when modelling a force-dynamic image-scheme.

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