Technique of diachronic research and cognitive approach to language

In the last quarter of the 20th century linguistics came to the need to see and study not only the historical variability of language, its complex system organization, but also "language in person and person in language", "language as home of consciousness". Diachronic semantics became urgent sending cognitive linguists to etymological sources. But they faced some "traps" they - judging by publications - still have not recognized. First, it is the problem of sources. Cognitive interpretation requires a developed diachronic modelling of semantics of the studied language material, but this semantics (or, rather, what we mean by this word) is taken from etymological dictionaries created before the semantic "boom", before the second half of the 20th century (only the Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages (edited by O.N. Trubachev) gave lexeme etymology, whole lexeme compliance, not the traditional root etymology and cluster arrangement of dictionary material). Formal reconstruction of the root and its original meaning restored on the basis of external reconstruction is not enough: conceptual analysis is applied to the lexeme as a whole for the conceptual bases of semantics are common for all its lexical-semantic options. Secondly, effective use of the technique of modern linguistic comparative study with cognitive approach to the facts of language is complicated by the lack of need in modern educational space of knowledge of specifics of the historical and historical-etymological analysis, specifics of its sources, features of modern diachronic analysis. Modern comparative-historical research of language is based on the integrated method (by O.N. Trubachev: 1) genetic comparison, 2) internal reconstruction, 3) structural typology). This assumes that formal reconstruction presented in etymological dictionaries should be supplemented with internal reconstruction and the system analysis of a derivative (derivatives) of the reconstructed root, and also their areal and historical characteristic. The article describes observations over facts of non-correlation of the traditional, studied by comparative-historical linguistics, and the new in research practice of modern linguists: the gap in practice between the synchronic and diachronic approaches to language facts, ignoring the fact that changes in diachrony are also a system, and, as a result, mixture of results of changes occurring at different times; the analysis of language changes out of historical and cultural, historical and areal contexts; shifts in definitions of concepts significant in linguistic comparativism (internal form of the word, etymon), and lack of their theoretical correlation as phenomena of external, semantic level of the language with the structure of the concept - a unit of the deep cognitive level.

Keywords

Authors

References