Cognitive Simulation and Perception Situation (On the Material of Boris Pasternak's Story Zhenia 's Childhood)

The aim of the article is to identify the special role of the situation of perception in cognitive modelling and its text-forming potential. The study is based on the material of Boris Pasternak's novelette Zhenya's Childhood. Its plot is fragmentary and lacunar. Perception is the initial stage of cognition; it does not change the world, but it changes the perceiver. This determines the features of cognitive modelling in the story. Under the influence of memory mechanisms, perception situations determine the strategy for implementing the author's intention and form the meaning and the structure of the text. The methods of linguistic, interpretative and cognitive analysis of the text made it possible to use the concept of a polypropositional complex as the main unit of analysis. In terms of expression, it is a collection of sentences. In terms of content, it is the "mental model of the event". In terms of functional features, the polypropositional complex approaches the concept of a montage fragment. The study confirms the hypothesis that polypropositional complexes with the semantics of perception form the basis of the structure of the text's macro-situation. Their choice is due to the features of the memory mechanism, which stores moments associated with the most powerful impressions. In the space-time continuum of the text, they are organised by several key coordinates. The semantics of the perceptual situation is complicated by reflection, which shows the character's growing -up. For Zhenya, the growing-up is associated with an increase in the level of responsibility for what is happening. The understanding of the perceived becomes an indicator of immersion into the secret of life. The internal structure of polypropositional complexes is based on an inductive-deductive model. Facts become signs when they acquire names in circumstances random but important for the character. Incidents reinforce the discontinuity of the text and reflect the specifics of subjective relations' manifestation in the text. The evolution of perception in the novelette lies in the fact that the initial fragmentary perception of individual objects transforms into searching and revealing functional connections, and then into revealing more complex relationships between objects and phenomena, causes, connections, goals, circumstances. As a result, a logical conclusion is formed. Its irrationality gives it special value. Perception is incomplete but only possible at this stage. The cognitive modeling of the situation of perception allows to better unders tand the character's and the author's ways of thinking, enables the reader to be involved in the modelling process.

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