Origins and main principles of cognitive derivatology

The author makes an attempt to find the origins of the cognitive derivatologyand to specify the place of word-formation research in the general spectrum of the cognitive linguistics works. Alongside with cognitivesemantics and cognitive grammar, which have already become an integral part of cognitive linguistics, cognitive derivatology has juststarted to develop, creating its methodology and its conceptual sphere. Many theorists of linguistics, belonging to various directions andschools, have become interested in the derivational processes research as they can elucidate some other linguistic phenomena. Unfortunately,for the present there is no consent among scientists in questions of methodology and the fundamental theoretical base for studyingword-formation processes, i.e. this area of linguistics requires ordering and unification. At present there is neither a uniform wordformationtheory, nor a uniform agreement as to what data can be considered relevant for its development. The author gives the reviewof the linguistic literature on different theoretical questions of cognitive science and word-formation theory. The paper also introducesthe overview of the historical development of the questions connected with word-formation. The author makes use of the rich heritage ofsuch authoritative linguists, as Ferdinand de Saussure, H. Marchand, N. Chomsky, R.B. Lees, E.V. Pennanen, V. Adams,V.V. Vinogradov, E.S. Kubryakova, Yu.S. Stepanov and others. Cognitive nature of word-formation processes consists in human necessityto search for the names to all the things, which are important for people. The basis for the realization of secondary nomination processesconsists in the associative character of human thinking which allows establishing various associations based on similarity, on contiguity,and also to categorize and subcategorize the objective reality. Thus, thinking processes are realized in nomination processes,which prove the cognitive character of word-formation. The concepts, which form the basis of a derivative semantics formation, correlatewith both conceptual attributes of the word-formation formant, and attributes of a derivational stem. The author defends the point ofview that the production of derivatives causes the human experience consolidation, which leads to the reflection of cognitive results ofworld acquisition in word-formation units.

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