2022 Vol. 13 №3

The article invites the reader to contemplate what impedes further development of lan­guage science which is currently in a state of stagnation. This crisis is caused by the inade­quate meth­odology used in linguistic research. It defines the paradigm of so-called ‘normal’ science, which suppresses innovation. The dualistic philosophy of external realism continues to be the epistemo­logical foundation of ‘normal’ linguistics, and neither mainstream cognitive science nor cogni­tive linguistics has been able to break away from it. The author argues that a new, constructivist epistemology is capable of overcoming the crisis and could give a new impetus to further devel­opment of language science. This calls for abandoning the traditional view of language as a tool used for the expression and transfer of thoughts. Instead, research­ers should use a systems ap­proach to linguistic semiosis as a biological adaptation, which is the organizational basis of hu­mans as living systems at both individual and social levels. Lin­guistic semiosis is an evolution­ary stage in the development of Homo sapiens. Establishing the functional role of linguistic semiosis in systemic cognition as a socially organized living system whose unity is ensured and sustained by its circular (self-referential) organization in the relational domain of language, calls for a radical revision of the extant views on the rela­tionship between language and mind, lan­guage and cognition, and language and conscious­ness. An ecological approach to language as­sumes that the cognitive dynamics of humans as living systems consists in the adaptive interac­tional behaviour in the relational domain of linguistic interactions. This domain constitutes the ecological niche of humans as organism-environment systems. It is in this continuously self-constructed human niche that the uniquely human power to reasoning (intelligence) emerges and develops. Humanness rests in language as the creative beginning of the world in which we exist as organisms capable of speech.

The article is devoted to the polemic with Alexander Kravchenko regarding his thesis that the way out of the protracted crisis in linguistics is to use a systemic approach to linguistic semiosis as biological adaptation. The author argues that linguistics is not in a state of crisis but rather in a state of stagnation. Overcoming it presupposes an intensive methodological search that infinitely expands the horizons of permissible views rather than the use of a sys­tem approach that is inadequate to the task. At the same time, it is necessary to take into ac­count the marginal manifestations of language as fully as possible to obtain truly universal results, which is impossible without clarifying the nature of man as the user of language. Human nature is in a very complex relationship with human biology in its anthropological understanding and the biology of Homo sapiens as an object of zoology as one of its compo­nents. The doctrines of different epochs and schools of thought, from the Book of the Prophet Ezra through Thomas Aquinas, from Palamas to Austin, from Searle to Shchedrovitsky and Father Georgy Kochetkov, are examples of works claiming to solve this problem.

The article suggests a way to overcome two well-known problems of embodied/grounded theory of cognition: the impossibility of strict differentiating modal and amodal symbols, and the difficulty in defining abstract concepts/simulators (abstract lexical meanings). The pro­posed functional approach is based on the dichotomy 'perceptual (external) vs. functional (internal)' that goes back to Ivan Sechenov. These cognitive units are shown to play funda­mentally different roles. The function — the embodied human response to the perceived object and the typical interaction with it — strictly defines the concept and the category set by it. The percept — the appearance of the object — allows one to quickly hypothesize which catego­ry this object belongs to. Based on the function of the concept and the division of this function into parts (private functions), it becomes possible to construct, instead of one generic concept (and one lexical meaning associated with it), an ontogenetic concept (ontoconcept) as three age-related variants of the concept (and, accordingly, three variants of the meaning of the word), arising in ontogeny — in preschoolers, early school and late school. As an example, the ontoconcept CHAIR and three variants of the meaning of the word chair are constructed. These constructions resonate with Vygotsky’s thought that the meaning of the word changes with the different modes of thinking. In other words, the ontoconcept supports the idea of het­erogeneous verbal thinking (Werner, Vygotsky, Luria, Tul’viste, and Pomanov), arguing that there are several types of verbal thinking associated with different types of human activity and the tasks solved within the framework of this activity (applied, theoretical, artistic, etc.).

The article explores linguistic phenomena as a form of manifestation of the magic func­tion. Systemic classifications, taxonomies, and linear phenomena such as euphemization and performativity reflect the beliefs and socio-spiritual functions of societies. This set of linguistic forms and means is determined by the existing religious beliefs. The article studies the foun­dation of beliefs in the form of elementary "primary performatives". They cannot be denied from the standpoint of logic but can be presented as felicitous and infelicitous. The entire set of cultural representations is based on elementary performatives. Another example of the con­tinuity of linguistic forms of religious beliefs is euphemization. Systemic classifications in the languages ​​of Australian aborigines and the animate/inanimate gender in Indo-European lan­guages ​​appear as dependent entities on religious choice in the form of preferences arising in the totem ideas of peoples. A we reconstruct the areas of intersection of beliefs and linguistic forms. The linguistic form is in harmony with certain stages of development of society, as well as its social organisation. Thus, we define the isomorphism of the linguistic and social struc­tures of the Australian aborigines. In Indo-European languages, taxonomies of gender go back to primary divisions into stems defined as active/animate and inactive/inanimate. The article shows that animate / inanimate is influenced by the stage of animism.