Международная заочная научная конференция
the idea of universals was developed by Jan Amos Komensky, Roger Bacon and others
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the idea of universals was developed by Jan Amos Komensky, Roger Bacon and others. The term grammatica universalis appeared in the 13 th century. When the famous book by An- toine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot «Port-Royal Grammar» was published in 1660, the problem of universals became one of the principal issues in theoretical grammar (nowadays in this case general linguistics is meant). The logical school in linguistics gave primary attention to general characteristics in languages, not taking into account their differences. It was firm establishment of comparative historical method in lin- guistics in the early 19 th century that initiated the attempts to seek for the differences between languages, though these distinctions were explained by diverse ways of historical de- velopment of particular languages, various ethnic cultures and national spirits, etc. The interest in linguistic universals awoke once again in the middle of the 20 th century due to ad- vances in structural, generative and functional linguistics. Phraseology represents a linguistic universal: there are no languages without any phraseological units. «Phraseology is a peculiar linguistic universal: wherever there is a language that exists as a communicative means, its functioning cannot but lead to formation of steady word-complexes in it» [6, p. 78]. Universals are formed in a phraseological corpus of any language. This fact is explained by universal thinking, the development of culture and civilization, universal attitudes and categories of being and cognition. Phraseological uni- versals came to languages of many people from historical, mythological, eminent literary sources or originated inde- pendently owing to the functioning of mutual mechanisms of human thinking, closeness to living conditions, labor ac- tivity, the development of arts and science. The main attri- bute of a set-phrase which acts as a language unit is uni- versal too: «underivability of a consistent meaning of an idiom from the scope of lexical meanings constituting com- ponents of a phraseological unit, from semantic compatibility of these components» [8, p. 57]. The pivotal categories, phe- nomena, processes, features, etc., inherent in phraseology, are also universal to some extent. They predetermine the for- mation of interlingual phraseological universality. An independent formation of phraseological universals in different languages is characterized by partial or complete convergence of both plane of expression and plane of con- tent. This is one of the principal ways of development of uni- versal features in phraseology of the languages under study. The independent development of the given features is based on the same sense of the initial free word combinations and to a considerable degree is determined by the functioning of universals. The same sense of the similar free phrases in dif- ferent languages occurs in the line of separate or total meta- phorical or metonymical transfer and simile. Universal features of idioms become apparent both in their semantics (plane of content) and structure (plane of ex- pression). Such universal semantic categories as time, space, quantity, degree, intensity, quality and state of subjects and objects are expressed in phraseology of any language. Be- sides, some universal cultural connotations can firmly be es- tablished in semantics of a phraseological unit. They are con- nected with various realiae of the outside world by means of which a phraseological pattern is formed. Discussing phraseological universals, U.P. Solodub ob- served that their presence in languages is caused by the functioning of universals which refer to two main classes: «the linguistic universals and the universals of human ex- istence» [7, p. 35]. The functioning of universals vents in phraseology, first of all, in the plane of content, particularly in the types of semantic transfer (metaphorical and metonym- ical), resulting in transformation of a free word combination to a fixed expression. The universals of human existence also determine general features of phraseology in different lan- guages, since these features firmly establish the phenomena of objective world and define human activity as of a biological and social individual. The subject of national cultural specificity in phraseology is fairly conventional. In researches on phraseology (espe- cially if were conducted as part of conventional linguistics) it was, over the years, affirmed that idioms are national spe- cific units of a language that accumulate the cultural poten- tial of people. A peculiar remark by A.M. Babkin is quite ap- 5. Общее и прикладное языкознание 80 Актуальные проблемы филологии (II) propriate here: idiomatic expressions are «the holy of holies of a national language» where the spirit and originality of the nation are uniquely reflected [2, p. 7]. The national cultural originality of a language is explained by peculiarities of lingual creative thinking and ethnic lin- guistic specificity of interpretation of the cognizable world. It also accounts for the special features of the secondary con- cept and categorization, the notions which are reflected in our mind about value-and-sense status of the essential ob- jects. «The cultural national specificity of idioms» is discov- ered in the possibility to interpret their meaning in the cate- gories of culture, and, which, according to N.A. Berdyaev [3, p. 26], is recognized as national, in fact. Since it is typical of idioms to possess some figurative motivation, «that is di- rectly connected with the world-view of a nation-bearer of a language», they (idioms), in fact, have cultural national con- notation [9, p. 214–215]. As quite a large number of cultural meanings are being ac- cumulated in our mind, there is a necessity of their stream- lining, categorization and adequate verbalization. This ver- balization is caused by system-notional connections which define the sphere concepts of each language. For this purpose lingual creative thinking uses the meanings that are already formed in a language, producing new, derived semantic struc- tures. «Cultural specificity presupposes correspondence be- tween a linguistic unit and an element of mentality or spiritual culture of a community, its history, religious beliefs, traditions and natural living conditions» [4, p. 260–261]. Meanwhile, phraseological system (like any subsystem of a language) possesses a special unity of the general and the particular and from this point of view its research in the light of the theory of linguistic universals presents itself quite pressing and offers new challenges for the linguistics of uni- versals and phraseological theory. «Idiomatic expressions are universal because their components are, at the same time, a threshold value of quantization of continuum and a maximal associative figurative generalization of cultural significant el- ements of ethnic linguistic mind» [1, p. 156]. The problem of the correlation of cultural linguistic spec- ificity and cultural linguistic universals in phraseology finds various, at times, mutually exclusive, solutions. Eventually, the solution to this problem is found in the course of the gen- eral approach to the issue of interrelation between language and culture, prioritization of diverse aspects of the given in- teraction. It is natural that, for instance, nihilistic view on the acknowledgment of systematic correlation between lan- guage and culture leads to complete negation of cultural lin- guistic specificity of phrasemes. On the other hand, the ac- ceptance of global dominance of ethnic cultural specificity of phrasemes automatically neglects the existence of linguistic cultural universals. To our understanding, linguistic cultural specificity and linguistic cultural universals are not mutually excluded. They coexist. Such interpretation is entirely conformed to B. Rus- sel’s statement that our knowledge of the world and things (in this case the linguistic knowledge is meant) «consists of the knowledge of two types – when the things are known as certainties and as universals» [5, p. 74]. Universal and ethnic cultural constituent parts are in complementary rela- tions with each other, respectively. Reflecting upon the world of universals, B. Russel notes that this world is «invariable, motionless, exact, admirable for mathematicians, logicians, creators of metaphysical systems and those, who do like per- fection more than life» [5, p. 68]. The formation of universals in phraseology is a devel- oping process. It is closely connected with further growth of culture, industry, economy, and other walks of human life. As a result of development in society, some phraseolog- ical universals may vanish from language; others appear in a new form. The presence of linguistic cultural universals is caused by universal nature of our thinking, general progressive devel- opment of human culture and civilization, the universality of being and cognition and their universal rules and categories, respectively. As of linguistic cultural specificity, it is the result of a peculiar linguistic coding of objects of the outside world. жүктеу/скачать 3.35 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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