Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології


reflection of a ray of light presumes its refraction



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reflection of a ray of light presumes its refraction. Derivative meaning may be treated analogously to imaginary visions built with refracted beams. As far as reflection generates referential net of a lexical unit, derivation arises as the consequence of the appearing meanings. In other words derivation is the result of textual references and interpretative efforts that are the indispensable existential condition of text. In this respect derivation must be regarded as the fundamental and primary property of each verbal text in contrast to “primary” direct & literal meanings that are to be conceived as the ultimate limits of derivative variability50. The problem of the derivations, semantic transitions and shifts that colloquial lexical units (and locutions) endure while being transformed into poetic idioms gains the decisive place in the study of poetic idiolects.

Derivability as the universal property of language entails still next consequence, that of derivation being comparable to translation. Both derivation and translation create inseparable property of verbal world51. The property to be translated is witnessed already with the development of child when it interprets the messages of adults into its own germs of language. One can say of interpretability & reflexivity that comprise both the property to be translated and to generate derivatives as of those inherent to each language. At the same time derivation is comparable to assimilation as they both deal with the introduction of new words and phrases into the common language. In particular the potential composita are present in each poetical text in the form of rare word combinations that need still to be acknowledged and adopted. In its turn this generalized property of interpretability determines transitiveness of language – the constant state of transition that is proper to language in each moment of its existence. The very stability of derivative processes and the constant state of semantic transition belongs also to the essence of each locution52. Semantic shifts can be said to become constant drifts, so that speech generation “slips away” from literal meaning. It is why it must not go merely about the accumulation of the increments of meanings53. The matter is that the derivative process constantly leads to the generation of newly explored meanings so that not only the explicitly accumulated contents come into play but the very opportunities of derivational semantic shifts must be taken into account. Respectively, as A. Zalizniak has put it, the task consists not only in the description of cumulative meanings but in the analysis of the generative mechanisms of such transitions54. One deals actually with constant variability of language that precludes any kind of its reduction to a mere reproduction of codified signs in the manner of parroting. Even a mere repetition presumes semantic drift and therefore can’t be restricted to reproduction. Therefore reproduction (and repetition in particular) is to be regarded as the singular case of imitation (mimesis) that always presupposes invention (fantasy) and simulation (mimicry) as their constant satellites. Derivability entails productivity as the inseparable property of language that appertain thus to the broad realm of mimesis.

The fact that these universal derivability & variability are associated with translations & assimilations and therefore with trespassing the dialects’ boundaries gains primordial importance in promoting the disclosure of a most fundamental property of language that has an outlook of the contradiction between its productive vs. reproductive powers with the outlook of text vs. code. This contradiction enables delineating the principal antinomy of language that can read as follows: each speech act can only reproduce (imitate) the existent code and use respective signs whereas it must produce (and therefore invent) the non-existent textual entity. Each dialect (as far as it possesses the properties of code) brings forth the strict & rigid demarcation between the proper and the alien as well as the insurmountable distinction between admissible lexical units of languages vocabulary and inadmissible “charades”. Such segregation imposes indispensable restrictions upon each act of textual production so that all its elements must become mere repetitions of the already existent ones, otherwise the speech act would degenerate to a kind of “glossolalia”. Meanwhile each speech act is also indispensably carried out anew and brings something new even if it is the absolutely exact repetition or echo of the previous one (already due to the difference of temporary moments). It must be endowed with something non existent previously; otherwise speech would degenerate to tautology. Moreover, be a speech act a reproduction only, then it would be reduced to the behavior of a parrot! Therefore speech must deliver elements capable of exerting impact upon the code and of promoting in its development, be it an external way of assimilation (from other dialects) or an internal way of derivation (that’s of semantic transition). This contradiction has been discovered and described by W. von Humboldt as that of  vs. . It was P.A. Florensky who has defined it as the initial antinomy and showed its connection with the above discussed antinomy of  vs. . As far as language performs the segregating mission it entails the restrictions imposed upon each speech act with the existent verbal system of a particular dialect. Due to this segregation as well as the partition and division of all human verbal activity into particular dialects the collision of production vs. reproduction (or imitation vs. invention) arises55. This contradiction has also a special temporal aspect of the opposition “moment vs. monument56. Apparently reproduction is nothing else as the ultimately reduced production restricted with repetition. In its turn this element of tautological repetition is necessary for productivity, otherwise it degenerates in chaotic Brown’s movement.

The principal antinomy of language implies the opportunity to define verbal activity as a kind of performance. Similarly to each performing act speech is the indispensable imitation of the existent paragon (reproduction of code’s sign) and at the same time it must be the creative invention of something absent previously (as the derivation of additional semantic meaning). Therefore it can be described with the well known concepts of imitation (with simulation) & invention ( -  - ). Then the principal problem would consist of how creation & exploration becomes possible within the restrictions imposed with imitation. To solve this problem it is to stress that language (as opposed to speech) includes a segregating code as a subsystem but can’t be reduced to it. It is not only “hereditary diseases” of falsehood or motivational integrative premises that discern language from artificial code: language possesses developmental capacities absent in any code. It is due to these capacities that speech as the act of performance does never degrade to the “parroting“”. Each speech act contributes something to the diachronic development of language as a whole so that it can’t be reduced to a pure tautology of repetition. Then it will be the collision of text vs. code that represents the discussed antinomy. Be a text the evolvement of a code, so a code also can be said to be the result of textual codification. As far as text presupposes reflection as its indispensable existential condition it produces also the taxonomic order of its segments turning into signs of the newly arising code. In its turn code presupposes hierarchy as its integration (on the basis different from textual integration) and its superstructure or a metasystem as a multilevel structure. No need to remind that the sources of language’s developmental powers are those of dialectal incompleteness, the simplest ways of modifying the code being those of external assimilation or internal derivation. Moreover due to reflection text can become codified and generate a code together with reproducing it.

The fundamental antinomy of reproducibility vs. productivity arises also in the form of textual generation vs. codification, both of them being the integrative processes though with opposite directions. Apparently this antinomy coincides also with the universal systematic biological antithesis of conservation (heredity) vs. mutability. It gives grounds to the problem of inner vs. outer form of the arising textual and codified entities. Obviously the outer form presumes reproducibility and respectively codification that is not so easily to be applied to the inner form. Codification comes to the disclosure of the transition from inner to outer form. In particular it becomes the communicative process where this transition comes to being together with textual codification necessary for comprehensibility. Textual production (generation) does not only oppose to codification, it represents also a code’s vestiges so that remnants (residua & excesses) become the basis for new text. Such is for instance the colloquial phraseology of epoch that wants to be reproduced with all its idiomatic connotations thus building up textual background. Codification presupposes description (with reciprocity). Moreover, codification as description takes place in practice much earlier than its theoretical elaboration: Such are slogans or newspapers’ titles not to say of such rhetoric means of deixis as anaphoric references to the repeated shape or anticipations of the future textual evolvement.

Code arises as textual self-descriptive mechanism that provides conditions for its reproducibility. In particular listing structures of enumerations are here those much narrower than any text (not to say of neologisms in phraseology constantly arising in text and exerting impact upon code). Speech spontaneity gains priority, nevertheless it becomes an object of “contemplative observation” as far as code’s reproducibility always presupposes descriptive procedure with the selection of a respective object. Obviously a word taken separately from a text as a unit of a code in a dictionary retains no identity of its collocations and becomes an abstract descriptor. Therefore there always exists residuum or excess irreducible to codification. It is such “sedimentary rests” that are to be represented in a sufficient textual description.

As to the transition from text to code still one paradoxical circumstance comes to play. All reproducible units are supposed to be countable. Therefore code arises as the power of numbers ascribed to its units and takes the outer position in regard to verbal system as the numerical entity and exerts resistance to textual productivity. Code supplies substance for textual evolvement and at the same time it restricts textual productive opportunities. Moreover the automatic nature of reproducibility implies the unlimited scope of textual evolvement and at the same time presupposes its restrictions. Thus the fundamental antinomy of language represented as productivity vs. reproducibility acquires still the outlook of the reducibility of textual units to code’s units in the sense of their affiliation to respective taxonomic classes. This problem of reducibility promotes approach to code as the residual phenomenon so that the antinomy can be recognized as that appertaining to phenomenological reduction. One can define therefore the codification as the procedure of aggregating residual & sedimentary textual entities.

In this respect also the question on the motivation of derivative processes arises. These processes resulting in semantic transition may be substantiated as the formation of transferred meaning. They may be also void of such substantiation so that the state of diffusion appears. There appears motivation vs. spontaneity (diffusion, as well as systematic vs. sporadic) opposition in derivative processes that gives grounds to say of initial and primary syncretism together with the accumulation of meanings in polysemy or with the transitional state of designation. The very fact of different meanings’ coexistence presumes their mutual relations as the reciprocal negation. It goes first of all about partial negations in the process of semantic differentiation. Designation of one thing is at the same time the negation of others. Obviously these phenomena don’t lie only within cognitive realm as far as it goes about existential conflicts and qualities of infiniteness mapped in language entailing both semantic diffusion and transition. All language’s map attests the presence of infiniteness and indefiniteness in the world. Cognitive premises of semantic diffusion entailed with reciprocal partial negations of the meanings are inherent to reflective activity that always implies the existence of problem attesting the presence of the unknown as the constant acknowledgement of infinity.

Derivative process differs from the plain plurality of meanings due to the fact that it provokes the potentially unlimited process of interpretation and is thus continued ad infinitum. At the same time this derivational infinity poses the question of the limitability as the inner property of derivation that ensues from the transitivity of verbal signs In particular the literal meaning, as it has been remarked, builds the very limits of infinite variations of a meaning. This idea belongs to A.F. Losev who suggested the treatment of such variations as the neighborhoods of the points of ultimate meanings57. One can extrapolate these arguments of semantic nature on part of “the signified” over the sphere of “the signifying”: for instance some consonants in Indo-European arise as the result of the split of “intermediary” phonemes – such as labiovelar initial in Ukrainian <хвиля> that further has become split and generated reflections in <коло> and <вал>. Such derivations are of the same nature as the conversion of a noun into a verb with the same root in semantics. The potential infinity of derivation entails essential consequences concerning the relations “contents / form” or “signified / signifying” that can by no means be constant: the element that plays now the role of form can turn out as the component of contents and vice versa. Thus the direct or literal meaning of an utterance being the element of contents in its initial use becomes the form of a trope’s contents as the result of derivation. In other words it transforms from “the signified” to “the signifying”. In its turn vice versa phonemes that belong to form in colloquial speech and remain indifferent as to the contents will acquire meaningfulness and enter the level of contents while becoming elements of rhyme in a poetic idiolect. Thus the situation perfectly agrees to morphology where the distinction between inner and outer forms is assumed to be changeable and moveable reflecting and representing thus the mutability of the border between contents and form.

It is also to stress an underestimated aspect of derivative processes which consists in its ability to create provisional taxonomic classes applicable for the given corpus of texts only. Semantic shifts “stir” the process of “nesting” that is peculiar only for the poetic idiolect in question. That the derivative process modifies taxonomic classes as a whole (separate lexical units only representing them) can be demonstrated with such French collocations as tendre les bras / croiser les bras “implore / greet” where lexical combinations with respective verbs determine the sense [Дыбо, 2009, 104]58. In more general sense each step of semantic transitions of a given word can be said to launch a chain process within the whole taxonomic system (of etymological nests, semantic fields, grammar categories, synonymic rows) that the word concerns. Such derivative interconnections of taxonomic units as opposed to subordination of ideographic schemes can also be conceived as filiation (in etymological sense, that is comparable to the so called natural system in biology as opposed to Lynnean system)59. 5n its turn all taxonomic aspects of language become the revelations of textual reflexive capacities of self-organization.

Respectively, as far as the taxonomy in its entirety is concerned, derivative processes acquire diachronic scope and scale. Each act of the generation of new meaning has diachronic aspect already due to its (let it be microscopic) impact upon the history of language. The appearance of neologism in phraseology designates already an entry to etymology. Derivation has in itself common essence with the historical development of language and the formation of poetical idiolect is similar to the split of dialects. Thus the question arises as to the fate of morphological taxonomic indices when the word is adopted and assimilated into a poetic idiolect where the effects of meaningful changes, “similes” (or “contraries”) of a sound shell of a word come into play. Such phonological processes initiated in semantics do immediately affect the inner form of words and belong to their morpho-phonological parameters, the inner form functioning as a morpho-phoneme.

It ensues from such taxonomic shifts that codification becomes the inevitable satellite of textual generation always coming to the reproducibility of textual elements (in particular to the repetition of some of them) and therefore to their reducibility to the emerging code. Then the explorative representation of a text can be conceived as its self-description. In particular the peculiarity of the methods apt for the study of poetical texts is determined with the fact that these methods aren’t explorative devices only performing at the same time the generative tasks of building the texts themselves. This methodological peculiarity is to be observed in such universal language’s property as the self-description. It is here to remind that generally the preference in the selection of methods applicable for the study of poetic idiolect is much determined with the relation “complication / simplicity” of the object to be studied. In particular such a relation refers to the so called J. von Neumann’s paradox of the growth of sophisticated structures in the reflection of complicated systems60. This statement presumes the decision in favor of the self-descriptive methods as far as the description of a verbal text is concerned61. These prerequisites have been adopted with corpus linguistics as it is attested for instance with the 2-d Geoffrey Leach’s maxim: “It should be possible to extract the annotations by themselves from the text”. It would be also appropriate here to remind the statement of E. Benveniste who stressed just the inherent property of language to designate itself so that the self-description belongs to its fundamental regularities62. All it attests the self-organizing properties of language as the aspects of its reflexivity & interpretability. Of course there are other opportunities of representing & describing any complicated object (such as language is) except those given at our disposal of a language itself, therefore it would be reasonable not to reject them. Meanwhile it is evident that such a complicated structure as the poetic idiolect would demand over-sophisticated descriptive mechanism to achieve the satisfactory degree of a text’s presentation so that the commentary would grow infinitely and the reflexive opportunities of language itself win here the upper hand so that the descriptive implements would become textual derivations.

At the same time it is to take into account the restrictions of self-descriptive methods as far as it goes about the tasks of the representation of a particular text. The universal interpretability of texts entails the consequence that one always needs elements absent within the borders of the given text to build its interpretation. As far as each description is a kind of interpretation it presupposes involving descriptors that don’t belong to the described text even in the case of its full reproduction in copies or quotations. It precludes the restriction of the proper self-descriptive means of the given text for the aims of its representation as the interpretation. Each text is to be regarded as that included into a corpus, so the wider means of description are presupposed as the corpus and respective idiolect are taken into consideration. It means actually that each representation obligatorily implies the observer’s comments built with the outer descriptive means.

Moreover the presence of such comments becomes unavoidable and is to be regarded as the indispensable existential conditions of text as a particular verbal entity. Paradoxically the very attempts to retain from comments turn out to become additional purifying attempts in reconsidering textual entity63. Interpretative distortions build up therefore the existential condition for each text. One can even refer to such kind of texts where self-descriptive opportunities are absolutely excluded and become impossible being replaced with necessary external comments. Such is the situation with dialogues or any communicative interaction of the kind, drama being he brightest example. Each couple of partners always presupposes here the existence of some invisible arbiter that would become the third person involved in the formation of text. Any attempt of describing the dialogue would be out of question without the arbiter’s competence and the respective interpretation.



Therefore self-descriptive restrictions can be applied to the language as a whole but not to separate texts. Any text can be described with its own elements only as far as it belongs to the corpus and presupposes the assistance of being interpreted with the outer elements it refers to. Self-description always demands further interpretative comments that must not necessarily belong to the level of abstractions and generalizations’ metasystem. Text can be said to evoke the echo of comments that supplement its self-descriptive devices instead of substituting them. Thus the artificiality of the self-descriptive restrictions is of the same nature that those of abstract universal grammar: the both approaches ignore and distort the observer’s interpretative attitude. It is also to add that in the case of dramatic texts the interpretative role belongs to the imaginary arbiter. The comments added with such observer or arbiter obviously can’t be abstract descriptors of metasystem; they give also semantic shift to the text’s contents. Thus each text needs outer references to become comprehensible, and communication (dramatic text) still reinforces this reference necessitating the existence of arbiter. Both metasystem of universalism and self-descriptive approach are artificial exercitations unsatisfactory for interpreting a text adequately. They both substitute real problems with fiction. In particular one can’t obtain a textual compression (as a description of a plot) with purely self-descriptive means. One always needs outer interpretation to fold a text and to disclose thus its nuclear structure (genotype, cryptotype) from the data attested with its surface structure (phenotype). Apparently this morphological biological opposition of genotype vs. phenotype can be conceived also within the linguistic terms of latency vs. manifestation.

At the same time the existence of an external observer as arbiter is implied with the inner structure of text as message appealing to some comprehensive addressee. The attachment of the description and representation of text towards its interpretation presupposes also its concern towards generative processes. Both self-description as an interpretative transformation of text and the description as its reflexive representation become actually also generative processes. This priority of reflection entails one very important consequence. The matter is that together with each informational structure its superstructure arises at once. Any system of signs presupposes always the existence of a metasystem emerging as its constant satellite or epiphenomenon. Otherwise any cognitive process (as well as conscience) would turn into impossibility64. In particular the task of the exploration of a text’s contents with its referential semantic net and the ensuing semantic transitions to be studied puts the problem of its analytical devices. There are at least two possible approaches towards this problem. The first consists in the representation of such a net with the means of descriptors built as a metastructure or a superstructure over the text and remained out of the text. For instance the scientific terminology used at compiling the reviews of articles behaves as an estranged and alienated element in relation to language itself. Meanwhile there exists an alternative opportunity ensues from the very essence of derivation as opposed to outer description. Terminological descriptors create artificial superstructure while derivatives are the epiphenomenon of text itself, its constant satellites. There is also an alternative research strategy that is founded upon the inner opportunities of a text to describe itself with its own means. Such an approach has already been in use at the mediaeval scholastic doctrines where the circumstance was observed that each statement enables a multitude of possible consequences and different reformulations of the same judgment – the so called exponibilia (that build up together what I. Kant had called exposition)65. In particular textual nuclear structure disclosed in its interpretation can usually be determined in this way. In other words together with the specially and artificially built superstructure of descriptors there exist proper devices of a text’s reflexive self-description built of its own derivatives that co-exist with the text as its “satellite” or epiphenomenon. Exposition as opposed to definition presupposes the disclosure of the notion’s compatibility as the set of its combinatorial opportunities as well as the expansion of a word into possible locutions. Of a special importance is such consequence of exposition as that of interpretative opportunities disclosed with exposing a word66. Exposition as the counterpart to definition exemplifies the most obvious form of textual self-description. The irreducibility of a notion’s contents to formal definition and the necessity of exposition can be demonstrated with the deficiencies of ideography based on formal definitions in Russian semantic dictionary compiled by Yu. N. Karaulov and allies67. This approach had revealed itself as insufficient so the necessity arose to involve the immediate reactions of persons to describe the contents of the entries68. Meanwhile such unlimited arbitrariness entails still greater deficiencies where the proper linguistic contents would be lost69. This deficiency grows still due to the fact that entries are built here as the double ramification so that the two - levels’ trees arise: the first level is made up of the definition’s descriptors of the entry’s title, the second level gives definitions to the first series of descriptors. Already the primary description looks out unsatisfactorily: for instance, the entry «волосы» (hair) generates the “isotope” «нить, роговица, животное etc.» (thread, horn stiff, animal etc.), where such evidently necessary descriptors are absent as «коса» (feminine braid), «шерсть» (wool) «мех» (fur).

Thus derivational properties of language entail necessarily the formation of such self-descriptive expository devices in opposite to outer descriptions. In its turn derivative and expansive properties of language are mutually connected. Derivative opportunities of a separate sign (not to say of an entire text) entail also its properties as a fold, a rudiment of a wider narrative and thus determine its expansive opportunities. Signs are by no means dead solid “atoms”; they are living respiring “germs” capable for growth and development. Consequently the notions or images so conceived must be exposed and not defined, they must be represented with their exponibilia (the cases of their applicability) and not with explicit definitions. To use the set theory, one could describe a verbal sign as a fuzzy set in contrast to scientific terms that presuppose constant definitions.


1.1.2. Experimental Textual Transformation as the Self-Description
As far as textual interpretative representation is conceived as the self-descriptive epiphenomenon, the terms of phenomenological approach are to be involved. From this viewpoint it becomes a kind of the so called residuum or the rest of the procedure of the so called phenomenological reduction. The importance of such a representation of self-description from the phenomenological approach is in its alternative to meta-system or superstructures. The self description being obtainable just as the rest of textual reduction demonstrates its latent inherence within the texts limits as its implied contents. In this respect self-description reveals also its folding properties. The compression of text in its fold (convolution) comes out as an element of derivation because it is generated from the folded text as the product of derivative processes. Fold can become both relic and rudiment of the folded text i.e. its “remnant” that keeps its contents into custody and simultaneously a “germ” for the text to be grown anew. Furthermore self-description as a case of self-reflection can also be regarded as self-negation of text. Being a residuum of phenomenological reduction self-description bears distinctions that differs it from the described text as its relics & rudiments in opposite to separate segments of a text that can easily obtained without special reflexive procedures. It is obvious that such self-descriptive procedures presume the transformation of the texts revealing thus generative properties. In its turn the compression (convolution) of a text within its fold is only one side of the process. The other side is the expansion of such fold. It is these capacities that promote the transformation of self-descriptive means of a text from the latent to explicit state. Self-description turns out to be the consequence of derivation together with expansion and fold of a sign. The existence of text then acquires an outlook of permanent pulsation of compression vs. expansion.

As far as exploration becomes textual epiphenomenon of self-description it entails experimental transformability as the inherent textual possibility. Experimentation as the textual transformative device presupposes at least bilateral prerequisites that include: 1) the so called mixture () of the involved phenomena in the sense of introducing alien elements and subsequent divulgation of homogeneity; 2) the so called revelation () in the sense of the detection of previously latent aspects; 3) the already discussed category of the error or fault () as opposed to the revelation and succeeded with correction (). It is known that the very idea of experimental exploration was developed on the concept of the so called accompanying fact – epiphenomenon. Then both mixture and revelation (with eliminated and corrected errors) are to be regarded as the corollary and sequel of the heterogeneity. The most important is that experimental approach aims at disclosing the latent essence70. Thus genotype reveals itself through phenotype due to the experimental interpretative efforts. It is essential also that in attempting at repletion of incompleteness the experiment introduces something alien and therefore becomes open to the confrontation with assimilatory processes – in particular as far as the obtained experimental results are concerned. As to the obligatory presence of epiphenomena it correlates with the mentioned homological nature of language where inexact similitude instead of identity comes into play.

Experimentation looks like the perturbation (distortion) of something homogeneous so that it detects the latent forces and makes them reveal themselves. From here the paradox still one ensues to build a text one needs not only to reproduce the ready stuff but also to slightly deviate from the foreseen ways of speech acts. This contradiction is to be solved in texts’ generation as experimental activity. Thus perturbation & revelation are to be regarded as the pillars of language’s self-development on the way of experimentation. They presuppose disharmony as the distortion of textual tissue entailing also anomalous phenomena so that integral text becomes transformed into series of dismembered disparate signs. Be experimentation such turbulence, so interpretation (and self-description as its subspecies in its ultimate degree) also becomes the transformation of textual extracts into signs. From here the consequence ensues as to the inner affinity of sign & fold. Sign can be regarded as the limit of the folding of a text so that limitation becomes the basic quality of sign. Experimentation becoming the permanent way of textual transformations, examination also becomes the constant satellite of this process. Textual transformation acquires then the outlook of conjectures in the form of circumscriptions of an unknown object that wait for their examination. .

One of the reasons in favor of the preference to the self-descriptive analytical methods that attest the coexistence of their explorative & transformative properties is to be seen in the fact that they give opportunity for experimental study of a text. The very idea of experimental approach to verbal art has already arisen as the consequence of futurist movement that proclaimed purposes of creating a broad stuff of neologisms71. Such approach of transforming text with the aim of the experimental examination of the obtained versions can be regarded as the result of derivative processes. It gives rights for the researcher to distort a text in view of its comprehending72. Meanwhile the very act of distortion is implied with the derivation and self-description as its consequence. Potential derivatives always are present within a text as its peculiar regulatory force to be referred to in its enunciation. One would imagine at least the most probable errors to be aware of the necessity of avoiding them as the implied sense capable to provoke the misunderstanding. For instance one would avoid in an official communication the locutions that would seem to become too rude or familiar. It means that the author bears in mind such implied consequences that might be defined as text’s derivative self-description. Being the result of interpretative act, the self-description is presumed in the text itself as such virtual force promoting feedback as the principal form of reflection for building and correcting a textual structure. As such latent and possible metamorphose of a text the latent self-description becomes indispensable for feedback as the foundation for a text’s inner coherence. Thus distorting experimental attempts and derivative self-descriptive versions have the common source that is the feedback.

As the simplest form of experiments of the kind may be cited well known M.L. Gasparov’s devices of transforming verses into prose. Another example of experimental textual transformation can be found in the devices of eliminating the cuts of a text, of replacing its fragments that are widely used in the work of editors. Besides, there are at least three simple means of the experimental transformation of a text: it is the insertion of dots, brackets and quotation marks. It is a special rhetoric device of fragmentation (parcellatio) where the meaning of the segregated utterance becomes changed radically. At the same way each text is in a way a fragment (no to say of the famous Goethe’s statement all literature be a fragment) because it always needs references to something external, indication to the implied knowledge that is clearly revealed already with the detachment of the fragment of speech as the independent statement. This method is widely used in the construction of articles’ titles in newspapers and other media, which are actually hints indicating the implied place in the corps of texts known to addressee. Meanwhile one can obtain a whole array of references of the kind as the result of the mental experiment of fractioning a text and transforming it in a row of fragments that function as autonomous utterances. The universal applicability of such an experimental device may be attested with any scientific text where all hints and equivocal expressions are excluded beforehand. As a specimen of scientific prose let be taken a single sentence from G. Ticknor’s „History of Spanish Literature“. Here it goes about the policy of Enlightenment in Spain in the last decades of the XVII-th century: „But, meanwhile, other attempts were making in other directions to revive the literature of the country; some by restoring a taste for the old national poetry, some by attempting to accommodate everything to the French doctrines of the age of Louis the Fourteenth, and some by the ill-defined, and often perhaps unconscious struggle to unite the two opinions …“ [Ticknor, 1891, III, 350]. In practice one always deals with the case of lacunas while transforming a text into excerpts. The competence of at least three lacunas to be supplemented is presumed in the cited example: it is the experience of the mentioned poetical tradition, of the Enlightenment and of the local situation. The fragmentation of text and separation of its segments with dotting increases the heterogeneity and subsequently generates a series of figures of reticence that lead to the development of deictic opportunities that referring to something transcendental in the sense of transgressing the boundaries of the text.

It can be exemplified with the quotation from one diplomatic document cited by Ye.V. Tarle: «Барант, отмечая (так же настойчиво, как и другие послы), что государь не любит дворянства и в конце концов рассчитывает на народ, спрашивает себя: правильно ли учитывает император относительную силу классов общества?» [Тарле, 1958, 572]. Bearing in mind that the dots designate usually a hint to the figure of reticence the quotation «… государь не любит дворянства …» (the tsar doesn’t sympathize with the nobility) is to be read as the indication to situation of the rule of Nickolai I peculiar for the respective relationship within the upper layer of society. Another phrase of the text transformed as «… *послы настойчиво отмечают …» (the ambassadors observe obstinately) shows latent anxiety provoked with the conflicts inherent to this societal stratum. There are also the opportunities of periphrastic transformations of the text that acquire the hue of slogans as in «… *рассчитывать на народ …» (to rely upon people) or «… *учитывать силу классов …» (to take into account the power of classes). This example elucidates how the experimental distortion of text becomes is derivative self-description.

Meanwhile it is not only explorative device of artificial transformation to study a text but colloquial practice widely used in dramatic works that seems to look out as distortion. In particular the device of interrupted speech’s fragments’ series is widely used to render the conversational situations with specific colloquial means. Bright examples of the kind are to be found in Moliere’s comedies as in “L’amour medicin” (2.4) (The physician in love): “Tomes: La maladie de votre fille … Des Fonandrés: L’avis de tous ces Messiuers tous ensemble …Macroton : Apres avoir bien consulté …Barys : Pour raisonner …”. In the XX-th century dramas this conversational device has won its place in mass scenes. Thus this analytical outer device turns out to become the inner textual property of artistic works and to be conceived as a kind of periphrastic transformation of text itself and not as the instrument for its study only.

There is a very wide range of such opportunities for experimental “distortion” of text without loosing the quality of coherent text as such. The transformations of the kind retain textual quality so that they appear as the virtual self-descriptive epiphenomena or invisible satellites included in the original text. As an example of the attempts to restore the supposed text can the known embellishments in folklore records of the romantic epoch serve whereas in reality one deals just with the seeming “distortions” caused with colloquial speech. As a very evident case of a text’s self-description the reconstruction of a plot may serve. It is the semantic net of reciprocal references and a text’s proper collocations that enable a reader to reproduce plot. The appearance of the whole new kind of literature – that of reader’s digests – attests the real existence of such latent self-descriptive derivatives that come to being as the result of special textual preparation. In other words plot is included in a text as its epiphenomenon present in latent form and explicitly detected in digests. An interesting witness of the first steps in this, so to say, self-description as the self-distortion, is the Ch. Lamb’s efforts of retelling Shakespeare’s plays. Here the very composition of a dramatic text turns out to be chosen as the most convenient object resonant to the tasks of the restoration of a plot as a self-descriptive process. The digest has its numerous predecessors in such forms as the summary of a short novel (presented, for example, in G. Boccacio’s “Decameron”), libretti of improvised plays or prompting notes (cribs) of some folklore epic narrators. It is often already the title of a play that indicates the plot (as “Macbeth”, “Hamlet”, “Othello”). Such folds imply a net of references existing in the experience of their readers and evoking respective images. A plot is included in a text as the possibility of its interpretation that bring forth a fold capable to be unfolded again in a text. Such folds contain the essentials of a text that can be complemented with details while being unfolded. Both the quick scanning and the slow reading as the known procedures of digest’s technologies enable the selection of such essentials and their transformation with the proper textual means. There is inherent mutuality between a plot (fable) and a separate phrase as the device of partial denomination. The fold of a text within a plot presumes the existence of locutions that would describe its most important features. It is the partitive denomination of circumlocutions that would be apt at carrying such stuff in the sense that the partiality enables representing the whole with its separate ingredients. The mentioned details represent the folded entirety to be expanded anew.


1.1.3. The Opposition of Lexical vs. Propositional Units
The statement on textual productivity in opposite to code’s reproducibility presumes a series of restrictions put upon the conception of sign as the element of code. From the viewpoint of traditional semiotics developed from the traditions of nominalism it is the primary matter of each language that belongs to such code. The triple division of signs in icons, indexes and symbols (by Ch. Pierce) aimed just at the reduction of textual entity to the reintegration of signs that would overlay all the possibility of designation. Meanwhile such approach to signs as the elements predestined beforehand for signification can’t pass the test of matter to be signified. First of all it is only objects that can be designated or signified in opposite to abstract attributes that can be only referred to (as it has already been stressed in the introduction). Vice versa abstractions cannot be such matter as far as they represent attributes without objects. Abstractions deal with the attributive space without any connection to the objects which properties are to be represented in this space. Respectively one ought to say of reference and not signification as far as abstractions are concerned. In particular it entails essential consequences towards the categories that refer to abstractions and have nothing to signify. Thus an element of a code (in opposite to a text) doesn’t designate something, it only bears references to abstractions. In particular N.D. Arutiunova has attracted attention to the differences arising between designation (signification) and reference while observing the importance to discern the means for rendering contents. She suggested the differentiation between what has been called referential and predicative descriptions as well as the division of references into identifying (in particular existential and introductory) and qualifying ones. It enables carrying out the semantic classification of what is called descriptions73. Respectively identification and qualification come out as the prerequisites for the formation of predicative function.

It is no any occasionally taken textual segment that can be regarded as a sign. To become a sign a textual extract must be separated and marked. It must become reproducible as a fixed element and endowed with the capability of designating some particular object instead of referring to abstraction as the case with code is74. In particular sign can be regarded as reflected textual extract. For instance the lexeme <star> becomes terminological sign within astronomical textual corpus where it indicates the respective objects. It becomes also iconic sign while acquiring the quality of a proper name as in <Polar Star>.In its turn to become a symbolic sign the amplitude of meanings and the combinatorial opportunities (compatibility) must be essentially restricted. It is here to remind A.F. Losev’s statement on the infinity of symbolic meanings. Symbol presupposes totality as its genuine contents as well as laws and regularities prescribed with its own structure so that magician myth comes to existence75. Meanwhile it is unexplored problem that stands behind any myth, therefore the identification of myth with wonder as the background for each symbolism discloses textual origins of such symbolic opportunities76. Perhaps it was the oblivion of textual and practical origins of symbol that caused the known “crisis of symbolism” where symbolic contents degraded to the pretentions for totality and problematic contents was reduced to the mysticism of wonder with the exhaustion of the meanings of signs’ code of the style. Meanwhile to be marked and fixed as a sign in such a way means that the respective textual extract becomes an idiom. Thus in opposite to the semiotics of the tradition of nominalism here sign is conceived as something designating particular detail. It entails a somewhat paradoxical conclusion that it is idioms that can be called signs in their proper sense and that only particulars can be designated.

It is to be stressed that signs are by no means simply textual segments. Signs separated from a text behave as the folds (convolutions) of a textual map and retain its vestiges. This secondary nature of sign as compared to text entails also the approach to notions as the secondary in comparison to images77. Signs and notions can be said to border the immanent realm of language where images occupy central position especially while they can be identified with texts78. In particular Chinese dictionaries give actually phrasal units (usually couples of characters) that are textual extracts and not separate signs. These aspects of the contradictions between text and sign disclose the fundamental antinomy of language. Each act of speech brings much more contents than one could suspect behind its outer form. It becomes especially evident in addressing an infantine when a separate enunciation brings the whole structure necessary for the development of speaking faculty79. Taxonomy (paradigmatic structure) with its sign systems is thus implicitly present in text as its latent satellite. Meanwhile these are only the external delineations of a much deeper contradiction. Language must always use the known and ready stuff otherwise the purpose of any speech act will be fortuitous and the message will not be comprehended. At the same time this purpose can’t be reduced to the activity of a parrot and be restricted with the reproductions of predestinated forms. Language is first of all the instrument of explorative thought and not the parroting of mantras.

Therefore text (speech) always displays much more richness than any sign system (code). To designate this textual informational excess V.M. Solntsev has used O.I. Smirnitsky’s term “supra-linguistic residue”, and it is due to this excess that text brings new knowledge: “whereas speech will retain what is called supra-linguistic residue after all language has been extracted from it, language is represented in speech in its totality, without any residue” [Solntsev, 1983, 75]. Respectively one can give the following definition to this textual excess: “Supra-linguistic residue is therefore something which remains after one has removed from speech everything that language is made of” [Solntsev, 1983, 125]. Thus the discussion acquires the outlines of a Then the ensuing problem arises as to the relation of text vs. signs (resp. speech vs. language).the already mentioned phenomenological reduction with its residual qualities (that comes back to E. Husserl) or excess (to use the terms of P. Ricouer). Being richer than language a text can’t be reduced to language. Another side of this antinomy can be represented as the paradox of signs’ imperceptibility80. Its solution consists in endowing signs with vestiges of textual qualities so that they become capable of displaying autonomous developmental properties. It is here that the phenomenon of lexical attraction and compatibility can be explained: lexical units that have been used in text acquire the property of probability to build up combinations81.

Then in its turn the ensuing problem arises as to the relation of text to codified reproducible signs, in particular on the division of signs into minimal vs. maximal or necessary vs. sufficient to be meaningful textual units as word vs. sentence. It is to be stressed especially that the transitions between text and code depend essentially upon the types of languages, in particular upon those of isolated and incorporated type. In the languages of isolated type textual units behave as the ready reproducible enunciation (in the manner of repeated quotations) and therefore the opposition “lexical unit - proposition” is not applicable and relevant here82. It is why the problem of lexical delimitation always remains present here so that the definition of a genuine word is present as a problem. That it is the problem to be solved in each particular case can be proved with the definition of word as the limit for speech’s generation that always remains movable83.

The textual codification entails together with the problem of reproducibility another problem of frequentation that appears to be essential textual property irreducible to the attributes of code. One of the most apparent advantages of text in comparison to code is the feature of frequency that the units are endowed with. In opposite to the textual application a unit within a code is void of this feature84. It is frequentation that prevents any opportunity of reducing a textual entity to a code. Therefore descriptive procedures are to take into account this “label” stuck to each textual unit. This approach has been developed not only in semantics with its renowned confrontation of commonplaces and rarities (loci communi – loci raritati) but also in the terrain of phonology. In this respect it is of a special importance to stress the discovery of S. Burago who has suggested applying the methods of range statistics for the estimation of poetical text’s phonological structure (from 2 for unvoiced explosives p, t, k and 3 for unvoiced fricatives sh, s to 6 for vowels) [Бураго, 1999, 131]. Therefore frequentation belongs to the global indices that are the inherent textual property that must leave its vestige in code. One can say that idiomatic locutions become such vestiges.

It would be useful to remind the detection of such marvelous transfiguration of usual collocation within poetic idiolect as their transformation into perfectly different grammatical systems. It goes namely about the restoration of archaic incorporated and isolated types of languages within our usual means of flexion and affixation. In particular the methods of corpus’ linguistics enable the detection of the priority of “syntactic complexes” (I. I. Meshchaninov)85 in comparison to usual lexical and phrasal units. The relationship of text to sign reproduces in a way that of inference to judgments and notions (with all necessary distinctions and reservations). From the viewpoint of nominalism such relationship seems to be obviously reciprocal: text is built as a set of sentences (and sentences as sets of words); each separate word implies a sentence (at least of the existential nature where the existence of the word’s object would be acknowledged) as well as a sentence can be folded up in a complex substantive. Meanwhile historically both such substantives and propositional implications of lexical units are secondary derivations from the primary diffuse “word-sentence”. Such was the case with archaic languages of incorporated type where the dictionary would be the dictionary of sentences and not words only. Poetic system exposes a doctrine and therefore there must be constructions in the manner of the language of incorporated type. One could take diffuse incorporated constructions for the initial point and say of textual priority in respect to separate signs.

It would justifiable to suggest even more general statement as to the reproduction of the traits of archaic grammatical structures within a poetic language namely of those of incorporation where lexical & propositional units coincide so that there are the so called “words-sentences” (as for instance in Amerindian languages). The grounds for such statement can be found in G.P. Melnikov’s theory on the connection between mental structures and grammatical typology. The incorporated type of languages is adapted for the situation where the tasks of mythological contents to be retold dominate. The reasons for such dominance lie in the small scope of community where the communication’s acts take place86. This situation determines the conditions for the formulaic language of folklore where the ready and widely known events are reproduced. An opposite situation takes place in the languages of the isolation type that correspond (according to G.P.Melnikov) to the situation of interethnic contacts and confusion so that a kind of creolized hybrid language arises in the manner of Mediterranean Sabir or Pacific Pidgin - English. In particular it explains a known inclination to homonymy in such languages87. At the same time one could here also remark that there were other reasons for minimization of the scope of dictionary than the blending of communities. Isolation bears all the traits of a secondary, later simplification of incorporating language restricted with the minimally necessary means. To spare the words as in monosyllabic languages one could find the reasons in the saturation and exhaustion of incorporating languages’ opportunities. Isolation could be said to develop from incorporation as its inversion, and in its turn it enables the development of an incorporating language through the assimilation of its elements, as one can see in Japanese (that preserves the relics of incorporation transformed into the so called polysynthetic type of grammar, for instance, in the framed structure of sentence) assimilating Chinese lexical units. At any rate incorporation and isolation behave as mutually interdependent and complemented grammatical structures. Of importance is the very possibility of their reproduction in poetic idiolects of languages with perfectly other grammars and consequently in the formation of composed words. At any rate the incorporation vs. isolation couple of grammatical types can be represented as simplification vs. sophistication.

Thus the problem of the relation of text to sign passes to the problem of signs’ stratification into words vs. sentences. The reality of such problem not only for archaic or exotic languages but for our daily practice can be attested with the experience of some particular cases. The relics of the incorporated type of language are to be traced in the manner of writing of illiterate persons who have problems with the delimitation between words within a sentence. They constantly abuse and trespass the words’ borders so that lexical units make a confluence in the manner of a word - sentence. Here one can apply the concept of the Old Slavonic рєчєніє (Ukrainian речення, Russian изречение) as the name for some diffuse speech formation of incorporated type.

The reproduction and revival of archaic grammatical relics are widely represented not only in colloquialism of plain speech but in the manners of scenic pronunciation. It goes about the fragmentation of sentence in separate locutions and even lexical units. It concerns especially the means of designation of such segments with the shift of registers in oral speech. Thus the scansion imparts the speech the outlook of the isolated type of grammar. This type can be rendered with the means of scenic scansion so that the whole utterance becomes “dotted” (divided into segments separated as if autonomous sentences) and interrupted with frequent pauses. Traditionally the manner of the “telegraph style” reproducing the isolated type of language is tied up with the name of on of the personages of Ch. Dickens’ “Pickwick Club” Jingle whose speech had been marked with such manner, so the phenomenon is usually designated as “jingloism”. The same concerns the reproduction of the features of the incorporated type of grammar structure in idiomatic locutions that behave as words and sentences simultaneously so that the properties of archaic structure return under the countenance of poetic idiolect. It is the inherent property of these locutions that they are easily transformed from a proposition into an expanded substantive and reversely. In particular, a special kind of composed words appears that meet the demands of incorporated structures.

In Europe it is already the prepositional system that attests the presence of the relics of incorporation. Word demanding that and not another governed preposition (esp. phrasal verb) represents a particle of a word-sentence that is to be encountered in archaic incorporating languages. Still more evidently the presence of such relics is to be traced in the formation of overcomplicated composed words. Paradoxically enough the traits of incorporation are first of all to be observed in languages with isolated structure. It was already Yu. Shchutski who has underlined that “the Chinese possesses exclusive opportunities of creating composita …A whole sentence can be integrated into a composita” [Щуцкий, §4]. Meanwhile this statement almost coincides with a similar peculiarity of English language approaching the structure of isolated type: according to V. Ivanov “in the contemporary English phrase a whole sentence … behaves as if it were an adjective” [Иванов, 2004, 42]. Thus a problem arises as to the universal nature of the attributive clauses of the kind.

The absolute majority of Chinese characters can be regarded as composed words or idiomatic fixed locutions or composed words where seemingly simple meanings are represented with the combination of other ones88. Thus (6295 = 79.6) consists of (6259 = 79.0) with the precedent



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