Филологические науки/ 3.Теоретические и методологические проблемы исследования языка.

PhD in Philology, Karpukhina V.N.

Altai State University, Russia

Linguistic Modeling as a Text Interpretation: Cognitive Linguistics Aspect

The term “modeling” is defined in different ways when dealing with diverse scientific spheres. We’ll keep to the semiotic definition of a model as an object structure showing the object characteristics relevant for an interpreter. Another aspect of studying models which is not less relevant for us is the cognitive-discursive aspect [cf. 1]. The model can be defined from this point of view as a cognitive correlation of some linguistic reality object. T.A. van Dijk discussing the situational or episodic models as the operational units in discourse processing considers the term “model” to be used for the denomination of a specific type of knowledge structures held in memory [2, s. 68-69].

The subdivision of all the models for formal and semantic, on the one hand, and analytical and synthetic, on the other, presents the process of modeling in its essence. The interpreter of some object (e.g., the object of the linguistic reality) can take into consideration the ontological characteristics of the object to deliver results of the research. This formal type of a model chosen should represent the most general constructive characteristics of the object (van Dijk calls this type of modeling “the abstract world reconstructions” [2, s. 74]). But in some other situation the interpreter can come to the construing / reconstruing semantic characteristics of the object (“Some moment of a sense dynamics appears even in the analysis of the terms ‘structure’ and ‘model’ itself” [6, s. 56], when the model is understood “as some ideal pattern” [6, s. 52]).

In discourse analysis the formal modeling is used in sociolinguistic studies, and the semantic models are being construed in the studies of discourse categories. Prospective or retrospective orientation of the linguistic reality interpreter gives the basic version of an analytical or synthetic type of a model. The viewpoint of an interpreter as an observer of the linguistic reality lets construe the analytical model in the case of retrospective modeling. This model will be a reconstruction of a text generation process, and in this specific case the observer is able to discuss only the one of the text “possible worlds”. “Constructing the model, which is presupposed to be hypothetical, doesn’t deny the assurance in the situation when the construed definite phenomena present the construed relations. The researcher can be absolutely sure in the reality of the relations revealed by the structural model, and, at the same time, assumes that the different decisions can be possible if you change the angle of viewing the problem” [3, s. 383]. The viewpoint of the interpreter oriented forwards, into the future prospective, should give the synthetic model of a text interpretation, when one or more text “possible worlds” is being construed. Non-linear organization of text semantics gives us the chance to observe the variety of text interpretations, or construed text “possible worlds”.

The modeling structures for the text production and interpretation are more complicated comparing to the word or sentence models. Making the complex models for the text production and interpretation based on the axiological linguistics strategies used by the subject (the author or the interpreter) lets apply both the analytical and synthetic principles of the linguistic reality modeling. The most formalized models of the linguistic reality objects (dealt with mathematical, cybernetic etc. construing) are acute in the processes of recoding of a large number of texts from the natural language to the artificial one. But in the case we deal with the reconstruction of the text production or the construction of the interpretation processes we should use the complex models adequate to the objects (probably, the models included some other models inside). Compare the contemporary tradition of the term-making process: the semantic field – the subfield, frame – subframe – metaframe – hyperframe etc. So, we can make up the hierarchy of the text and discourse cognitive models: proposition – script (schema) – scenario – frame – “the possible world” ([4; 5; 7]). Each of these constructed or reconstructed models can be represented in its static or dynamic aspects according to the axiological linguistics strategies on which the process of text and discourse semantics modeling is based.

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