Philological Sciences / 3. Theoretical and methodological problems in the language research.
Postgraduate Kresin
I.A.
Belgorod State University, Russia
New computational
methods in cognitive linguistics
Computerization
of scientific activity in many areas opens up new opportunities for
professionals and has a
huge potential. Methodological innovations, based on the use of software,
enable programming language to
solve research problems and, thus, open up new ways in the linguistic area as well. Below we will have a look at the method of computational
text processing in cognitive linguistics, based on statistical analysis.
As
one of the most promising directions in the field of linguistics, cognitive
linguistics is based on a number of assumptions, the main of which is the
following: "linguistic and cognitive mechanisms are mutually
integrated" [3, p. 198], which means that the study of the first one is possible through the study of the second.
One of the most important
concepts of cognitive linguistics is the so called
recurrence of concepts. The notion of recurrence is inherent not
only in
cognitive
linguistics, but is used much broader and is understood as a repetition, frequency of any language elements [4, p.
135]. As a "universal linguistic
category organizing the process of
communication" [4, p. 136] the recurrence is widely studied in the
framework of different linguistic areas.
In
cognitive linguistics the notion of recurrence of concepts (or frequency of
linguistic representations of concepts in speech) is fundamental and reflects the specific features of
cognitive consciousness of the people or of the individual. One of the tenets
of cognitive linguistics is that these features can be identified through the
analysis of the frequency of language verbalizations [2, p. 148].
Recurrence
of concepts is an important indicator of their relevance in the cognitive
consciousness of the people or individual author. It reflects not only the linguistic, but also the cognitive and the social relevance of concepts
[5, p. 80]. A significant increase of the units
frequency
objectifying a particular concept in the text may indicate an increase of its
communicative relevance, that is, that it is actively discussed in the
society and, consequently, is important for the national conceptosphere [2, p.
149]. Recurrence of the concept can also mean the relevance or irrelevance of
the concepts in individual conceptosphere. The usage of various lexical units is traced to the time in which the author lived, and to the
characteristics of his personality. In this way the communicative consciousness of
the author may be also partially modeled by cognitive interpretation. [2, p. 149]
Analysis
of recurrence of concept allows to some extent to reconstruct the
linguistic consciousness of the author, and draw some conclusions about his linguistic and cognitive
preferences. It also allows to determine which concepts for each author were more, and which - less relevant, which concepts have been cognitively
relevant to one or the other work period.
In
order to adequately investigate the recurrence of concepts in the works of an
author, one
must use statistical methods. Quantitative methods have long been widely used
in historical linguistics and mathematical linguistics [7]. On the interaction of statistics and philology
indicates E. Kielich, noting that "statistics is not simply a method of
confirming or refuting certain linguistic assumptions, but often reveals
patterns of language and the interaction of different language levels" [1, p. 37]. The use of
quantitative methods today is one of the features of modern linguistics [6, p. 146]. According to S. Verkhozin, one of the reasons is just "the
emergence of applied problems related to the text automatic processing" [6, p. 146].
To give an example of solving a
particular research problem, we can look at how software instrurments work based on the use of quantitative
methods in linguistic research.
One
of the research
goals was to
analyze the linguistic side of the Kant's texts
"Critique of Pure Reason", "Critique of Practical
Reason", "Critique of Judgment"
in order to find out which concepts are most relevant for the author at some work periods. Formulated in this way the research objective
presupposed the listing of the most frequently used lexical units, taking into account all
possible morphological variants.
To perform this type of analysis,
we needed to develop a special software. When creating a program, we used the Harbour - a universal
high level programming language. This choice was dictated by the fact that the
Harbour is a free development open source environment, easy to install and to use, and does not require
compiling and linking programs, making the way from writing a code to the result as
much as possible reduced.
The
program consists of two main modules. The first module works with individual
words, analyzing the full text, forming an array of all lexical units occurring in it, and
counting the number of occurrences of each of them. The program then analyzes
the array by combining different forms of
lexical
units
according to the prepared and replenished online directory.
The
second module splits the text into sentences and searches at each of them the set phrases in which the lexical units can take many forms and be
separated from each other by other linguistic units.
The work result, provided by our text processing program, is the creation of special tables
illustrating the frequency of use of different lexical units in different texts in relation to other
works of the same author.
We could conclude for example that the "Critique of Pure
Reason" features a much more frequent use of the lexical units associated with the
theory of knowledge in comparison to other works: Apperzeption
(apperception), Wahrheit (truth), Erkenntnis (knowledge), Anschauung
(perception), Vorstellung (representation), Erfahrung (experience),
empirisch (empirical), Zeit (time), Raum (space), Logik
(logic).
This method of the computational text processing can serve as
a support for the further linguistic research. So, to conduct further analysis
of the lexical
units in the
tables, using the methods of cognitive linguistics, we can model the
corresponding conceptual units to rethink the structure of the most relevant concepts
for this author and
reveal new aspects of his works.
List of
references
1. Kelih E. History of the use of
quantitative methods in Russian Language and Literature // Kritikon Literraum.
Slovyanskaya Filologia. 2010. pp. 37-44.
2. Popova Z.D., Sternin I.A. Cognitive Linguistics M
.: AST East-West 2007. 314 p.
3. Rezanova Z.I. Cognitive Linguistics in
the paradigms of linguistic functionalism and integrated concepts of
consciousness // Bulletin of Tomsk State University. 2010. ¹ 334. pp. 195-199.
4. Sokolova, I.B. Recurrence as a
universal language category (on the basis of modern English) [Text] / I.
Sokolova // News Lugans'ka NHRIs. 2005. ¹ 5 (85). pp. 135-140.
5. Titova O.I.
Prospects linguistic research of recurrent units lexicon // Philology. 2003. ¹
2. pp. 79-86.
6. Verkhozin S.S. On the status of quantitative methods in linguistics
// Journal of Irkutsk State Linguistic
University, Issue number 3 (24). 2013.
pp. 145-150.