Philological Sciences / 3

Building of nominative fields as a research method in cognitive linguistics

Cognitive linguistics has successfully taken its place in the paradigm of concepts in the world of modern linguistics. It is significantly developing in the end of the XX century, but its subject - features of learning and processing of information, methods of mental representation of knowledge through the target language - was known and studied in the first theoretical writings on linguistics in the XIX century.

The tasks of cognitive science include mainly the description of knowledge representation systems, learning the different ways of information processing, and, at the same time, the study of the general principles of organization of human cognitive abilities in a single mental mechanism, and the establishment of their relationship and interaction [1 p. 8-9].

One of the presuppositions of cognitive linguistics is the idea that the concept, as a unit of the mental level, can be described by means of the analysis of its ways of objectification in language. On this basis, the primary task of cognitive linguistics is obtaining an exhaustive list of linguistic units, which objectify the concept, that researchers are interested in. The whole set of linguistic units, that express the concept (including the units of all the parts of speech) is called nominative field of a concept [3, p. 66].

According to M. V. Pimenov, the concept is often objectified through different language characters, that is, the different authors express the same concept features through a variety of linguistic means. Thus, the full description of a concept, valueble to a particular culture, is only possible while the study of the most complete set of tools of its representation [2, p. 12].

The nominative field of a concept is not homogeneous - it includes both direct nomination of the concept itself (core of the nominative field), and the nomination of certain cognitive features of the concept, which reflect its content and the attitude to it (periphery of the nominative field).

In the process of the linguo-cognitive analysis both - systemic and random ( used by certain authors ) nominative means can be identified, as they are all included in the same nominative field and are valuable for cognitive interpretation and the following modeling of the concepts.

Nominative field of a concept is a linguistic material which becomes to the object of the linguo-cognitive study. The subject of the cognitive research is the semantics of lexical units of the nominative field of a concept that reflects the studied concept in language consciousness of native speakers. The purpose of research is the linguo-cognitive description of the concepts [ 3, p. 77 ].

Description of the semantics of the nominative field units allows us to represent the content of the concept in the form in which it is reflected and recorded in the language. This will allow to reconstruct, to describe only a part of the concept, including its most communicatively relevant features (and therefore finding linguistic objectification).
The greater the volume and variety of the lexical units are, formed in the process of the linguo-cognitive research of the nominative field, the more reliable will be the results of the reconstruction of the concept, standing behind the given nominative field, and the fuller and more accurate can we then describe its content and structure. However, depending on the type of a concept, this problem can be quite complex and can require precise steps to be fulfilled in order to represent all the components of a concept in a proper way.

Regardless of the particular features of the given material, the process of constructing the nominative field starts with finding the key lexeme – a lexical unit, determined by the researcher, that best nominates the studied concept. As such the most common name can be selected (the researcher can define it by means of a frequency dictionary), generalized enough in its semantics (the average degree of abstraction). At the same time preferable are stylistically neutral, non-evaluative words (man, friend, family, life).

The determination of the core and the periphery of the nominative field is the next step of the research. The core of the nominative field is defined through the synonymous expansion of the keyword ( dictionaries of synonyms and phrasebooks can be helpful ), as well as through the analysis of the context in which the researched concept is nominated ( belles-lettres, publicistic texts). Peripheral components of the nominative field, depending on the objectives of the study, can also be determined on the basis of analysis of the context and through the compatibility of lexemes (for the lexeme friend - faithful, fair-weather, inseparable, lifelong etc.)

Construction of associative field of the keywords, formed through the processing of the results of free or directed associative experiment, as well as the analysis of phraseological nominations (or inclusion of a phraseological unit in the nominative fields) and proverbs, may also be useful to researchers depending on the tasks and resources (a friend in need is a friend indeed).

Construction and investigation of the derivation field of the keyword can identify some cognitive feature. The set of the lexical units of the same root helps better represent its content (friendless, friendliness, friendly, friendship etc.)

The above described steps contribute to obtaining reliable results and make this method of building the nominative fields become widely used in the framework of cognitive learning of the language that takes as such one of the main places in the toolbox of cognitive linguistics.

References

1. Kubryakova E.S. On cognitive science and actual problems of cognitive linguistics // Issues of cognitive linguistics, Tambov, 2004. P. 6-17.

2. Pimenov M.V. Soul and spirit: features of the conceptualization // Kemerovo, 2004. 385 p.

3. Popova Z.D., Sternin I.A. Cognitive Linguistics M.: AST East-West, 2007. 314 p.