Филологические науки/ Теоретические и методологические проблемы исследования языка

К.ф.н. Костюченкова Н.В.

Новгородский государственный университет имени Ярослава Мудрого, Россия

On the Space Category as Treated by Science Branches

“The Space is considered to be one of the dominant reality comprehended and differentiated by the human being” [Гак, 2000: 127]. It is quite sufficient to have a glimpse at the development of the human society to be convinced that the space component of its existence has played the primal role in the course of the human relationships.

The mental images of the space fragment where an individual is situated, is the matter of the immense importance for him. According to I. Blinnikova, the above-mentioned images are supposed to be the basic units for the processes of planning and performing everyday practical activities of the individual. The units are related to the global structures of the personal experience [see: Блинникова, 1998: 106].

G. Kolshansky remarks that “the space-and-time orientation of the human being is a physical law of every object existing” [Колшанский, 1990: 90].

Various space conceptions have been maintained since the human being started pondering over the fundamental principles of the objective reality. The scientific theories proposed by I. Newton and G. Leibniz are regarded to be the basic ones.

According to I. Newton, the Space is “the primal self-sufficient category” that can be treated as the endless extent comprising all the substance, and therefore, including and “storing” a set of objects. Thus, the Space is neither determined nor dependent upon the objects [Кобозева, 2000: 153].

The above-conveyed idea of “the empty space” is in the opposition to “the filled space” conception by G. Leibniz, who considered the Space as “something relative, being in dependence on the objects comprising in” [Кобозева, 2000: 153].

In the contemporary scientific world, there is no indisputable approach to the problem of the objective space. V. Toporov supports the idea of the “Newton Space” defining it as primal, homogeneous, continuous, independent upon the substance [Топоров, 1983: 227-285].

The Encyclopedia of Psysics, on the contrary, stands for the conception by Leibniz suggesting the following definition – “The Space is the whole complex of relations conveying the coordination of objects, their location to one another and their relative dimensions” [ФЭС IV: 227].

The psychological approach to the idea of the space is also considered to be rather significant since perceptual experience and space sensations are appeared to be the foundation of expressing space relations by means of the language. As B. Rassel notes, the science of psychology deals with the category of space not as the system of relations between physical objects, but as a characteristic feature of human perceptions. The visual field is “a comlex whole, the parts of that are in coherence to one another in different ways”, and manifesting all-dimension relations [Рассел, 1997: 235-236].

Finally, the notion of “the linguistic space” is correlated with conveying the objective physical space in the language, Thus, V. Panfilov truly points out that, since objects, phenomena and events really exist in the space, spatial relations between them have objective characteristics [see: Панфилов, 1977: 12].

We support the viewpoint by V. Kolshansky, maintaining the hypothesis that “the objective aspect of the two worlds – the objective and the subjective , i.e. the extra-human and the human, must be taken into consideration. The only problem of revealing the primary world in the secondary one is regarded to be principal for the human vital functioning” [Колшанский, 1990: 10].

So, it is expedient to distinguish the three notions of the Space – the objective (the real world space), the perceptual (the subjective individual comprehension of the objective space and its revealing in the consciousness) and the linguistic (the relative conveying cognitive space in the language) space.

Since space comprehension is one of the dominant aspects of the world cognition, all the spatial concepts are supposed to be the basis for the linguistic means of expressing objective phenomena and events. While speaking about the most significant ones, they are “place”, “space” [Степанов, 1997: 95-96].

Literature Sources:

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