Practical_Class_3_P

1. Make the list of contributions (theories, ideas, notions) which came to language study thanks to naturalism and are still used by modern linguistics.

August Schleicher formed the theory that a language is an organism, with periods of development, maturity and decline. He explicitly represented languages as perfectly natural organisms that could most conveniently be described using terms drawn from biology: genus, species, and variety. Principles formulated by Schleicher; comparative historical research, the concept of family tree, working methods praform reconstruction, including the designation of an asterisk (*) not testified reconstructed forms (they have used by all comparativists) stayed in linguistics.

2. What is the correlation between language and thinking? Who laid the foundation for the development of the psychological view of language? (Write a short report, 2 pages, Times New Roman, 14).

Human thought is always framed by language. Language is a system of signs used for communication. The origin of language was closely linked with the emergence of thinking, and vice versa. Language is involved not only in terms of thought, but also in its formation. There is a difference in the structure of language and thought. The main units of thinking are concepts, judgments and inferences. The components of language are: the phoneme, morpheme, token offer (in speech), allophone (sound) and others.

Gaiman Steinthal the founder of psychology as a science of language. Steinthal psychological concept can be summarized in the following main ideas:

1) Linguistics refers to the psychological sciences, as language - is a spiritual activity;

2) the subject of linguistics is language as an object of psychological observation. Language - is "a conscious expression of internal, psychological and spiritual movements, conditions and relationships using articulated sounds";

3) "national spirit" is reflected in morals, customs, behavior, traditions, folklore, but most of the language, linguistics as "the best introduction to the psychology of the people";

4) the problem of the nature and origin of language are identical, because it constantly and generated the same way the human soul;

5) to distinguish between substantive (logical) thinking and language.

Thematic thinking - this idea of ​​objects and phenomena of the objective world. Linguistic thinking - idea of ​​the scope vychleneni objective thinking. Got an idea - it is an internal form. The language of thinking associated with "linguistic consciousness";

6) language as a mental phenomenon does not exclude its dependence on society. In individual having mental formation, complex representations that without the influence of other people would not have, or would have occurred very late.

3. Language and society. Make the glossary of linguistic terms (not less than 15) which are of importance for understanding the interrelation between society and language. (E.g., sociolinguistics, language function, social dialectlect, etc.)

The sociological trend - a set of movements, schools and individual concepts that interpret the language primarily as a social phenomenon.

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language serves and is shaped by the social nature of human beings.

The internal linguistics-the branch of linguistic that studies the relationship of language units without resorting to vneshnelingvisticheskim factors.

External linguistics – the branch of linguistic that studies the set of ethnic, social, historical, geographical factors are inextricably linked with the development of language.

Symbolic System - a system uniformly interpreted and are treated messages / signals that can be exchanged in the communication process.

Synchrony - is the axis of simultaneity, where are the phenomena that coexist in a language and with no intervention time.

Diachrony- is the axis sequence where every single thing is placed in the historical development of all changes.

Language function - assignment language related with the implementation of its special role in the life of society.

Сommunicative function of language- language acts as a means of communication (the people in the process of communication transmit to each other their thoughts, volition feelings, emotional experiences affect each other in a certain direction, seeking understanding)

Cognitive function of language- purpose of language convey meaning - the result of thinking, the specific content of proposals

Accumulative function of language- intended of language is retain and display knowledge

Social dialect is a variety of speech associated with a particular social class or occupational group within a society. 

Language norm - a set of the most enduring, traditional elements of language, historically selected and assigned a social language practice; collective set of implementations of the language system accepted by society at a certain stage of its development and perceived it as correct model.

4. Read the article by V. Z. Demyankov (pay attention to his list of language functions). Choose 5 functions which you think are the most important ones. Describe them in short (4 – 5 sentences for each).

Aesthetic function - orientation of the particular style of the text to achieve a particular aesthetic (especially literary) effect.

Expressive function - transfer of the author's opinion: this signaled the expressive intention of the author is required to be transmitted in the translation of texts from one language to another, corresponding to the standards of culture; neglect it makes inadequate translation.

Heuristic function - the function of the use of language when they want to find out the reasons why the reality is there is one, and not the other way. As a result, do not expect to get to the true reasons, but get at least a rough idea about the reasons.

5. Make a summary of the introduction to the book by A. Wierzbicka Understanding Cultures through their Key Words : English, Russian, German, Polish and Japanese(2 pages, Times New Roman, 14).

In this book, Anna Wierzbicka carries the idea that different languages ​​differ significantly with regard to their vocabulary of these differences reflect differences nuclear values ​​of the cultural communities. On the pages of her work the author tries to show that every culture can be investigated, subjected to comparative analysis and is described using the language keywords, this service culture. The theoretical basis of this analysis can be a natural semantic metalanguage, which is reconstructed on the basis of extensive comparative-linguistic research. The book will be interesting not only for linguists but also anthropologists, psychologists and philosophers.