Language is usually defined in two aspects: the first is a system of phonetic, lexical, grammatical means, which are a tool for expressing thoughts, feelings, expressions of will, serving as the most important means of communication between people, i.e. language is a social phenomenon associated in its origin and development with the human community; the second is a type of speech characterized by certain stylistic features (Kazakh language, spoken language).

Language as the main means of human communication is arranged in such a way as to fulfill various functions in accordance with the intentions and desires of an individual linguistic personality and the tasks of the human community. In its most general form, language functions are understood as the use of potential properties of language means in speech for different purposes.

Language is not a natural phenomenon, and, therefore, does not obey biological laws. The language is not inherited, not passed down from senior to junior. It arises precisely in society. It arises spontaneously, gradually turns into a self-organizing system, which is designed to fulfill certain functions.

The first main function of language is cognitive(i.e. cognitive), meaning that language is the most important means of obtaining new knowledge about reality. Cognitive function connects language with human mental activity.

Without language, human communication is impossible, and without communication there can be no society, there cannot be a full-fledged personality (for example, Mowgli).

The second main function of language is communicative, which means that language is the most important means of human communication, i.e. communication, or transmission from one person to another of any message for one purpose or another. Communicating with each other, people convey their thoughts, feelings, influence each other, achieve mutual understanding. Language gives them the opportunity to understand each other and to establish joint work in all spheres of human activity.

The third main function is emotional and motivational... It is designed not only to express the attitude of the author of the speech to its content, but also to influence the listener, reader, interlocutor. It is realized in the means of assessment, intonation, exclamation, interjections.

Other language features:

– thought-forming, since language not only conveys thought, but also shapes it;

– accumulative Is the function of storing and transmitting knowledge about reality. In written monuments, oral folk art, the life of the people, nation, history of the speakers of the language is recorded;

– phatic (contact-establishing) func-
ttion - the function of creating and maintaining contact between interlocutors (formulas for greeting when meeting and saying goodbye, exchange of remarks about the weather, etc.). The content and form of phatic communication depend on gender, age, social status, relationships of interlocutors, however, in general, they are standard and minimally informative. Fatal communication helps to overcome lack of communication, disunity;

– conative function - the function of assimilation of information by the addressee, associated with empathy (the magical power of spells or curses in an archaic society or advertising texts in a modern one);

– appellate function - the function of calling, prompting for certain actions (forms of imperative mood, incentive sentences, etc.);

– aesthetic function - a function of aesthetic impact, manifested in the fact that the reader or listener begins to notice the text itself, its sound and verbal texture. A single word, turnover, phrase begins to like or dislike. Speech can be perceived as something beautiful or ugly, i.e. as an aesthetic object;

– metalanguage function (speech commentary) - the function of interpreting linguistic facts. The use of language in the metalinguistic function is usually associated with difficulties in verbal communication, for example, when talking with a child, a foreigner or another person who does not fully know the given language, style, or professional variety of the language. The metalanguage function is realized in all oral and written statements about the language - in lessons and lectures, in dictionaries, educational and scientific literature about the language.

LANGUAGE - social processed, a historically changeable system of signs, serving as the main means of communication and representation of different forms of existence, each of which has at least one of the forms of implementation - oral or written.

SPEECH - this is one of the types of human communication, i.e. using language to communicate with other people

Types of speech activity:

Speaking

Listening

The main functions of the language are:

communicative (communication function);

thought-forming (function of embodiment and expression of thought);

expressive (the function of expressing the internal state of the speaker);

aesthetic (the function of creating beauty by means of language).

Communicative function lies in the ability of language to serve as a means of communication between people. The language has the units necessary for constructing messages, the rules for their organization, and ensures the emergence of similar images in the minds of the participants in communication. The language also has special means of establishing and maintaining contact between the participants in communication.

From the point of view of the culture of speech, the communicative function involves the installation of participants in speech communication on the fruitfulness and mutual usefulness of communication, as well as a general focus on the adequacy of understanding of speech.

Thought-forming function lies in the fact that language serves as a means of forming and expressing thoughts. The structure of language is organically linked to the categories of thinking. "A word, which alone is capable of making a concept an independent unit in the world of thoughts, adds to it much of itself," wrote the founder of linguistics, Wilhelm von Humboldt (V. Humboldt, Selected Works on Linguistics. - M., 1984, p. 318).

This means that the word singles out and formalizes the concept, and at the same time a relationship is established between the units of thinking and the sign units of the language. That is why W. Humboldt believed that "language should accompany thought. Thought should, keeping up with language, follow from one of its elements to another and find in the language a designation for everything that makes it coherent" (Ibid, p. 345) ... According to Humboldt, "in order to correspond to thinking, language, as far as possible, its structure must correspond to the internal organization of thinking" (Ibid.).

The speech of an educated person is distinguished by the clarity of expressing his own thoughts, the accuracy of retelling other people's thoughts, consistency and informational content.

Expressive the function allows the language to serve as a means of expressing the internal state of the speaker, not only to communicate some information, but also to express the speaker's attitude to the content of the message, to the interlocutor, to the communication situation. Language expresses not only thoughts, but also human emotions. The expressive function presupposes the emotional brightness of speech within the framework of social etiquette.

Artificial languages ​​have no expressive function.

Aesthetic the function is to set the message for its form in unity with the content to satisfy the aesthetic sense of the addressee. The aesthetic function is characteristic primarily for poetic speech (works of folklore, fiction), but not only for it - journalistic and scientific speech, and ordinary colloquial speech can be aesthetically perfect.

The aesthetic function presupposes the richness and expressiveness of speech, its correspondence to the aesthetic tastes of the educated part of society.

language is system(from the Greek. systema - something whole made up of parts). And if this is so, then all its constituent parts should not represent a random set of elements, but some ordered set of them.

What is the systematic nature of the language manifested in? First of all, the fact that the language has a hierarchical organization, in other words, different levels(from lowest to highest), each of which corresponds to a certain language unit.

The following are usually distinguished levels of the language system: phonemic, morphemic, lexical and syntactic... Let us name and characterize the linguistic units corresponding to them.

Phoneme- the simplest unit, indivisible and insignificant, serving to distinguish between the minimum significant units (morphemes and words). For example: NS ort - b ort, st O l - st at l.

Morpheme- the minimum significant unit that is not used independently (prefix, root, suffix, ending).

Word (lexeme)- a unit that serves to name objects, processes, phenomena, signs or points to them. This is the minimum nominative(name) unit language, consisting of morphemes.

Two linguistic units correspond to the syntactic level: a phrase and a sentence.

Collocation Is a combination of two or more words between which there is a semantic and / or grammatical connection. A word combination, like a word, is a nominative unit.

Offer- the main syntactic unit that contains a message about something, a question or an urge. This unit is characterized by semantic design and completeness. Unlike a word - a nominative unit - it is communicative unit, since it serves to transfer information in the process of communication.

Between the units of the language system, certain relationship... Let's talk about them in more detail. The "mechanism" of the language is based on the fact that each language unit is included in two intersecting rows. One row, linear, horizontal, we directly observe in the text: this is syntagmatic series, where units of the same level are combined (from the Greek. syntagma - something connected). In this case, the units of the lower level serve as the building material for the units of the higher level.

An example of syntagmatic relations is the combination of sounds: [gurt mlskvá]; grammatical compatibility of words and morphemes: play football, play the violin; blue ball, blue notebook, under + windows + nickname; lexical collocation: writing desk, work at the desk, mahogany table -"Piece of furniture" plentiful table, dietary table -"Food", "food", passport office, information desk -"Branch in the institution" and other types of relations of linguistic units.

The second row is non-linear, vertical, not given in direct observation. it paradigmatic series, i.e. this unit and other units of the same level associated with it by one or another association - formal, meaningful similarity, opposition and other relations (from the Greek. paradeigma - example, sample).

The simplest example of a paradigmatic relationship is a paradigm (pattern) of declension or conjugation of a word: house, ~ a, ~ at ...; I'm coming, ~ eat, ~ em ... Paradigms form interrelated meanings of the same polysemantic word ( table- 1. piece of furniture; 2. food, nutrition; 3. branch in the institution); synonymous series (cold-blooded, restrained, unflappable, balanced, calm); antonymic pairs (wide - narrow, open - close); units of the same class (verbs of motion, designations of kinship, names of trees, etc.), etc.

It follows from what has been said that linguistic units are stored in our linguistic consciousness not in isolation, but as interrelated elements of a kind of "blocks" - paradigms. The use of these units in speech is determined by their internal properties, by the place that one or another unit occupies among other units of a given class. Such storage of "language material" is convenient and economical. In everyday life, we usually do not notice any paradigms. Nevertheless, they are one of the foundations of language knowledge. After all, it is no coincidence that when a student makes a mistake, the teacher asks him to decline or conjugate this or that word, form the desired form, clarify the meaning, choose the most suitable word from the synonymous series, in other words, turn to the paradigm.

So, the consistency of a language is manifested in its level organization, the existence of various linguistic units that are in certain relationships with each other.


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"Being the most important means of communication, language unites people, regulates their interpersonal and social interaction, coordinates their practical activities, participates in the formation of worldview systems and national images of the world, ensures the accumulation and storage of information, including information related to the history and historical experience of the people and personal experience of the individual, dismembers, classifies and consolidates concepts, forms the consciousness and self-consciousness of a person, serves as a material and form of artistic creativity "( Arutyunova N.D. Language functions // Russian language. Encyclopedia. - M., 1997.S. 609).

    The main functions of the language are:

    • communicative(communication function);

      thought-forming(function of embodiment and expression of thought);

      expressive(function of expressing the internal state of the speaker);

      aesthetic(the function of creating a beautiful language means).

Communicative function lies in the ability of language to serve as a means of communication between people. The language has the units necessary for constructing messages, the rules for their organization, and ensures the emergence of similar images in the minds of the participants in communication. The language also has special means of establishing and maintaining contact between the participants in communication. From the point of view of the culture of speech, the communicative function presupposes the installation of the participants in speech communication on the fruitfulness and mutual usefulness of communication, as well as a general focus on the adequacy of understanding of speech. Achieving the functional efficiency of communication is impossible without knowledge and adherence to the norms of the literary language. Thought-forming function lies in the fact that language serves as a means of forming and expressing thoughts. The structure of language is organically linked to the categories of thinking. "A word that alone is capable of making a concept an independent unit in the world of thoughts adds to it much of itself," wrote the founder of linguistics W. von Humboldt ( Humboldt W. Selected Works on Linguistics. M., 1984.S. 318). This means that the word singles out and formalizes the concept, and at the same time a relationship is established between the units of thinking and the sign units of the language. That is why W. Humboldt believed that "language should accompany thought. Thought should, keeping up with language, follow from one of its elements to another and find in the language a designation for everything that makes it coherent" (ibid., P. 345) ... According to Humboldt, "in order to correspond to thinking, language, as far as possible, its structure must correspond to the internal organization of thinking" (ibid.). The speech of an educated person is distinguished by the clarity of expressing his own thoughts, the accuracy of retelling other people's thoughts, consistency and informational content. The expressive function allows the language to serve as a means of expressing the internal state of the speaker, not only to communicate some information, but also to express the speaker's attitude to the content of the message, to the interlocutor, to the communication situation. Language expresses not only thoughts, but also human emotions. Expressive the function presupposes the emotional brightness of speech within the framework of etiquette accepted in society. Artificial languages ​​have no expressive function. Aesthetic the function is to set the message for its form in unity with the content to satisfy the aesthetic sense of the addressee. The aesthetic function is characteristic primarily for poetic speech (folklore, fiction), but not only for it - journalistic and scientific speech, and everyday colloquial speech can be aesthetically perfect. The aesthetic function presupposes the richness and expressiveness of speech, its correspondence to the aesthetic tastes of the educated part of society.

Language is not only a system of signs that symbolically mediates the human world, but also the most important instrument of human activity. Being the most important means of communication, language unites people, regulates their interpersonal and social interaction, coordinates their practical activities, ensures the accumulation and storage of information resulting from the historical experience of the people and the personal experience of the individual, forms the consciousness of the individual (individual consciousness) and the consciousness of society (public consciousness ), serves as a material and form of artistic creation.

Thus, language is closely related to all human activity and performs various functions.

The main ones are: communicative; cognitive (cognitive); nominative; accumulative.

The communicative function of language is associated with the fact that language is primarily a means of communication between people. It allows one individual - the speaker - to express their thoughts, and the other - the perceiver - to understand them, that is, to somehow react, take note, and accordingly change their behavior or their mental attitudes. The act of communication would not be possible without language.

Communication means communication, exchange of information. In other words, language arose and exists primarily to enable people to communicate.

The communicative function of the language is carried out due to the fact that the language itself is a system of signs: there is simply no other way to communicate. And signs, in turn, are intended to convey information from person to person.

The cognitive, or cognitive, function of language (from the Latin cognition - knowledge, cognition) is associated with the fact that human consciousness is realized or fixed in the signs of the language. Language is an instrument of consciousness, reflects the results of a person's mental activity.

Any images and concepts of our consciousness are realized by ourselves and those around us only when they are clothed in a linguistic form. Hence the idea of ​​the inextricable connection between thinking and language.

The connection between language and thinking has been established even with the help of physiometric evidence. The person being tested was asked to think over some difficult task, and while he was thinking, special sensors took data from the speech apparatus of a silent person (from the larynx, tongue) and detected the nervous activity of the speech apparatus. That is, the mental work of the subjects "out of habit" was reinforced by the activity of the speech apparatus.

The nominative function of language is directly derived from the cognitive one. The cognized must be named, given a name. The nominative function is associated with the ability of the signs of a language to symbolically designate things.

The name allows you to fix what has already been learned. Without a name, any known fact of reality, any thing would remain in our minds as a one-time accident. By naming words, we create our own - understandable and convenient picture of the world.

The act of naming is of great importance in a person's life. When we meet with something, we first of all call it. Otherwise, we can neither comprehend what we have encountered ourselves, nor convey a message about it to other people. The accumulative function of language is associated with the most important purpose of language - to collect and store information, evidence of human cultural activity. A language lives much longer than a person, and sometimes even longer than entire nations. There are so-called dead languages ​​that survived the peoples who spoke these languages. No one speaks these languages, except for the specialists who study them.

The process of accumulation and exchange of information is even more accelerated due to the ever increasing introduction of new high-speed information technologies into our life.

All the gigantic volumes of information produced by humanity exist in linguistic form. In other words, any piece of this information can in principle be uttered and perceived by both contemporaries and descendants. This is the accumulative function of language, with the help of which mankind accumulates and transmits information both in modern times and in the historical perspective - along the baton of generations.

Various researchers identify many more important functions of the language.

Fatic (contact-establishing) - the function of creating and maintaining contact between interlocutors (formulas for greeting when meeting and saying goodbye, exchange of remarks about the weather, etc.). Communication takes place for the sake of communication and is mainly unconsciously (less often - consciously) aimed at establishing or maintaining contact. The content and form of phatic communication depend on gender, age, social status, relationships of interlocutors, however, in general, such communication is standard and minimally informative. The standard, superficiality of phatic communication helps to establish contacts between people, overcome disunity and lack of communication;

Emotive (emotionally expressive) - an expression of the subjective-psychological attitude of the author of the speech to its content. It is realized in the means of assessment, intonation, exclamation, interjections;

Conative - the function of assimilation of information by the addressee, associated with empathy (the magical power of spells or curses in an archaic society or advertising texts - in a modern one);

Appellative - the function of calling, prompting for certain actions (forms of imperative mood, incentive sentences);

Aesthetic - a function of aesthetic impact, manifested in the fact that speakers begin to notice the text itself, its sound and verbal texture. A single word, turnover, phrase begins to like or dislike. An aesthetic attitude to language means, therefore, that speech (precisely the speech itself, and not what is communicated about) can be perceived as beautiful or ugly, i.e. as an aesthetic object. The aesthetic function of language, being the main one for a literary text, is also present in everyday speech, manifesting itself in its rhythm and imagery.

Summing up, it can be noted that all functions are reduced to four main ones.

The communicative function provides social connections, life in society.

Cognitive function provides thinking, cognition and orientation in the world.

The nominative function names objects and phenomena.

The accumulative function ensures the continuity of knowledge and the existence of a person in history.

Thus, the language is multifunctional. He accompanies a person in a variety of life circumstances. With the help of language, a person learns the world, remembers the past and dreams of the future, studies and teaches, works, communicates with others.

Language is a naturally arising in human society and developing system of signs, clothed in sound (oral speech) or graphic (written speech) form. Language is capable of expressing the entire set of concepts and thoughts of a person and is intended for communication purposes. Outstanding Russian linguist A.A. Potebnya said: "Language is always as much an end as a means, as much as it is created as it is used." Language proficiency is an integral part of a person, and the emergence of language coincides with the time of the formation of a person.

The naturalness of occurrence and limitless possibilities for expressing the most abstract and complex concepts distinguish language from the so-called artificial languages , that is, languages ​​developed specifically for special purposes, for example, programming languages, languages ​​of logic, mathematics, chemistry, consisting of special characters; traffic signs, maritime signaling, Morse code.

The term "language" itself is ambiguous, since it can mean 1) any means of communication (for example, programming languages, body language, animal language); 2) natural human language as a specific property of a person; 3) national language ( Russian, German, Chinese); 4) the language of any group of people, one or more people ( children's language, the language of the writer)... Until now, scientists find it difficult to say how many languages ​​there are in the world; their number ranges from 2.5 to 5 thousand.

There are two forms of language existence, corresponding to the concepts language and speech , the first should be understood as a code, a system of signs that exists in the minds of people, speech as a direct implementation of the language in oral and written texts. Speech means both the speaking process itself and its result - speech activity fixed by memory or writing. Speech and language form a single phenomenon of the human language in general and of each specific national language, taken in its specific state. The speech is incarnation, implementation language, which reveals itself in speech and only through it embodies its communicative purpose. If language is an instrument of communication, then speech is a form of communication produced by this instrument. Speech is always concrete and unique in contrast to the abstract and reproducible signs of language; it is relevant, correlated with some life event, language is potential; speech unfolds in time and space, it is determined by the goals and objectives of speaking, by the participants in communication, while the language is abstracted from these parameters. Speech is infinite both in time and space, and the language system is finite, relatively closed; speech is material, it consists of sounds or letters perceived by the senses, language includes abstract signs - analogs of speech units; speech is active and dynamic, the language system is passive and static; speech is linear, but language has a level organization. All changes that take place in the language over time are conditioned by speech, are initially made in it, and then are fixed in the language.

Being the most important means of communication, language unites people, regulates their interpersonal and social interaction, coordinates their practical activities, participates in the formation of concepts, forms human consciousness and self-consciousness, that is, it plays a vital role in the main spheres of human activity - communicative, social, practical, informational, spiritual and aesthetic. The functions of a language are unequal: those are considered fundamental, the implementation of which predetermined its emergence and constitutive properties. The main thing is considered communicative function language, which determines its main characteristic - the presence of a material shell (sound) and a system of rules for encoding and decoding information. It is thanks to the ability of the language to perform a communicative function - to serve as an instrument of communication, that human society develops, transmits information in time and space that is vital, serves social progress and the establishment of contact between different societies.

To serve as a tool for expressing thoughts is the second fundamental function of language, which is called cognitive or logical (as well as epistemological or cognitive)... The structure of the language is inextricably linked with the rules of thinking, and the main significant units of the language - morpheme, word, phrase, sentence - are analogs of logical categories - concepts, judgments, logical connections. The communicative and cognitive functions of the language are inextricably linked, since they have a common basis. Language is adapted for the expression of thoughts and for communication, but these two most important functions are realized in speech. They, in turn, are closely related to more specific functions, the number of which varies. Thus, the famous psychologist and linguist K. Buhler identified three most important functions of language: a representative - the ability to designate extra-linguistic reality, expressive - the ability to express the inner state of the speaker, appellate - the ability to influence the addressee of speech. These three functions are inextricably linked with the communicative, as they are determined based on the structure of the communication process, the structure of the speech act, the necessary components of which are the speaker, the listener and what is being reported. However, the expressive and representative functions are closely related to the cognitive, since, when communicating something, the speaker comprehends and evaluates what is being reported. Another famous scientist - R.O. Jacobson - identified six unequal functions of the language: referential, or nominative , serving to designate the surrounding world, extra-linguistic categories; emotive expressing the attitude of the author of the speech to its content; conative , which determines the orientation of the speaker or writer towards the listener or reader. The scientist considered these functions to be the main ones. Closely related to the conative function is magic function , designed to influence the psyche of the listener, causing him to a state of meditation, ecstasy, serving the purposes of suggestion. The magical function of the language is realized with the help of certain techniques: spells, curses, conspiracies, divination, advertising texts, oaths, oaths, slogans and calls and others.

In the free communication of people, it is realized phatic, or contact-establishing function. The phatic function of language is served by various formulas of etiquette, appeals, the purpose of which is to establish, continue and stop communication. Language serves not only as an instrument of communication between people, but also as a means of knowing the language itself; in this case it is implemented metalanguage function, since a person receives knowledge about a language with the help of the language itself. The intention that the message with its form in unity with the content satisfies the aesthetic sense of the addressee creates the poetic function of language, which, being the main one for an artistic text, is also present in everyday speech, manifesting itself in its rhythm, imagery, metaphoricity, and expressiveness. Learning a language, a person simultaneously assimilates the national culture and traditions of the people who are the bearers of the given language, since the language also acts as the keeper of the national identity of the people, its culture and history, which is due to such a special function of the language as cumulative ... The peculiar spiritual world of the people, its cultural and historical values ​​are fixed both in the elements of the language - words, phraseology, grammar, syntax, and in speech - in the set of texts created in this language.

Thus, all the functions of the language can be subdivided into the main ones - communicative and cognitive (cognitive) and secondary ones, which are distinguished insofar as they create the main types of speech acts or specific types of speech activity. The basic functions of a language are mutually dependent on each other when using the language, but in individual acts of speech or texts they are revealed to varying degrees. Private functions are associated with the main ones, so the contact-setting function, conative and magical functions, as well as the cumulative function are most closely related to the communicative function. The most closely related to the cognitive function are such as nominative (naming objects of reality), referential (representation and reflection in the language of the surrounding world), emotive (assessment of facts, phenomena and events), poetic (artistic development and understanding of reality).

Being the main instrument of human communication, language manifests itself in speech activity, which is one of the types of human social activity. Like any social activity, speech communication is conscious and purposeful. It consists of individual acts of speech, or speech (communicative) acts, which are its dynamic units. The following elements must be involved in a speech act: the speaker and the addressee, who have a certain fund of general knowledge and ideas, the setting and purpose of speech communication, as well as the fragment of objective reality about which the message is being made. These components form the pragmatic side of speech activity, under the influence of which the coordination (adaptation) of the utterance to the moment of speech is carried out. To perform a speech act means to pronounce articulate sounds belonging to a common language; build an utterance from the words of a given language and according to the rules of its grammar; provide the statement with meaning and relate it to the objective world; give your speech purposefulness; to influence the addressee and thereby create a new situation, that is, to achieve the desired effect by speaking.

The informative orientation of communicative acts is very diverse and can be complicated by additional communicative tasks. With the help of speech acts, you can not only convey some information, but also complain, brag, threaten, flatter and others. Some communication goals can be achieved not only with the help of speech, but also non-verbal means , for example, facial expressions, gestures - an invitation to enter, sit down, a threat, a request to be silent. Other communication goals, on the other hand, can only be achieved with using verbal means - an oath, a promise, a congratulation, since speech in this case is equivalent to the action itself. According to the purpose of the statement, various types of communicative acts are distinguished: informative, informative; prompting; etiquette formulas; expressing emotional reactions to the reported.

Speech activity is an object of study by linguists (psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, phonetics, stylistics), psychologists, physiologists, specialists in higher nervous activity, in the theory of communication, acoustics, philosophers, sociologists, literary scholars. In linguistics, as it were, two main areas of research are formed: in one, language systems are studied, in the other, speech. Linguistics of speech studies typified phenomena that are associated with participants in communication and other conditions of communication; it splits into two interacting areas: linguistics of the text and the theory of speech activity and speech acts. Linguistics of the text studies the structure of speech works, their division, methods of creating coherence of the text, the frequency of occurrence of certain language units in certain types of text, the semantic and structural completeness of the text, speech norms in different functional styles, the main types of speech - monologue, dialogue, polylogue), features of written and oral communication. The theory of speech activity studies the processes of speech production and speech perception, the mechanisms of speech errors, communication goals, the connection of speech acts with the conditions of their course, factors that ensure the effectiveness of a speech act, the relationship of speech activity to other types of human social activity. If the theory of the text is inextricably linked with literary criticism and stylistics, then the theory of speech activity is developed in cooperation with psychology, psychophysiology and sociology.

However, not all languages ​​are capable of performing a communicative function and participating in speech activity. So, languages ​​that have gone out of use and are known on the basis of written monuments or records that have come down to our time are called dead... The process of extinction of languages ​​is taking place especially in those countries where native speakers are pushed into isolated areas and, in order to be included in the general life of the country, must switch to its main language (English in America and Australia; Russian in Russia). The use of a foreign language in boarding schools, colleges and other secondary and higher educational institutions plays a special role in speeding up this process. Many languages ​​of the High North, North America, Australia have become or are becoming dead; they can be judged mainly on the basis of descriptions drawn up before their extinction.

With the extinction of a language at the last stages of its existence, it becomes characteristic only for certain age and social groups: the oldest age group retains the language for the longest time, with the physical death of which it dies. A dying language can also be used by preschool children, but in conditions of learning in a non-native language, they can almost completely lose their native language, switching to a common language for a given region or country. This process, which is facilitated by the spread of the main language by the media, leads to the rapid extinction of small languages ​​in the second half of the twentieth century. In earlier eras, the main factors in the extinction of languages ​​could be the mass destruction of the conquered peoples during the creation of large empires, such as the ancient Persian or the imposition of the main language of the empire, the Byzantine, Roman.

Dead languages ​​have often survived as a language of worship for millennia after being driven out of other spheres of communication. So, the Catholic Church still uses the Latin language, the Christians of Egypt - the Coptic language, the Buddhists of Mongolia - the Tibetan language. A rarer case is the simultaneous use of the cult language as a class and literary language, as was used Sanskrit in ancient India, Latin in medieval Europe, Church Slavonic in medieval Russia. The population of these regions in colloquial use used living languages, for the most part dialects, and Latin, Sanskrit or Church Slavonic were used as the languages ​​of church, science, culture, literature and inter-dialectal communication. In exceptional social conditions, it is possible to transform the dead language of the cult into a spoken language, as happened in Israel. Hebrew fell out of use in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. and remained the language of religious practice and high-style spiritual and secular literature. However, in the second half of the 18th century. it begins to revive as the language of educational and fiction literature, and from the second half of the 19th century. Hebrew is also becoming a spoken language. Hebrew is currently the official state language in Israel.

The need for communication between representatives of different ethnic and linguistic groups gives rise to linguistic contacts, as a result of which there is an interaction of two or more languages, influencing the structure and vocabulary of these languages. Contacts occur thanks to constantly repeating dialogues, constant communication between speakers of different languages, in which both languages ​​are used either simultaneously by both speakers, or separately by each of them. The results of contacts have a different effect on different levels of the language, depending on the degree of their elements entering the global holistic structure. As a result, contact affects differently at different levels of the language. The most common result of such contacts is the borrowing of a word from one language to another. One of the necessary conditions for the implementation of linguistic contacts is bilingualism, or bilingualism. On the basis of bilingualism, there is a mutual influence of languages. According to the latest data from neurolinguistics, language contacts are made within each of the bilingual speakers in such a way that one hemisphere of the cerebral cortex speaks one language, while the other hemisphere understands or knows to a limited extent the second language. Through the channels of interhemispheric communication, the forms of one of the languages ​​that are in contact are transmitted to the other hemisphere, where they can be included in the text spoken in another language, or have an indirect effect on the structure of this text.

In certain areas of the spread of a language, linguistic changes can occur in different directions and lead to different results. Initially, slight changes in the language of two neighboring regions can accumulate over time, and eventually the mutual understanding of the people who speak these languages ​​becomes difficult, and sometimes impossible. This process is called differentiation in language development. The reverse process - the gradual erasure of the differences between the two variants of the language system, resulting in complete coincidence, is called integration. These opposite processes occur constantly, however, at different stages of history, their relationship is not the same, each new era brings something new to these processes. Thus, the fragmentation of the tribe caused the fragmentation of languages. The separated parts of the tribes over time began to speak differently from their former relatives: a process of language differentiation took place. If the main occupation of the population is hunting or cattle breeding, the process of differentiation occurs slowly, since the nomadic way of life forces separate clans and tribes to collide with each other; this constant contact of kindred tribes restrains centrifugal forces, prevents the endless fragmentation of the language. The striking similarity of many Turkic languages ​​is the result of the past nomadic way of life of many Turkic peoples; the same can be said about the Evenk language. Agriculture, or life in the mountains, greatly contributes to the differentiation of languages. So, in Dagestan and in the north of Azerbaijan, there are 6 relatively large peoples and more than 20 small ones, each speaking their own language. In general, in the absence of developed economic exchange and the domination of the natural economy, the processes of language differentiation prevail over the processes of integration.

Thus, many changes in the language, in particular, arising as a result of linguistic contacts, are carried out initially in speech, and then, repeated many times, they become a fact of the language. The key figure in this case is a native speaker of the language or languages, a linguistic personality. Language personality any speaker of a language is called, characterized on the basis of an analysis of the texts produced by him in terms of the use of language units in them to reflect his vision of reality and the achievement of certain goals as a result of speech activity. The linguistic personality or the person speaking is the central figure of modern linguistics. The very content of this term contains the idea of ​​gaining knowledge about an individual and an author of texts, who is distinguished by his own character, ideas, interests, social and psychological preferences and attitudes. However, it is impossible to study each individual individually, therefore knowledge about the speaker is usually generalized, a typical representative of a given linguistic community and a narrower speech community included in it, the aggregate or average carrier of a given language, is analyzed. Knowledge about the typical carrier of any language can be integrated, as a result of which it is possible to draw conclusions about the representative of the human race, an inherent property of which is the use of sign systems, the main of which is the natural human language. The complexity of the approach to the study of language through the prism of a linguistic personality is that language appears as a text produced by a specific individual, as a system used by a typical representative of a specific linguistic community, as a person's ability to generally use language as the main means of communication.

Researchers come to the linguistic personality as a linguistic object in different ways: psycholinguistic - from studying the psychology of language, speech and speech activity in normal and altered states of consciousness, linguodidactic - from analyzing the processes of learning a language, philological - from studying the language of fiction.

§ 12. Language as a social phenomenon, as the most important means of human communication, performs a number of social functions in people's lives.

The word "function" (from lat ... functio- "execution") is ambiguous. In general use, it can denote such concepts: meaning, purpose, role; duty, scope of responsibilities; work, type of activity; a certain phenomenon, depending on another, the main phenomenon and serving as a form of its manifestation, implementation. This word is used in various ways as a scientific term, i.e. has a number of special meanings. As a linguistic concept, it is also used ambiguously. According to some linguists, recently in the science of language this term (along with the term "structure") has become the most ambiguous and stereotyped.

The compound linguistic term "language function", or "linguistic function", denotes the purpose, purpose, or "predestination, potential orientation of the language system to meet the needs of communication (communication) and the needs of mental activity." Following V. A. Avrorin, the concept of the function of language can be defined as "a practical manifestation of the essence of language, the implementation of its purpose in the system of social phenomena, the specific action of language, conditioned by its very nature, something without which language cannot exist, just as matter does not exist. motionless" .

When we talk about linguistic functions in general theoretical terms, we mean, first of all, the functions of language in general, language as a universal phenomenon, i.e. functions specific to different languages. They should not be confused with the specific functions of individual languages ​​associated with the special conditions of their functioning. You can compare such functions of the Russian language as, for example: to be a means of interethnic communication of the peoples of Russia or Soviet peoples (in the former USSR), to act as one of the international languages, etc. In general linguistics, including in the course "Introduction to Linguistics ", usually considered those functions that appear in any language, are carried out or can be carried out by each language.

Sometimes, as linguistic functions, varieties of language are considered that serve different spheres of human activity, i.e. talks about the performance of the language of the functions of the folk spoken language, the oral form of the literary language, the language of science and technology, the language of culture, art, the language of social and political life, or the function of the language used in various spheres of social and political life, the function of the language of teaching in primary , secondary schools and universities, etc. In such cases it would be more correct to speak not about the functions of the language, but about the spheres of its application.

Speaking about linguistic functions, one should distinguish between such functions of language as a means of human communication, as an integral system, and the functions of elements of this system - different linguistic units, their types, for example, the functions of a word, sentence, sound of speech, verbal stress, etc. Here we will only talk about the proper language functions.

The main, most important function of language is considered to be communication function, or communicative(from lat. communicatio- "communication, message"). This function is understood as the purpose, the purpose of the language to serve as a means of communication between people, their transmission of messages, exchange of information. In the process of communicating with the help of language, people transmit to each other their thoughts, feelings, desires, moods, emotional experiences, etc.

The presence of a language of a communicative function is due to the very nature of the language; this function finds its expression in the generally accepted understanding of language as the most important means of human communication. The communicative function is "the original, primary, for the sake of which the human language appeared"; this idea is also expressed in the above statement by K. Marx and F. Engels that "language arises only from a need, from the urgent need to communicate with other people."

Language exists, functions insofar as it realizes its purpose - to serve as a means of communication between people. If, due to certain conditions, the language ceases to fulfill this purpose, it ceases to exist or (in the presence of writing) is preserved in the form of a dead language, as mentioned above.

In order to exchange information, thoughts about the reality around us, about specific objects and phenomena, it is necessary to create, form, construct the corresponding thoughts that do not exist in a finished form, but appear only as a result of a person's mental activity, carried out (mainly or only) with language help, as discussed in the previous section. Recall that units of thinking (concepts, judgments) are expressed by linguistic means (words and sentences). On this basis, a special function of the language is distinguished - thought-forming function, thought-forming, or constructive(from lat. constructio -"construction"), sometimes called mental, or the function of the tool of thinking. This function of the language, in contrast to the communicative one, is not recognized by all linguists. According to some linguists, the constructive function belongs not to language, but to thinking.

Usually thoughts are formed, constructed by a person with the aim of transmitting to others, and this is possible only if they have a material expression, a sound shell, i.e. expressed by linguistic means. "In order ... for a thought to be transmitted to another, it is necessary to express this thought in a form that is comprehensible to perception, it is necessary for the thought to receive material embodiment. The most important means for this ... is the human language." It is language, being closely related to abstract thinking, which provides the ability to "convey any information, including general judgments, generalizations about objects that are not present in a speech situation, about the past and the future, about fantastic or simply untrue situations." Thus, it should be recognized that, along with the functions discussed above, the language also performs thought expression function, or, more simply, expressive function, which is also called expressive(from lat. expressio- "expression"), or explicative(from lat. explicatio- "explanation, deployment").

Expressing his thoughts, judgments about the world around him, about various objects and phenomena of reality, the speaker can simultaneously express his attitude to the content of speech, to the reported facts, events, etc., his feelings, emotions, experiences or empathy in connection with the information being reported. ... This is most clearly manifested in artistic, poetic speech and is comprehended through special selection, purposeful use of various means of the common language, "the specific artistic organization of linguistic material." For these purposes, such linguistic means are used as, for example: introductory words and phrases, modal particles, interjections, significant words with emotional, expressive, stylistic coloring, figurative meanings of words, derivational affixes with evaluative meaning, word order in a sentence, intonation (for example , intonation of joy, admiration, anger, etc.). In this regard, a special function of language stands out - the function of expressing emotions, feelings, experiences and moods, or, more simply, "the function of expressing the feelings and will of the speaker", which in special literature is usually called artistic, poetic, aesthetic, emotional, or emotive. This function of language can be defined as "the ability of language to act as a form of art, to become the embodiment of an artistic intention", "to serve as a means of embodying an artistic intention, a means of creating a work of art"; its essence lies in the fact that "language, acting as a form of verbal art, becomes the embodiment of artistic intention, a means of figurative reflection of reality, refracted in the mind of the artist."

Language is not only a means of reflecting reality, objects and phenomena of the surrounding world, a means of expressing human thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc., but also the main means and the most important source of knowledge of the world, processes and phenomena occurring in it. In other words, the language performs cognitive function, or, otherwise, gnostic, epistemological(from the Greek. gnosis -"knowledge, knowledge" and logos- "word, teaching"), cognitive(Wed lat. cognoscere- "learn, learn", cognitum- "to learn, to know").

The simplest way to cognize the external world is sensory perception, however, not all objects, their signs, properties, etc. are perceived and cognized by the senses. In particular, abstract concepts such as space, movement, speed, etc. are completely inaccessible to sensory perception. Yes, and with the help of the senses, you can get only a very superficial idea about specific objects. Deep and comprehensive knowledge of the surrounding world is possible only with the help of language.

The participation of language in the knowledge of reality manifests itself, as is known, in the process of thinking, in the formation of concepts and judgments, which are expressed in words and sentences. Without the participation of language, linguistic means, the scientific, research activity of people is unthinkable, as a result of which our knowledge is constantly enriched with new information, new information about the world around us, about the phenomena being studied.

In the process of cognition, communication between people plays an extremely important role in order to exchange information and experience. Such an exchange is possible not only through direct oral communication, but also when reading books, newspapers, magazines, while listening to radio broadcasts, watching television, films, theater performances, etc. The process of cognition is especially intensive during study, in training sessions. All this is possible with the participation of the language.

As noted above, language is not only a means, but also a source of knowledge about the world around us. "The language itself carries the information contained in its signs." This or that information contains all the significant units of the language - morphemes, words, phrases, sentences. "The content side of the significant units of the language, ie the meaning of words and word components, the meaning of phrases, the semantics of propositional structures, is a picture of the world processed by human thought (in each language in a slightly different way), formed as a result of a long-term analytical, cognitive activities of many previous generations ".

The source of human knowledge is not only specific language units, but also certain linguistic categories, in particular grammatical ones. So, for example, a noun as a part of speech denotes an object (in a broad sense), or objectivity, an adjective is a sign of an object, a numeral is a number, a number of objects, a verb is an action, a process. The same can be said about the lexical and grammatical categories of nouns, adjectives and other parts of speech, about the categories of number, gender, animation, degree of comparison, time, mood, etc.

It should be noted that the cognitive function of language (as well as the constructive function) is not recognized by all scientists. Some linguists believe that "this function is inherent in human thinking, and language is only a tool that is used in the process of its implementation," that language does not perform a cognitive function, but only a function of a means of cognition. It seems, however, that this difference is not fundamental. After all, language is not only a cognitive means, but also a means of communication. It is generally accepted that language performs the function of communication, or a communicative function, precisely because it is means communication of people; it can equally be argued that language as a means of cognition performs a cognitive function.

Closely related to the cognitive function of language accumulative function(Wed lat. accumulatio- "accumulation, dumping in a heap"), i.e. the function of accumulating, consolidating and transferring social experience, or "a means of consolidating and transferring the achievements of human thinking, human knowledge." The essence of this function is that "language, in a certain sense, accumulates in itself the social experience of mankind and knowledge acquired in the process of life," which "are deposited primarily in significant vocabulary, to a certain extent also in grammar, reflecting more or less measure indirectly, the connection and relationship of reality. " With the help of language, the acquired knowledge and experience is spread between people, becomes the property of different peoples, is passed from generation to generation, which ensures the accumulation and constant enrichment of experience and knowledge, the development of science, technology, etc. "If language did not make such transfer of knowledge possible, then each generation would have to start in the development of knowledge from an empty space, and then there would be no progress in science, technology or culture."

Some linguists, along with the named functions of the language, distinguish and describe such functions as regulatory, i.e. "a function that regulates relations between people in the process of communication"; phatic (or contact, contact-establishing), nominative (name) and some others, which, in our opinion, are not of particular interest.

  • Cm.: Jacobson R. Development of a target language model in European linguistics in the period between the two wars // New in linguistics. 1965. no. 4, p. 377.
  • L. A. Kiseleva Communicative linguistic functions and the semantic structure of verbal meaning // Problems of semantics. M., 1974.S. 67.
  • V. A. Avrorin Language functions. P. 354; Its the same. O the subject of sociolinguistics. P. 34.
  • Cm.: V. G. Kostomarov The problem of social functions of language and the concept of "world language" // Sociolinguistic problems of developing countries. M., 1975.S. 241–242.