The vast distance traveled from the idea of the sacrament of sacred texts containing divine meaning (which imposed a strict prohibition on any deviation from the words of the scriptures) to the modern and difficult-to-grasp multiplicity of approaches to the study and interpretation of any texts cannot but amaze. The inviolability of divine messages did not exclude attempts to comprehend their innermost meaning, and therefore, since ancient times, the interpretation of sacred texts has fascinated the best minds of mankind. The Indian Vedas, created many centuries before our era, became the first monument, the study of which was perceived as a matter of primary importance; the slightest deviation from what was written in the Vedas was considered fraught with terrible consequences. The collection of ritual and magical texts of the ancient Egyptians, the Books of the Pyramids, also created long before our era, refers to phenomena of the same order, and in both cases the interpretation of the texts resulted in the accumulation and deepening of knowledge about the language. In early Christianity, discrepancies in the interpretation of divine revelations caused painful intra-church conflicts; the further development of theology invariably led to zealous attention to the problems of the language of religious texts. By the twentieth century, hermeneutics, as an artistic interpretation of biblical texts, was firmly embedded in the orbit of philosophy and linguistics.
It is obvious that interest in language has existed for thousands of years; this article sets a very modest task: to trace the manifestations of this interest within the limits of only one twentieth century.
The turn of the twentieth century became an important milestone in the history of mankind, marked by drastic changes that, with the light hand of the American philosopher and author of works on the history of science, T. Kuhn, were called scientific revolutions. Using his terminology, we can talk about the third revolution in cognition, that is, the «Einsteinian» revolution in natural science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is followed by the scientific and technological revolution, which dates back to the 50s of the last century.
How are these stages of great upheavals, mainly in the field of natural science and technical knowledge, related to linguistics? The facts show that there is a connection; in any case, it is difficult to explain the coincidence of the cardinal changes in linguistics with the revolutionary changes in natural sciences and technology by chance alone; the reasons for such coincidences are undoubtedly deeper.
The first stage of fundamental changes in the evolution of linguistics in the 1920s coincided with great discoveries in the field of non-humanitarian sciences. In this regard, it is enough to recall, for example, the emergence of the theory of quantum mechanics in the same decade and much more.
This stage in the development of linguistics is associated with the awakening of scientific interest among philosophers in natural language as a priority object of research. At that time, analytical philosophy received an impetus for development with its relentless attention to the logical clarification of language, its contradictions and paradoxes. For the Austrian philosopher L. Wittgenstein, language means the limit of thinking. Thinking «behind» language, according to him, simply does not exist, and therefore clarity of language is the highest value.
Nowadays, linguistics, which has become the «progenitor» of many related branches of knowledge, is able, together with them, to provide a large number of various tools designed to make the learning process of native or foreign languages more effective. Familiarization with the history of the emergence of such «subsidiary» sciences in the twentieth century can be useful and instructive, and it may even make it possible to better understand one’s own pedagogical experience. According to the fair remark of T. According to Kuhn, «the fact that scientists are usually not interested in and do not discuss the question of what gives legitimacy to particular problems and solutions leads us to believe that they know the answer to them at least intuitively» [1, p. 82].
A brief overview of the trends in linguistics that bear the stamp of novelty and first declared themselves in the twentieth century allows us to identify three stages of its development: new areas of research either appeared, separated from linguistics and gained independence; — or these new areas entered a new stage of their development. For linguistics, four decades have become such times of rapid change: the 20s, 50s, 70s and 90s.
The 1920s should be considered the first significant stage in the evolution of linguistics in the last century. This decade can be rightfully considered the time when irreversible qualitative changes took place in the science of language. Linguistics as the science of language has become the epicenter of numerous studies, and new branches of knowledge have begun to rapidly branch off from it. However, this phenomenon cannot be considered something exceptional, it is noted that it was then that the boundaries between many fields of science began to thin out.
The interest in natural languages in their connection with social phenomena marked the beginning of the formation of such a science as sociolinguistics. The ideas of the social conditionality of language date back to the 1920s, although the term sociolinguistics itself was introduced only in 1952, when linguistics entered the second stage of transformation. This interdisciplinary discipline studies problems related to the social nature of language, its role in society, as well as the possibilities and limitations of the impact of social factors on language.
The forerunners of sociolinguistics were such outstanding Soviet scientists as I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay with his «revolutionary» theory of the immutability of the differences between written and oral speech and the resulting requirements for a different approach to them; E. D. Polivanov, a student of Baudouin de Courtone with his reasoning that the pace of linguistic evolution depends on the pace of development of society, although language always lags behind social changes in its changes; L. P. Yakubinsky, another student of Baudouin de Courtonnay, who in the 1920s published a number of articles containing a sociolinguistic analysis of the Russian language. F. Bruno in France, A. Seche in Switzerland, J. Vandries in Belgium, B. Gavranek in Czechoslovakia also have a number of fruitful ideas, without which modern sociolinguistics could not exist.
Like any interdisciplinary branch of knowledge, sociolinguistics sets goals for itself, the achievement of which provides an arsenal of tools for one or another of the «ancestral disciplines». Thus, linguistics provides an orderly understanding of the features of the official and unofficial aspects of communication, a set of rules for the use of etiquette formulas and stable expressions, and an understanding of the meanings of phraseological units. Without knowledge of these layers of linguistic culture, sociology cannot successfully explore communication barriers.
Various research directions have been formed in sociolinguistics: synchronous sociolinguistics studies the relationship between language and social institutions, diachronic sociolinguistics is interested in the relationship between the development of language and the development of society. Macro sociolinguistics analyzes linguistic processes in large regions, states, or large social groups; micro-sociolinguistics analyzes these processes in small groups. Some studies are theoretical, while others are experimental.
Practical sociolinguistics, which focuses on the process of teaching native and foreign languages, deserves special attention from foreign language teachers. This includes works devoted to the problems of borrowing and interference of various elements of languages.
In the 1920s, interest in natural languages led to the appearance of works in which ideas were formulated that served as a breeding ground for the emergence of structural linguistics. This is primarily about the works of the Swiss linguist F. de Saussure. Noting the difference between the act of speech and the system that generates it, de Saussure gave a dominant place to the system, which he focused on studying.
According to the classical «encyclopedic» definition, structural linguistics is a set of views on language and methods of its research, which are based on the understanding of language as a sign system with clearly distinguished structural elements and the desire for a strict description of the language. Structural linguistics got its name due to its special attention to the structure of language, which is a network of relationships between elements of the language system that are ordered and hierarchically dependent within certain levels. There are three stages in the development of this science, and chronologically these stages coincide with the same time frame, the importance of which for the evolution of linguistics, we have already noted.
The first stage, dating back to the 1920s, is associated with a prevailing interest in exploring the role of connections between the elements of the language system.
The second stage, dating back to the 1950s, is characterized by an increased interest in the substantive side of language and work with its dynamic models; comparative historical linguistics also borrowed methods of structural linguistics.
The third stage marks the wide scale spread of structuralism ideas in the 70s, which find application in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and other areas of the humanities. We can talk about the weakening of its influence since the 80s.
At the veryend of the 1920s, there wasanincreasedinterest in thepeculiarities of the use of termsindifferentlanguages,whicheventuallyledto the emergence of terminologyas a separatebody of knowledgewithin the framework of generallinguistics.Currently, there aretwomainareas of researchinterminology: on theonehand,theoreticalterminology,focusedon the study of the ways of the emergenceanduse of specialvocabulary, on theother–appliedterminology,engaged in optimizing the use of termsinvariousfields of knowledge.
Theimportantplacegiven to the study of termsinRussianscience is evidenced by thefact that more than2,000dissertations have been devoted to it.Soonafter,in the 70s, terminologydeclareditselfasanindependentfield of linguistics,andit,inturn,began to be dividedintoseparateareas of research;thisprocess is steadilydeveloping.Forexample,wearecurrentlywitnessing,notwithout the influence of cognitivelinguistics, the formation of such a newfieldascognitive and communicativeterminologywithitsinterestinidentifying the role of termsinscientificcognition.
Foreignlanguageteachers have longnoted the importance of termsfor the properformation of skills for adequatetranslation of technicaltexts;clarifying the scientificfoundations of the thoughtprocessassociatedwiththisaspect of languageteaching is certainlytimelyandcan be beneficial.
The time of the emergence of applied linguistics is considered to be the same 20s, which were the most important for linguistics. The main area of interest of this science is the optimization of language functions, whether it is a communicative function (that is, work on improving translation theory, theory and practice of teaching native and foreign languages, creating artificial languages) or a social function (justification of language policy theory of influence, political linguistics).
Responding to the needs of practice,in the 50s, appliedlinguisticsmovedto a newstage of itsdevelopment,itfirmlyestablished itself amongotherhumanities,introducedintoitseveryday life the achievements of manydisciplinesrelatedtolinguistics in one wayoranother.
Aswementionedabove, the secondstage in the evolution of linguisticsshould be considered the 50s.Duringtheseyears, thegenerativelinguistics of the AmericanlinguistChomsky emerged,whosethimself the task of creating a theory of languageusingthemethods of naturalsciencesas a modelandresortingtorigidformalization. In hisown way, he solves an importantquestionforanyteacheraboutpeople’slanguageabilities;inhisopinion,theseabilitiescan be studiedusingmathematicalmodeling.Inhisopinion,suchabilities are basedon an innateandbiologicallydeterminedcomponent.At the same time,in the 50s, for the first time they started talkingaboutpsycholinguisticsas a scienceoflanguage. The interestnot so muchinlanguageitselfasinspeechactivityatthattimeopenedup a newpromisingarea of research for scientists.
Russianpsycholinguistics was formedin the 70s,whenthere was a need for theoreticalunderstanding of importantpracticaltasks,suchasoptimizing the process of a foreignlanguage learning.It was then that theworks of the SovietpsycholinguistA.A.Leontievcreated a semanticmodel of linguisticknowledgeacquisitionusedinteaching a nativeorforeignlanguage.Psycholinguistics was primarilyinterestedintheprocess of creatingandperceivinglinguisticsignsinhumanconsciousness.Studyingthisprocessrequiresconsideringhowlanguagemanifestsitselfinconsciousnessfrom the point of view of linguisticsandpsychologyintheircomplexunity.Psycholinguisticsstilllacksits own uniqueterminologicalapparatus.In this regard, it uses the terms of linguisticsandpsychology,so the shift in the focus of the analysisdependson the choice of amorelinguisticorpsychologicalperspective.Consequently,there are differentinterpretations of the termpsycholinguistics.Toproperlyevaluate the workinthisdiscipline, it is necessary to takeintoaccountboth the features of the historicalperiod of the study’sappearanceand the scientificdirectiontowhichaparticularstudytends.
For teachers of foreign languages, the works of the Soviet psycholinguist A.A. Leontiev, which are fundamental to our science, are of particular value. In the 70s, in the decade when the third stage of major changes in linguistics began he developed a model for the assimilation of linguistic knowledge in learning a foreign language. In such a discipline as cultural linguistics, which finally developed in the 70s, the object of research is the relationship and interaction between culture and language and its subject is the linguistic picture of the world. The linguistic picture of the world, in turn, includes a set of knowledge about the world, reflected in vocabulary, phraseology and grammar. The research focuses on the linguistic personality in its aspect, as it appears to us in language and through language. If cultural linguistics is a theoretical discipline, then linguistics, which is close to it, has a different focus and is a practical academic discipline.
Mathematicallinguisticsisnotexactly a closerelative of linguistics;it is ratheritsdescendantwith a largeshare of someone else’s blood,because it is nocoincidence that the Department of mathematics lists this branch of knowledge. The Encyclopediadefinesmathematicallinguisticsas a mathematicaldiscipline that owesitsorigin to the needforastricterdefinition of conceptsanddevelops a formalapparatusfordescribing the structureofnaturalandsomeartificiallanguages. The time of the birth of mathematicallinguistics, the scienceat the junction of mathematicsandlinguistics, is considered to be the 20s,whilethefinalformation of sciencedates back to the 50s, in otherwords, the successesinthissciencecoincidewith the firstandsecondstages of changesinlinguistics.
The mathematicaldescription of language is basedonF.deSaussure’s ideaoflanguageasamechanismfunctioningthrough the speechactivity of itsnative speakers.Thisviewmade it possible to develop a purelyformalapparatusfordescribingnaturallanguages.Tostudy the work of such a «mechanism», mathematicallinguistics has attracted a wholearsenal of methodsborrowedfromotherbranches of science:algebra,theory of algorithmsandtheory of automata,settheory,statistics,mathematicallogic,probabilitytheory. The use of mathematicalmethodsmakes it possible to compilefrequencydictionaries,explore the compatibility of linguisticphenomena, and study the processes of speechgenerationandperception.
Summing up the results of theresearch, we cometo the conclusionthatwhenassessing the consequences of the paradigmshift in science(the «Einstein»revolution of the latenineteenth and earlytwentiethcenturies, the scientific and technologicalrevolution of the 50s,changesin the approachtoresearchobjectsin the 70s), the mainattention was paid to breakthroughsin the field of naturalsciencesandrelatedscientific and technicalachievements.However, even a cursoryreview of the periods of massemergence of newfields of knowledgeaccumulatedduring the twentiethcenturyshows the temporaryconnection of linguisticswithdisciplinesveryfarfromit.
Thus, the 1920smarkedthebirth of analyticalphilosophywithitsinterestinnaturallanguage;insociolinguistics, it was thetime of the formation of fundamentalideas;instructurallinguistics, it was the firstofthreestages of development;interminology, it was the time of empiricalsearches for the specifics of termsinlanguage;appliedlinguisticsreachedthelevel of formation of newresearchdirections at that time.
In the 1950s, theworld was flooded with newdiscoveriesandinventions:electronics, computer science,energy,biotechnologyandgeneticengineeringemergedandestablished themselves at the forefront of science. In otherwords,ascientific and technologicalrevolution has taken place.Andwhat was the situationinlinguisticsduringthiscrucialdecade?Brilliant!
In the 50s of the XX century, the second stage of development began in structural linguistics; mathematical linguistics and generative linguistics first declared themselves as a science; the emergence of psycholinguistics also belongs to this period as a kind of response to the needs of practice in working with language.
In the 70s, anotherera of changesinlinguistics began.Then,at the thirdstage of itsdevelopment,structurallinguisticsreached its maximuminitsdistribution.Appliedlinguistics,departingfrom the prevalence of theory,turnedtosolving the linguisticproblems of the realworld.Significantchanges have also taken placeinterminology, which has successfullydevelopednewareas of research.Inthesameyears, cultural linguisticsfinallyemergedas a science,andwithinitsframework, linguisticand ethnographic studies weredeveloped.
The emergenceandfruitfuldevelopmentoflinguistics-related disciplinesdidnotend there. We cansingle out anothertimeperiodwhen the symbiosis of linguisticswithothersciencesbroughtgoldenfruits.So,in the 90sanewstagein cultural linguistics began,inthesameyears the development of mathematicallinguisticsledto the emergence of quantitativelinguistics.At the same time, cognitivelinguisticsfirmlytookitsplaceamongothersciences,byno means severing the umbilical cord connectingitwithlinguistics.All the factsdescribed by ussuggestthat the cyclicalparadigmshiftinscience,consideredin the works of T.Kuhn,affectsnotonly the natural,technicalandsocialsciences,butalso the scienceoflanguage,bringingit closer tophilosophy,mathematics,sociology,and even psychology, in short,paradoxicallygivingitfeatures of a specialkind of versatility.