Introduction. Language and society. Target. To reveal the connection between the origin of language and the emergence of human society; determine the significance and purpose of the language; to reveal the concept of national culture in its broadest sense, the reflection of culture in the language; to consolidate the spelling skills of unstressed vowels and unpronounceable consonants at the root of the word.
Syntactic warm-up Language is the first tool of labor, the first machine that helps a person to transform the world. Performing logical operations for us, he serves man and enslaves him. (A.Genis) Language is a trace of the gigantic productive labor of human society. These are deposited crystals of myriad labor movements, gestures and the spiritual energy they evoke. All complex movements, born in the depths of our being, take shape in a linguistic definition. Language is an instrument of thought. (A.N. Tolstoy)
What do these two statements about language have in common? - Why is the emergence of a language as a social phenomenon both A. Genis and A. Tolstoy associated with the labor activity of a person? - Expand the meaning of the last sentence of the second statement. Find the answer in the first sentence.
Various interpretations of the words Enslave: 1) enslave; 2) completely subjugate yourself. Language: 1) a historically established system of sound, vocabulary and grammatical means, which is a tool for communication, exchange of thoughts and mutual understanding of people in society; 2) a set of means of expression in verbal creativity based on a nationwide sound, vocabulary and grammatical system (Pushkin's language); 3) speech, the ability to speak; 4) a system of signs that convey information (sign language). Productive: fruitful, productive. Myriads: innumerable multitude.
Visual dictation Our language is more perfect than our concepts. The worse you speak the language, the less you can lie in it. In order to understand the manners of any people, try first to learn their language. You can communicate with those who speak a different language, but not with those who put a completely different meaning into the same words. Explain the punctuation in these sentences. - How do you understand the fourth statement? - Reflect on the saying of Erasmus of Rotterdam "Language is the best medium for establishing friendship and harmony"
Working with Text Exercise Read the text and make a simple plan. Approximate plan: 1. "The people express themselves more fully and more accurately in their language." 2. "Language is the indivisible property of the whole people." 3. The history of the language is inseparably linked with the history of the people. Formulate the main idea of the text. Complete the oral tasks for exercise 268 (1-4).
9 Homework Match 20 words with the spelling "checked vowel in the root" and 20 words with the spelling "unpronounceable consonant in the root". Ex. 269: write out from the text the expressions that most clearly convey the main idea of the author, explain punctuation marks in quotes, underline obsolete words.
Human consciousness is the highest form of mental reflection of reality formed in the process of social life in the form of a generalized and subjective model of the surrounding world in the form of verbal concepts and sensual images. The integral features of consciousness include: speech, representation, thinking and the ability to create a generalized model of the surrounding world in the form of a set of images and concepts.
Consciousness can be defined in different ways, you can narrow or expand this concept. But the main thing is that “consciousness” is that new term that designates and describes by its content a new quality of the psyche that appears on the evolutionary ladder only in humans. Such an undoubted feature of a person is the possession of language.
In modern psychological science, language is understood as "a system of signs that serves as a means of human communication, mental activity, a way of expressing a person's self-consciousness, transmitting from generation to generation and storing information" 1 . The human language came into being
The ability to use language leads to the emergence of another distinctive psychological quality in a person - the ability to communicate with oneself. An external influence or an internal experience acquires the form of a conscious thought when it appears before the subject in a linguistic form, i.e. displayed in categories formed by language. Presented in internal or external speech, displayed in a system of signs and made, in principle, accessible to other people, the thought is alienated from the subject and becomes an object for his own perception. Thought, being newly perceived by the subject, can raise corresponding questions and answers to them. Thus, a conscious dialogue with oneself, or reasoning, is generated. Having acquired such an opportunity with the help of sign systems, a person gets the opportunity to give commands to himself, just as he does with respect to other people. Behavior takes on the character of arbitrariness.
The connection between language and consciousness is also manifested within the limits of the subject's awareness of phenomena in the process of their perception. The essence of the phenomenon lies in the fact that a person can consciously perceive the world around him only in those categories that are formed using the language of the culture to which he belongs. The dependence of a comprehensible picture of the world on the structures of the language of a given human community has received the name of the “hypothesis of linguistic relativity” by Sapir-Whorf.
Summing up this chapter, we note that consciousness and language form a unity: in their existence they presuppose each other. Language is a direct expression of thought, consciousness. The connection between consciousness and language is not mechanical, but organic. They cannot be separated from each other without destroying both.
Correlation between the concepts of "language" and "thinking"
Scattered sounds become a language only if they perform the function of transmitting, receiving or displaying information by a carrier of consciousness and thinking.
language also has another very significant role that goes beyond the organization of perception and the provision of communications. The presence of a language and its complex logical-grammatical structures allows a person to draw conclusions on the basis of logical reasoning, without referring each time to his direct sensory experience. The presence of language allows a person to carry out the operation of inference, not relying on direct impressions and limiting himself only to those means that language itself has at its disposal. This property of the language creates the possibility of the most complex forms of discursive thinking, which are the main forms of productive intellectual activity of a person.
This feature decisively distinguishes the conscious activity of man from the mental processes of the animal. An animal can form its experience only on the basis of directly perceived impressions or those events that come to it in the form of an immediate impression.
A large number of scientific works are devoted to the issues of interaction between language and thinking. But although language and thinking differ from each other in their essence and specific characteristics, the position that these are two inextricably linked types of social activity is not questioned.
One of the most interesting concepts of the essence of thinking discussed in this essay is the theory of N. I. Zhinkin, according to which the basic component of thinking is a special language of intellect. This language has a special non-verbal nature and represents a special system of signs, which has the character of a sensory reflection of reality in consciousness.
The thinking process is characterized by the following features:
1. Thinking is always indirect. Establishing connections and relationships between things, a person relies not only on direct sensations and perceptions, but also on the data of past experience, preserved in his memory. This conditionality of thinking by past experience is especially clearly revealed when one comes across the result of some phenomenon, from which one can draw a conclusion about the cause of the phenomenon.
For example, seeing snow-covered streets and rooftops in the morning, we can conclude that there was a snowstorm at night. To establish this connection, we are helped by the ideas that have surfaced in memory about previously observed and observed events. Without these ideas, we would not be able to establish the cause of this phenomenon.
Thinking also has an indirect character in direct observation of the connection of phenomena. When we see how the rain-soaked streets dry up under the influence of the sun's rays, we infer the cause of this phenomenon only because the observation of it has evoked in our memory a generalized recollection of similar cases observed earlier.
2. Thinking is based on the knowledge that a person has about the general laws of nature and society. In the process of thinking, a person uses the knowledge of general provisions already established on the basis of previous practice, which reflect the most general connections and patterns of the world around him. In the example above, this would be the idea that water tends to
evaporates under the influence of heat. The very concept of cause and effect could arise only indirectly, by generalizing the many facts preserved in the memory, in which these connections between phenomena were found. But once this concept has arisen, it is included in the further work of thinking.
3. Thinking comes from "living contemplation", but is not reduced to it. Reflecting the connections and relationships between phenomena, we always think of these connections in an abstract and generalized form, as having a common meaning for all similar phenomena of a given class, and not only for a given, specifically observed phenomenon. These connections are found only because they are inherent in all
phenomena of a given class, are a common law of existence for them. Therefore, in order to reflect this or that connection between phenomena, it is necessary to abstract from the specific features of these phenomena.
The very process of abstraction or abstraction is to some extent based on the knowledge of general connections and regularities of the phenomenon obtained in the process of practical activity, without which it would be impossible to separate in it
the essential from the inessential, the general from the singular. However, the fact that our thinking is abstracted from the specific features of objects and phenomena does not mean at all that it does not need a living contemplation of reality,
sensations and perceptions. No matter how complex thought processes we have, they are always based on the perception of reality in their initial moment. Without this, the connections of phenomena reflected by consciousness easily lose their
its objective nature. Cognition, reflecting the actual connections between phenomena, always goes "from living contemplation to abstract thinking and from it to practice."
When, for example, we think about the connection between drought and plant life, we always have certain visual images. But these images play only an auxiliary role, facilitating the process of thinking to a certain extent; their specific external features are of no importance for the act of thinking. This can be judged at least by the fact that different people, when thinking about the above connection, the specific images of things can be completely different: one person imagines a dried up steppe covered with cracks, another - a field of rye with dried ears, a third - scorched foliage of young trees and so on. However, the common thing for all will be that they all think of the same connection: the lack of moisture and the heat that has dried up the soil are the cause of the death of plants.
4. Thinking is always a reflection of connections and relationships between objects in verbal form. Thinking and speech are always inseparable unity. Even K. Marx and F. Engels pointed to the organic connection between language and thinking: “Language is the immediate reality of thought”; "...neither thoughts nor language form in themselves a special realm... they are only a manifestation of real life." Due to the fact that thinking takes place in words, the processes of abstraction and generalization are facilitated, since words by their nature are very special stimuli that signal reality in the most generalized form. "Every word (speech) already generalizes."
The meaning of the word for the process of thinking is exceptionally great. Due to the fact that thinking is expressed in words, we can reflect in our thought the essence of not only acting directly on us, but also objects that are inaccessible to direct perception. Thinking allows us to penetrate into the distant past, to imagine the processes of the emergence and development of life on Earth, and so
Further. It also allows us to look into the future, to foresee the course of historical events. By thinking, we can reflect the laws of existence of both huge celestial bodies and the smallest atoms. It is necessary in any practical activity, because it helps to foresee its results.
5. Human thinking is organically connected with practical activity. In its essence, it is based on the social practice of a person. This is by no means a simple “contemplation” of the external world, but such a reflection of it that meets the tasks that arise before a person in the process of labor and other activities aimed at reorganizing the world around:
“The most essential and immediate basis of human thinking is precisely the change of nature by man, and not nature alone as such, and the mind of man has developed in accordance with how man has learned to change nature”
It is fundamentally important that they do not exist on their own, but are closely related to each other. Thus, a single and integral system is formed. Each of its components has a certain significance.
Structure
It is impossible to imagine a language system without units of signs, etc. All these elements are combined into a common structure with a strict hierarchy. Less significant together form components related to higher levels. The language system includes a dictionary. It is considered an inventory, which includes ready-made ones. The mechanism for their combination is grammar.
In any language there are several sections that differ greatly from each other in their properties. For example, their systematization may also differ. Thus, changes in even one element of phonology can change the entire language as a whole, while this will not happen in the case of vocabulary. Among other things, the system includes the periphery and the center.
The concept of structure
In addition to the term "language system", the concept of language structure is also accepted. Some linguists consider them synonyms, some do not. Interpretations differ, but there are among them the most popular. According to one of them, the structure of a language is expressed in the relations between its elements. The comparison with the frame is also popular. The structure of a language can be considered a set of regular relations and links between language units. They are due to nature and characterize the functions and originality of the system.
Story
The attitude to language as a system has developed over many centuries. This idea was laid down by ancient grammarians. However, in the modern sense, the term "language system" was formed only in modern times thanks to the work of such prominent scientists as Wilhelm von Humboldt, August Schleicher, and Ivan Baudouin de Courtenay.
The last of the above linguists singled out the most important linguistic units: phoneme, grapheme, morpheme. Saussure was the founder of the idea that language (as a system) is the opposite of speech. This teaching was developed by his students and followers. Thus, a whole discipline appeared - structural linguistics.
Levels
The main tiers are the levels of the language system (also called subsystems). They include homogeneous linguistic units. Each level has a set of its own rules according to which its classification is built. Within one tier, units enter into relationships (for example, they form sentences and phrases). At the same time, elements of different levels can enter into each other. So, morphemes are made up of phonemes, and words are made up of morphemes.
Key systems are part of any language. Linguists distinguish several such tiers: morphemic, phonemic, syntactic (related to sentences) and lexical (that is, verbal). Among others, there are higher levels of language. Their distinguishing feature lies in "two-sided units", that is, those linguistic units that have a plan of content and expression. Such a higher level, for example, is semantic.
Types of levels
The fundamental phenomenon for building a language system is the segmentation of the speech flow. Its beginning is the selection of phrases or statements. They play the role of communicative units. In the language system, the speech flow corresponds to the syntactic level. The second stage of segmentation is the articulation of statements. As a result, word forms are formed. They combine heterogeneous functions - relative, derivational, nominative. Word forms are identified into words, or lexemes.
As mentioned above, the system of linguistic signs also consists of the lexical level. It is formed by vocabulary. The next stage of segmentation is associated with the selection of the smallest units in the speech stream. They are called morphs. Some of them have identical grammatical and lexical meanings. Such morphs are combined into morphemes.
Segmentation of the speech flow ends with the allocation of tiny segments of speech - sounds. They differ in their physical properties. But their function (sense-distinctive) is the same. Sounds are identified in a common language unit. It is called a phoneme - the smallest segment of a language. It can be thought of as a tiny (but important) brick in a vast linguistic edifice. With the help of the system of sounds, the phonological level of the language is formed.
Language units
Let's look at how the units of the language system differ from its other elements. Because they are indestructible. Thus, this rung is the lowest in the language ladder. Units have several classifications. For example, they are divided by the presence of a sound shell. In this case, units such as morphemes, phonemes and words fall into one group. They are considered material, as they differ in a constant sound shell. In another group there are models of the structure of phrases, words and sentences. These units are called relatively material, since their constructive meaning is generalized.
Another classification is built according to whether a part of the system has its own value. This is an important sign. The material units of the language are divided into one-sided (those that do not have their own meaning) and two-sided (endowed with meaning). They (words and morphemes) have another name. These units are known as the higher units of the language.
The systematic study of the language and its properties does not stand still. Today there is already a tendency, according to which the concepts of "units" and "elements" began to be substantively separated. This phenomenon is relatively new. The theory is gaining popularity that, as a plan of content and a plan of expression, the elements of language are not independent. This is how they differ from units.
What other features characterize the language system? Language units differ from each other functionally, qualitatively and quantitatively. Because of this, humanity is familiar with such a deep and ubiquitous linguistic diversity.
Properties of the system
Proponents of structuralism believe that the language system of the Russian language (like any other) is distinguished by several features - rigidity, closeness and unambiguous conditionality. There is also an opposite point of view. It is represented by the comparativists. They believe that language as a language system is dynamic and open to change. Similar ideas are widely supported in new directions of linguistic science.
But even supporters of the theory of the dynamism and variability of language do not deny the fact that any system of linguistic means has some stability. It is caused by the properties of the structure, which acts as a law of connection of a variety of linguistic elements. Variability and stability are dialectical. They are opposing tendencies. Any word in the language system changes depending on which one has the most influence.
Unit Features
Another factor important for the formation of a language system is the properties of language units. Their nature is revealed when interacting with each other. Sometimes linguists refer to properties as functions of the subsystem they form. These features are divided into external and internal. The latter depend on the relationships and connections that develop between the units themselves. External properties are formed under the influence of the relationship of the language with the outside world, reality, human feelings and thoughts.
Units form a system due to their connections. The properties of these relationships are varied. Some correspond to the communicative function of language. Others reflect the connection of language with the mechanisms of the human brain - the source of its own existence. Often these two views are presented as a graph with horizontal and vertical axes.
Relationship between levels and units
A subsystem (or level) of a language is singled out if, on the whole, it possesses all the key properties of the language system. It is also required to comply with the requirements of constructability. In other words, units of the level must participate in the organization of the tier located one step higher. In a language, everything is interconnected, and no part of it can exist separately from the rest of the organism.
The properties of a subsystem differ in their qualities from the properties of the units that construct it at a lower level. This moment is very important. The properties of a level are determined only by the units of the language that are directly part of it. This model has an important feature. The attempts of linguists to present language as a multi-tiered system are attempts to create a scheme that is distinguished by ideal order. Such an idea can be called utopian. Theoretical models differ markedly from real practice. Although any language is highly organized, it does not represent an ideal symmetrical and harmonious system. That is why in linguistics there are so many exceptions to the rules that everyone knows from school.
Language is a system of verbal expression of thoughts. But the question arises, can a person think without resorting to language?
Most researchers believe that thinking can exist only on the basis of language and in fact identify language and thinking.
Even the ancient Greeks used the word " logos"to denote the word, speech, spoken language and at the same time to denote the mind, thought. They began to separate the concepts of language and thought much later.
Many creative people - composers, artists, actors - can create without the help of verbal language. For example, composer Yu.A. Shaporin lost the ability to speak and understand, but he could compose music, that is, he continued to think. He retained a constructive, figurative type of thinking.
The Russian-American linguist Roman Osipovich Yakobson explains these facts by saying that signs are a necessary support for thought, but inner thought, especially when it is a creative thought, willingly uses other systems of signs (non-speech), more flexible, among which there are conditional generally accepted and individual ( both permanent and occasional).
Some researchers ( D. Miller, J. Galanter, K. Pribram) believe that we have a very clear anticipation of what we are going to say, we have a sentence plan, and when we formulate it, we have a relatively clear idea of \u200b\u200bwhat we are going to say. This means that the plan of the sentence is not carried out on the basis of words. The fragmentation and curtailment of reduced speech is a consequence of the predominance of non-verbal forms in thinking at this moment.
Thus, both opposing points of view are well founded. The truth most likely lies in the middle, ie. Basically, thinking and verbal language are closely related. But in some cases and in some areas, thinking does not need words.
speech and brain
The organ of thought is the brain. Since thinking is connected with language, the "geography" of the brain is of considerable interest for finding out which areas are responsible for human speech.
Functional asymmetry of the cerebral cortex
The left and right hemispheres of the brain have different specializations, that is, different functions, which can be defined as a functional asymmetry of the cerebral cortex.
Left hemisphere- the speech hemisphere, it is responsible for speech, its coherence, abstract, logical thinking and abstract vocabulary. It controls the right hand. For left-handed people, it is usually the other way around, but most left-handed people have their speech zones in the left hemisphere, and the rest in both or the right. This verbal hemisphere is always dominant, it controls the left hemisphere in particular, and the whole body as a whole. It is characterized by energy, enthusiasm, optimism.
Right hemisphere associated with visual-figurative, concrete thinking, with the objective meanings of words. This hemisphere is non-verbal, responsible for spatial perception, controls gestures (but recognizes the language of the deaf and dumb, usually the left one). It is the source of intuition. Pessimistic. Able to distinguish people's voices, gender of speakers, intonation, melody, rhythm, stress in words and sentences. But even after damage to the left hemisphere, the right one can distinguish between nouns, numerals, songs.
Damage to the left hemisphere is more serious and leads to pathology, and with damage to the right hemisphere, there are less noticeable deviations. For example, the composer M. Ravel, after an accident in 1937, when his left hemisphere was damaged, could listen to music, but could no longer write it.
It should be noted that in women, both hemispheres differ less than in men. Diseases of the left hemisphere cause them less disturbance.
Left hemisphere zones and aphasia
Researchers have found that various human speech abilities are associated with certain areas of the cerebral cortex, predominantly in the left hemisphere, since lesions in these areas lead to aphasias.
Aphasia- complete or partial loss of the ability of oral speech communication due to brain damage. Often associated with aphasia agraphia(painful inability to write) and alexia(painful inability to read).
motor aphasia- loss of the ability to express thoughts orally. Associated with damage to the motor zone, located in the precentral gyrus of the brain.
Sensory aphasia- loss of ability to understand spoken language. It is associated with damage to the sensory zone located in the postcentral gyrus of the brain.
Dynamic aphasia- Loss of the ability to communicate. Associated with damage to the frontal lobes of the left hemisphere.
Semantic aphasia- loss of the ability to find the right words for objects, the inability to make complex statements. Associated with damage to the parietotemporal lobes of the brain.
Homunculus
Homunculus(from lat. homunculus- “little man”) is a conditional drawing of a person, displaying the sensory and motor areas of the cerebral cortex that control various parts of a person. More than a third of the homunculus is associated with human speech, which emphasizes the role of language in people's lives. Animals have different homunculi.
Broca's area bears the name of the French scientist who discovered this zone XIX century, whose name was Paul Broca. It is located in the posterior part of the inferior (third) frontal gyrus. This zone controls human speech.
At Broca's aphasia there are difficulties in the motor acts of pronouncing words (motor aphasia), but speech understanding, reading and writing are not impaired. The patient is aware of his defect.
Wernicke's area bears the name of the German scientist who discovered this zone XIX century, whose name was Carl Wernicke. It is located in the first temporal gyrus. This zone controls the understanding of human speech.
At aphasia Wernicke understanding of speech is severely impaired, the patient pronounces sounds normally, speech is fluent, but strange and meaningless; it has a lot of non-existent words. Grammatical forms are preserved, but reading and writing are impaired (agraphia and alexia). Usually the patient is not aware of the meaninglessness of his speech.
Parietal-occipital zone responsible for logical-grammatical connections and grammatical correctness of the sentence. With aphasia due to damage to other areas, the patient equally perceives, for example, words dot and cloud.
According to some studies, the front part of the brain is responsible for the connections of words in sentences (syntagmatics), and the back part is responsible for the associative connections of words (paradigmatics).
It should be noted that brain areas and their functions are not absolute. Some people may have quite normal deviations, and in diseases and injuries, sometimes the role of the affected areas is played by other reserve areas of the brain.
Logic and language
Logics(gr. logos- mind, thinking, speech, word) is the science of correct thinking in its linguistic form (psychology also involves thinking, but its correctness is not a prerequisite).
There are different opinions about the relationship between linguistic (primarily grammatical) and logical categories.
According to this theory, people who speak different languages see the world differently, therefore, each language has its own logic of thinking.
Humboldt He argued that language is a kind of "intermediate world located between the people and the objective world surrounding it." Each language describes a circle around the people to which it belongs, from which you can only get out if you enter another circle. Since the perception and activity of a person entirely depend on his ideas, his attitude to objects is entirely conditioned by language. But thinking does not simply depend on language in general, but to a certain extent it is also conditioned by each individual language. In different languages, signs are not different designations of the same object, but different visions of it. The most striking examples are associated with words denoting colors in different languages: blue and blue in Russian, blue, blue, blue- one-word designations in English, German and French. Some African tribes have only two words for colors: one for "warm" (red, orange, yellow) and one for cold (blue, purple, green).
Thus, the word is a sign, but also a special entity, located between external phenomena and the inner world of a person. Learning foreign languages is the acquisition of a new point of view, a new view of the world.
If you try to replace the words of languages with signs like mathematical ones, then this will be just an abbreviated translation, covering only an insignificant part of everything conceivable.
Edward Sapir stated that the worlds in which different societies live are separate worlds, and not one world using different labels. Language divides reality in its own way, and a person is at the mercy of a particular language. The real world is built on the linguistic norms of a given society.
Benjamin Whorf believed that human behavior is explained by linguistic factors. He began his career as a safety inspector and therefore cited facts from this area to support his theory. For example, workers calmly smoked near empty gasoline tanks, as they were written Empty petrol drums(Empty gasoline tanks), although fuel residues always accumulated at the bottom and dangerous gas was formed. People in their behavior were guided not by a dangerous situation, but by a sign with a soothing inscription. The same goes for the adjective. inflammable(combustible), which the Americans interpreted as "non-combustible" ( in- negation prefix, flame- flame). It has now been replaced by a clearer one. flammable.
In his expeditions to study Indian languages, Whorf drew attention to the linguistic features of the Hopi Indians. In particular, if in European languages the form and content differ (a bucket of water, a piece of meat), then the Hopi do not have such a difference: in such cases they use only one word, which includes both concepts (water and a bucket). Similarly, they do not abstract numbers from facts and things.
From these observations, the scientist concluded that the concepts time and matter are not given from experience to all men in the same form. They depend on the nature of the language. Grammar and logic do not reflect reality, but change from language to language. Whorf expressed this extreme thought in the following statement: Newton's laws and his view of the structure of the universe would be different if he used the Hopi language instead of English.
Leo Weisgerber, another follower of Humboldt, believed that the essence of language lies in the transformation of the world of "things in themselves" into the content of human consciousness. Language is the key to the world. This is a net thrown over the outside world, and a person cognizes only what the language creates.
The word expresses the concept of an object, and does not designate specific objects. For example, Unkraut(weed), obst(fruits), Gemuse(vegetables) are not botanical concepts (like nettles, apples and carrots), but a pure idea, a product of the human brain. If there is no special designation, then there is no corresponding content in the language. The designations of objects and phenomena in various languages are peculiar:
Russian word leg in many European languages there are two words for different parts of the foot ( leg - foot, Bein - Fuss, pied - jambe).
It is believed that the Eskimos have up to 100 names for snow, and the Arabs have up to 500 names for horses and camels. Currently, many linguists believe that this is a great exaggeration.
In many cases, this diversity is due to the fact that any of the signs of the object can be taken as the basis for the name of the object, depending on its significance in society.
Supporters of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity absolutize the linguistic originality of different peoples and the originality of national thinking resulting from this (for example, stereotypical ideas about Russians about Germans, French, English, Chinese, etc. are true to some extent), and adherents of the identity of logical and linguistic categories absolutize the unity of the logic of thinking underlying the national grammars. The truth is obviously in the middle.
Language as an intermediate world can be likened to glasses with colored lenses. If one person has pink lenses, he sees everything in pink, blue - in blue, but the outlines of objects will be the same for everyone.
Features of multilingualism
Monolingual- A person who speaks only one language. He has a very strong connection between thought and language. And only when the basis for comparison appears - a foreign language, then "thought is freed from the captivity of words" (Russian linguist Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba).
bilingual- a person who is equally fluent in two languages (trilingual - three). There are two types of bilinguals:
- Bilingual of a pure form, when both languages are used not interspersed, but in isolation, for example, at home and at work. For example, in Paraguay, Spanish, as a more prestigious language, is used for courtship, and after marriage, an Indian switches to an Indian language - Guarani. If a bilingual is a child, then he may not even be aware that he speaks different languages (at home and in kindergarten). There is a case when a peasant woman from Transylvania (Romania) spoke fluent Hungarian and Romanian, but could not translate: in her mind, these languages were separated by a blank wall.
- Bilingual is a mixed type, when during a conversation he switches from one language to another. In this case, there may be a constant connection between the two speech mechanisms that affects speech. In such cases, there is often interference, i.e. unconscious use of elements of one language in speech related to another language, for example. "I am a German soldier" ( Ich bin deutscher Soldat). One Russian German woman spoke like this: Gip world saucepan auf dem polka (give me a saucepan on the shelf). Interference is also evident in these comic songs:
If you don't love me
Let's go Ufa-river,
We'll plant a stone around your neck
And swim like a fish.
Sin matur and min matur
We are both mothers.
Loved one -
They turned out to be stupid.
One person is going to swim, not two, since there is an interference of the Bashkir and Tatar endings of 1 person singular. ( bars- I'll go) and the Russian root (" syn" - you, " min" - I, " mathur"- beautiful (Tatar language).
The term " bilingual" should not be confused with the word " bilingual”, meaning a monument of writing in two languages (usually with parallel texts).
Polyglots
It has been rightly observed: whoever does not know at least one foreign language does not understand anything in his own.
Polyglot- a person who knows many languages (gr. πολυς - many, γλωσσα or γλωττα - language).
The first known polyglot in history was. With his multinational army, he fought the Roman Empire for a long time and successfully. They say that Mithridates knew 22 languages, in which he judged his subjects. Therefore, editions with parallel texts in many languages (especially the Bible) are called "mitridates".
The most famous female polyglot in antiquity was Cleopatra (69-30 BC), the last queen of Egypt. “The very sounds of her voice caressed and delighted the ear, and the language was like a multi-stringed instrument, easily tuned to any tune - to any dialect, so that only with very few barbarians she spoke through an interpreter, and most often she herself talked with strangers - Ethiopians, troglodytes , Jews, Arabs, Syrians, Medes, Parthians ... They say that she also studied many other languages, while the kings who ruled before her did not even know Egyptian ... ”(Plutarch, Anthony, 27). Together with Greek and Latin, Cleopatra knew at least 10 languages.
The ancients said: how many languages you know, so many times you are a person. He was such a versatile person. Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti(1774 - 1849), the son of a poor carpenter, who became a cardinal. He knew from various sources from 30 (perfectly) to 100 languages. The English poet George Byron tested Mezzofanti, "it's a linguistic marvel... in every language I know a single swear word... and it struck me so much that I was ready to swear in English." In addition to the main European languages, he was fluent in Hungarian, Albanian, Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, Turkish, Persian, Chinese and many other languages, and easily switched from one language to another. A.V. met with him. Suvorov and N.V. Gogol, and he spoke to them in Russian. Mezzofanti even wrote poems in many languages, for example, the beginning of one verse and an excerpt from another in Russian:
Oh what a light!
Everything in it is perishable,
Everything is changeable
There is no world.
By the way, the Pole Jozef Kozhenevsky, having studied English in adulthood, became a classic of English literature - Joseph Conrad.
Polyglots who know dozens of languages were not uncommon hundreds of years ago, and in our time there are many of them. True, they say, in Finland XVII century, a student “bewitched by the devil” was sentenced to death for “learning foreign languages with incredible speed, which is unthinkable without the assistance of evil spirits.”
But polyglots have one “secret”: the more languages they master, the easier it is for them to follow them. Usually a polyglot cannot perfectly know more than 25 languages, and he has to refresh his knowledge all the time: languages are forgotten.
