PSYCHOLOGICAL DIRECTION IN LINGUISTICS 1 page

§1.General characteristics. The essence of the psychological direction is best understood in comparison with the logical one, since the very emergence of this new direction occurred in confrontation with the logical direction, in repulsion from it. All representatives of this direction are united by the following:

1)In contrast to the logical direction, underscore national specificity of languages , connections of languages ​​with the mentality of a particular people, with folk psychology.

2) Underline the role of the unconscious in the emergence and development of language. The origin of language is a natural evolutionary process associated with the development of thinking, psyche, “spirit”, and not the result of an “invention”, a “social contract”, as with the “logicians”.

3)Non-identity of logical categories and linguistic forms : a) logical categories are universal for all peoples (concept, judgment, inference), and linguistic categories are national; b) logical categories are rational, but there is a lot of irrationality in language: illogicalities, exceptions. Representatives of the logical direction also showed differences between logical categories and linguistic ones, but for them it was much more important to see the commonality, and for representatives of the psychological direction the whole point was in the differences. Some representatives of this trend generally managed to define linguistic units without logical categories, using psychological categories, for example: offer - it is a connection, an association of two or more ideas.

4) The connection of language not only with thinking, but more broadly - with the psyche. The use of psychological methods in linguistics (associative experiment, etc.).

5) The psychological direction, to a greater extent than the logical one, was characterized by historicism : linguistic categories in different eras are not identical to each other. Wed. definitions of a sentence by F. I. Buslaev (logical direction) and A. A. Potebnya (psychological direction). Buslaev gives a definition of a sentence that is true for all times and all languages: a judgment expressed in words. Potebnya believes that such a universal definition is meaningless: each language and each historical era will have its own definition of a sentence. Thus, an Indo-European sentence can be defined as a combination of words in which the verbum finitum is necessarily present. Language changes are explained psychologically: their roots are in the individual’s psyche (development of thinking, unconscious associations, mutations, analogy, saving pronunciation efforts, etc.).

6)Formed principle of anthropocentrism : The speaker must be placed at the center of linguistic research. In reality, there are languages ​​of individuals, but national languages ​​(as well as smaller subdivisions - the languages ​​of a particular village, region, jargon) are a scientific fiction. People strive for mutual understanding, and therefore a commonality is established between the “languages” of two communicating individuals; Larger linguistic communities are formed in a similar way. However, as Humboldt noted, the speaker and the listener still do not fully understand each other.

7) The psychological direction is very heterogeneous, but conditionally two main trends can be distinguished in it: a) socio-psychological , more focused on the ideas of W. von Humboldt and not denying the social (national, collective) essence of language (Wilhelm Wundt, Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya, young grammarians); b) individual psychological , which considers language as a special mechanism of activity of the individual psyche (Heyman Steinthal, Beneditto Croce, Karl Vossler).

§2.Heyman Steinthal. The founder of the individual psychological understanding of language is considered to be Professor of the University of Berlin Heyman Steinthal (1823-1899), whose linguistic views were largely formed, on the one hand, under the influence of the ideas of W. von Humboldt, on the other, under the influence of the associative psychology of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776 -1841). Steinthal's main works: “Works of W. Humboldt on the philosophy of language” (1848); “Classification of languages ​​as the development of a linguistic idea” (1850); “Grammar, logic, psychology, their principles and relationships” (1855); “Characteristics of the most important types of language structure” (1860); “The Origin of Language” (1880), etc.

1)The relationship of linguistics to logic. Steinthal believed that logical and grammatical categories are not identical and generally not correlated with each other: “The categories of language and logic are incompatible and can relate to each other just as little as the concept of a circle and red.” There are different types of thinking, and each type has its own logic, but language is not correlated with any of the types of thinking; linguistic thinking is a special thinking that develops according to laws inherent only to it. It is thanks to Steinthal that the doctrine of “linguistic thinking”, different from logical thinking, appears in linguistics.

2)The relationship of linguistics to psychology. Since speech is a spiritual (mental) activity, linguistics is one of the psychological sciences. Whatever a linguist writes about: about the origin of language, about its essence, about the laws of language development, about the differences between languages ​​- he must always be “within the boundaries of psychology.” Following Herbart, Steinthal distinguishes between individual psychology and ethnopsychology (the psychology of peoples). Ethnopsychology studies the phenomena of the “folk spirit”: mythology, morals, traditions, religion, folklore and, of course, language. Hence, Linguistics is the most important part of ethnopsychology. Steinthal, like Humboldt, occupied a central place in the doctrine of language as the expression of the “spirit of the people.”

2.The essence of language

Steital understands language as individual psychological phenomenon , but if this is so, then how to explain the existence of ethnic languages? He resolves this contradiction as follows: 1) Steinthal defines language as “the expression of conscious internal, mental and spiritual movements, states and relationships through articulate sounds.” As we see, this understanding is very close to Humboldt’s. Like Humboldt, the cognitive function of language is in the foreground here, not the communicative one. Everything mental, according to Steinthal, is accomplished within a separate psyche, according to the laws of individual psychology : “Since the spirit of a people lives only in individuals and has no existence separate from the individual spirit, then naturally only the same basic processes take place in it, which are more closely explained by individual psychology.” However, the influence of one person on another, the transfer of the content of ideas from one individual to another cannot be carried out psychically. This can only be accomplished indirectly - with the help of language, sound matter.

2)Unity of ethnic language explained by Steinthal genetically. In his opinion, people originally thought only together, each connected his thought with the thought of his fellow tribesman, and the emerging thought belonged to both, just as a child belongs to its father and mother. A similar physical organization and similar impressions received from the outside arouse similar feelings and emotions in the souls of individuals, and these, in turn, arouse similar thoughts and similar language. Mental formations arise in an individual that, without the influence of other people, either would not have arisen in him at all, or would have arisen very late (as, for example, proving the Pythagorean theorem himself or learning the proof from a textbook).

3. The doctrine of the internal form of language

Steinthal develops Humboldt's teachings about the internal form of language. In his opinion, the internal form is historically changeable and has gone through three stages in its development: 1) oldest the stage when there are no naming words, but only interjections; 2) prehistoric – the stage of blossoming of the internal form – the appearance of motivated words ( snowdrop, mumble); 3) historical – the stage of extinction of the internal form, when the internal form of many words is erased and forgotten; sound and meaning begin to connect without an intermediary in the form of an internal form - the stage of zero internal form.

§3.A. A. Potebnya. Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya (1835-1891) - great Russian-Ukrainian linguist, head of the Kharkov linguistic school. Major works: “Thought and Language” (1862), “On the History of the Sounds of the Russian Language” (1876), “From Notes on Russian Grammar” (4 volumes, 1874-88), “From Lectures on the Theory of Literature” (1894), etc. Potebnya is close to Humboldt on many issues, but in general his linguo-philosophical concept is deeply original. Potebnya's main contribution to linguistics is in the development of issues of historical semantics and historical syntax.

1. General characteristics of Potebnya’s scientific method

Potebni's scientific method is characterized by the following main features:

1)psychologism : understanding of language as a mental entity; constant attention to how thought manifests itself in words;

2) geneticism : the problem of the genesis (origin) of linguistic phenomena is always in the center of attention of a scientist;

3) historicism : according to Potebnya, “all linguistics, whether it is called historical or not, must necessarily be historical. Any explanation that we can imagine to explain a given phenomenon in language necessarily comes down to what was different before”;

4) logocentrism (“word-centrism”): at the center of all Potebnya studies is word ; in the study of the origin and history of words, the scientist saw the key to solving all the most important theoretical problems of linguistics: the problem of the origin of language, the connection between language and thinking, the formation of parts of speech, the development of sentences, etc.;

5) functionalism : consideration of linguistic phenomena in dynamics, in the process of functioning, use, i.e. in speech , hence the irrelevance of the opposition of language and speech for Potebnya; Potebnya is always in sight speech-thinking function language, that is, how thought is realized in a word; for him, language is not a dead set of signs, but a functioning system: “Language is not a set of signs to denote ready-made thoughts, it is a system of signs capable of indefinite, limitless expansion”; Defining language as an activity during which the language is continuously updated and developed, Potebnya viewed language as a stream of continuous verbal creativity. That is why for Potebnya there is no opposition between language and speech . The main object of his attention is the functioning of linguistic units in speech, since in reality we are only given speech. The meaning of a word is realized only in speech; an isolated word is dead, it does not reveal either its semantic or formal properties. This is where Potebnya’s attitude to polysemy stems: “A word in speech each time corresponds to one act of thought, and not several, that is, each time it is pronounced or understood, it has no more than one meaning.” Thus, there are no ambiguous words ; the polysemantic word in Potebnya is split into homonyms.

6) ascent from abstract to concrete : in the system created by Humboldt, the comparative historical method was a method of particular linguistics (a method of studying related languages: Indo-European, Semitic, etc.), while the general theory of language was built on other methodological foundations. Potebnya combined the comparative historical method with the philosophy of language : in his system, for the first time, the general theory of language is not divorced from the analysis of specific linguistic functions. On the one hand, all general conclusions about the nature and essence of language, the origin of language, the connection between language and thinking are based on the analysis of specific linguistic facts; on the other hand, all specific linguistic phenomena are explained by him from the standpoint of the general theory of language.

Language, according to Potebnya, is not a means of expressing a ready-made thought, a thought is being done in language: “Language is conceived only as a means (or, more precisely, a system of means) that modifies the creation of thought: it would be impossible to understand it as the expression of a ready-made thought.” Potebnya emphasizes the non-identity of thinking with language: “The area of ​​language does not coincide with the area of ​​thought. In the middle of human development, thought can be connected with the word, but at the beginning it, apparently, has not yet grown up to it, and at a high degree of abstraction leaves it, as not satisfying its requirements, and as if because it cannot completely renounce from sensuality, seeks external support only in an arbitrary sign.” Thus Potebnya poses the question about prelinguistic and extralinguistic thinking . This position of Potebnya should be understood as follows:

1) Language could appear only when thinking had already reached a certain degree of development, i.e., the ancestor of man, the “languageless” man, already possessed some imperfect forms of thinking that did not need words.

2) At a certain stage of development, human thinking becomes so complicated that it can no longer do without words; This is how the word, human language, is born. This stage conscious, linguistic thinking. Potebnya argues that “if we take spirit in the sense of conscious mental activity, presupposing concepts that are formed only through words, we will see that spirit without language is impossible, because it itself is formed with the help of language, and language in it is the first event in time.” .

3) Gradually, human thinking becomes more and more abstract, and the word already becomes a “interference” for the expression of complex and very abstract thoughts, and then thinking seeks a way to free itself from the “shackles” of the word, tries to replace the word with a conventional, arbitrary sign (cf., e.g. , mathematical symbols). On the last point, Potebnya’s position is contradictory, although he admits that such a high degree of development of thought can only be achieved through language.

4.Origin of language

Potebnya considers this problem primarily as a problem origin of the word. 1) Word formation is a very complex process. First there is a simple reflection of feeling in sound (interjection). Potebnya believed that the first words appear in the language as a result of the transition of instinctive cries into full-fledged words. The transition of interjections into words occurred due to the fact that with the development of thinking, primitive people began to associate certain interjections not only with certain feelings, but also with the objects that these feelings evoked: “An interjection, under the influence of a thought addressed to it, changes into a word.” 2) The external difference between a human word and a shout-interjection is in articulation. Potebnya explains the articulateness of the sound of the human word articulateness of thought . Animal emotion is inarticulate, thought is articulate: it analyzes objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality, isolating their essential features. An inarticulate cry corresponded to an inarticulate emotion; an articulate word began to correspond to an articulate thought.

At the center of Potebnya’s linguo-philosophical teaching are problems genesis of linguistic units . Moreover, the central units around which all his theoretical constructions revolve are the word and the sentence. Therefore, in his system the following are closely linked and intertwined: a) etymology and historical semantics - the doctrine of the origin and semantic evolution of the word; b) historical morphology - the study of the origin and development of parts of speech; c) historical syntax - the doctrine of the origin and development of a sentence.

Offer, according to Potebnya, the basic speech unit in which all semantic shifts occur and all categories of language are formed. Word lives only in the sentence; There is no such thing as an isolated word in reality; a word taken out of a sentence is dead and does not reveal any formal or semantic properties. Parts of speech – these are morphologized members of the sentence. Since Potebnya consistently stands on genetic, historical positions, he believes that it is impossible to give a single definition of a word, sentence, part of speech, universal for all periods and languages.

Unlike Bopp, who interpreted the first words as verbal, Potebnya believed that the first word was neither a name nor a verb - it was semantic syncretism , combining nominal and verbal features, a word somewhat similar to a participle. Primitive “participles” performed the functions of simple sentences, being both subject and predicate, i.e. syntactic syncretism. In primitive languages, the nominal structure of the sentence dominated; later, in Indo-European languages, the verbal nature of the sentence increased. In other words, constructions like Cue (was) carrier gradually began to give way to structures like Cue transported. The verb is thus born from a nominal predicate. The most ancient form of the verb is infinitive (a form that has no person, no number, no time; by origin - a frozen form of the name). Over time, personal forms of the verb develop; names, in turn, are differentiated into nouns and adjectives. Thus, the development of parts of speech is associated with the development of sentence structure; The development of the sentence, in turn, is associated with the development of the word, and all this together is due to the constant progress of thinking.

Potebnya concretizes Humboldt's doctrine of the internal form of language. Just as the problem of the origin of language for him rests on the problem of the origin of the word, so Potebnya reduces the internal form of language, first of all, to the internal form of the word.

A word is a unity of sound (articulate sound) and meaning. How is this unity ensured? The sound of a word is its external shape . The meaning of the word is performance , excited in our soul by the sound of a given word, its external form. Internal form of the word – This connection between sound and meaning; This cause , according to which this meaning was assigned specifically to this, and not to any other articulate sound. So, the child calls the spherical lampshade watermelon based on the similarity in shape between two objects (a watermelon and a lampshade). The Slavs named the snake snake because she crawls on the ground(name by adjacency), window - based on similarities with eye(similarity in function), etc. This is the mechanism of the naming process, the formation of new words. The internal form of the word plays a dominant role in this process. We can therefore say that the internal form is attribute underlying the name , with the only difference that the internal form is not a sign taken by itself, but a sign for which an analogy has been found in the world of sounds, a designated sign.

The internal form of a word can be completely clear (as in the word windowsill), may be partially obscured (like words snake And window) or completely forgotten (like the word house), but it definitely exists; it is a necessary condition for the birth of a word. That is why Potebnya claims that any meaning of a word is derivative . The category “internal form” is correlated in Potebnya with such categories as etymological meaning of the word, image, representation; sometimes they act as synonyms.

Like Humboldt, Potebnya shows that the national specificity of a language is associated with the internal form. For example, the content thought of in words salary, annuum(lat.), pension(French), gage(German), has a lot in common and can be subsumed under the concept of “fee”; but there is no similarity in how this content is depicted in the named words: annuum this is what is released for a year ( annual); pension what weighs out; gage– guarantee, the result of mutual obligations, in English. – pledge; salary - an act of love, a gift, but not a legal reward ( favor - have mercy, pity, love).

Potebnya derives the category “lexical meaning” from the internal form of the word: 1) Criticizing the logical direction, he opposes the identification of lexical meaning and concept: “A word is not the presence of a sound form alone, but its entire content is different from the concept and cannot be its equivalent or expression simply because in the course of the development of thought it precedes the concept.” Concept - this is a set of essential features of an object or phenomenon in our consciousness. The basis of the lexical meaning is one attribute of an object or phenomenon that has fallen into the bright field of consciousness ( snake - earthen, cow - horned). Thus, the lexical meaning is initially identical to the internal form, because the internal form is the feature underlying the name. In the book “Thought and Language” Potebnya writes: “A word has... two contents: one, which we above called objective, and now we can call the closest etymological meaning of the word, always contains only one sign ; the other is subjective content, in which there may be signs a bunch of . The first is a sign, a symbol that replaces the second for us.” Development of lexical meaning words are directly related to the progress of thinking and lies in the fact that the lexical meaning “grows” towards the concept, strives towards the concept as its limit.

2) At the same time, the lexical meaning never merges with the concept. To show this, Potebnya makes a distinction immediate and further meanings of the word . In his work “From Notes on Russian Grammar” (Vol. 1), speaking about lexical meaning, he writes: “What is the meaning of a word? Obviously, linguistics, without shying away from achieving its goals, considers the meaning of words only up to a certain limit. Since all kinds of things are spoken about, without the aforementioned limitation, linguistics would contain, in addition to its indisputable content, which no other science judges, the content of all other sciences. For example, speaking about the meaning of a word tree, we should move into the field of botany, but regarding the word cause or causal union - to interpret causality in the world. But the fact is that the meaning of a word generally means two different things, of which we will call one, subject to the knowledge of linguistics, nearest , and the other, which is the subject of other sciences - further meaning of the word. Only one immediate meaning constitutes the actual content of thought during the utterance of a word.”

Thus, the closest meaning is the LZ word, and the further meaning is the concept. The closest meaning is based not on all the essential features of an object, but first on one that accidentally fell into the field of consciousness of native speakers in the process of cognitive activity. For example, cow(proto-Slavic *korva)originally meant horned (cf. lat. corvu - horn). And gradually in the process of cognition it is enriched with new features. It is in this sense that the thesis of Yu. S. Stepanov should be understood that “the meaning of a word tends to the concept as its limit.” Sometimes the terms “everyday concept”, “naive concept” are used for “immediate meaning”, and for “further meaning” - “scientific concept”; but this is not entirely accurate and distorts Potebnya’s thought. By “further meaning” Potebnya understood the whole set of essential and non-essential features of a given object or phenomenon, not only discovered by science, but also by faith, intuition, experience, including personal experience, the whole set of our (and my personal) knowledge about a given subject . Therefore, “the closest meaning of the word popularly"(is common to all representatives of a given people), "while further, for each, different in quality and quantity of elements, - personally».

3) So, the category of lexical meaning in Potebnya, like all other linguistic categories, historical. Potebnya does not try to give a universal definition of lexical meaning that is true for all stages of the historical life of a word; but he outlines how is born lexical meaning (problem of genesis) and in what direction it evolves (the problem of the semantic history of words), which is much more important for science than a dogmatic definition.

8. The doctrine of grammatical form.

For Potebnya the grammatical form is not a sound, but a special type of meaning , different from the lexical (real), additional to the lexical: “the grammatical form is an element of the meaning of the word and is homogeneous with its real meaning.” From this general thesis follow the following provisions of Potebnya’s teaching on the grammatical form of words:

1) Potebnya opposes the identification of grammatical form with affixes (inflections), since the grammatical form may not have a material expression (for example, verbs marry, execute have an appearance, but it is not expressed materially in any way). Therefore, the presence of a grammatical form in a word is recognized only “by meaning, that is, by connection with other words and forms in speech and language.”

2) Since grammatical form is, first of all, meaning, the number of grammatical forms in a language is determined by the number of grammatical meanings. Thus, “every new use of the instrumental case is a new case, so that we actually have several cases denoted by the name of the instrumental” ( chop with an ax - gun, flutter like a butterfly– comparative, go through the forest - spatial, bitten by a dog - subjective, etc.).

3) Based on his doctrine of grammatical form, Potebnya criticizes the teaching of early comparativists (J. Grimm, A. Schleicher, etc.) about two periods in the development of human language - a period of growth, flourishing and a period of destruction, aging, decline. Comparativists viewed the decrease in the number of inflections as aging and the decline of language. Potebnya argues that a decrease in the number of endings does not lead to a decrease in the number of meanings, and therefore the number of forms; the previous grammatical meanings simply receive a different expression (in word order, combinability, etc.). Unlike the early comparativists, Potebnya speaks of language progress in connection with the progress of thinking.

Semantic evolution of the word lies in perpetual motion mapping (figurative meaning) to the concept. Potebnya connects the semantic evolution of the word with the evolution of thinking, identifying three historically replacing each other types of thinking - mythical, poetic and prosaic:

1) Mythical thinking is based on a simple comparison-identification ( sun = wheel, from here – heavenly chariot); this thinking is not metaphorical, but metonymically : it comes not from the similarity of the compared objects, but from their actual relationship, according to native speakers.

2) Poetic thinking is based on comparison as a way of knowing the unknown through the already known. The difference between poetic and mythical thinking is in the relation of consciousness to the image: in the first case, the sun is identified with a wheel, and the speaker believes that a heavenly chariot is actually rolling across the sky; in the second case, the sun-wheel is an image, an internal form, a way of representing meaning, but the speaker is aware of the non-identity of two objects (the sun and the wheel), highlighting the common feature of these objects - roundness. Poetic thinking is a huge leap forward in comparison with mythical thinking. This type of thinking metaphorical .

3) Prosaic thinking occurs when the internal form is forgotten, when the “word with representation” (“poetic” word) turns into “word without representation” (“prosaic” word). The reason for this transformation is expansion of the word's meaning (or condensation of thought ), however, “the very expansion of meaning occurs through poetic form.” In other words, losing its former “poetry” (previous internal form), the word immediately acquires a new one. Thus, according to Potebnya, in language there is a constant change of poetic and prosaic thinking, and this change “goes endlessly back and forth.”

The highest level of prose language is language of science . He no longer operates with words-images, but with words-concepts. The prose word differs from the poetic word in that it directly combines the sound complex with meaning (the internal form disappears as a mediator); Before us is a word-term.

Prerequisites for the emergence of a psychological direction. Gaiman Steinthal - the founder of the psychological field
In the middle of the 19th century, neither a logical nor a naturalistic explanation of linguistic facts, each due to its one-sidedness, could satisfy the majority of linguists in Europe and Russia.
The attention of scientists begins to switch from the problem of invariance (commonality) of the internal structure of human language to the problem of the infinite variety of languages ​​of the world. Linguists are much less interested in the universal features of languages, but they began to pay more attention to the reasons for the variability of languages ​​and the analysis of their variation.

The founder was the German scientist Heiman (Heyman) Steinthal
“Grammar, logic and psychology, their principles and relationships” (1855), “Characteristics of the most important types of language structure” (1860), “The origin of language” (1880), “Introduction to psychology and linguistics” Like Humboldt , Steinthal solves in his works general theoretical problems of linguistics: the relationship between the language and the spirit of the people;
answer questions about the origin of language, the relationship between language and thinking,
Steinthal is convinced that grammatical and logical categories are not identical
language is a completely unique kind of thinking, and it develops according to known laws inherent only to this thinking. It is thanks to Steinthal that the doctrine of special “linguistic thinking”, of linguistic consciousness, appears in linguistics
when studying linguistic consciousness, it should be based on psychology, and not on logic. formed under the influence of the works of the idealist philosopher, creator of mechanistic associative psychology I.F. Herbart, that mental life is a mechanical struggle of ideas, which is governed by three mental laws: assimilation (from the Latin assimilatio 'assimilation , similarity'; 'similarity, merging, assimilation'); apperception (from Latin ad + perceptio perception’; ‘clear and conscious perception’); associations (from Latin associatio ‘connection’; ‘connection formed between two or more mental formations’). Linguistics is one of the psychological sciences
Following Herbart, Steinthal distinguishes between individual psychology and the psychology of peoples, or ethnopsychology. Thus, according to Steinthal, society is based on “sympathy,” and linguistic understanding is also based on it: “The fact that all understanding is based on sympathy also follows from this. Steinthal,. It is not the message, but self-awareness that is the source of language. “It is not work, not the need for communication, but joy and pain, beautiful and inseparable divine sparks, that ignite language,” concludes Steinthal.
He wrote that in objective thinking we operate not with objects, but with their representations, which are based only on some features of objects. In linguistic thinking we operate with representations of the objects of thought. These secondary representations are the internal form that establishes the connection between the first representations and articulate sounds.
And if the first ideas are subjective, then the second are doubly subjective.

The internal form of the language, according to Steinthal, is historically changeable and has gone through three stages in its development:
th - the most ancient, when there are no naming words, but only interjections (onomatopoetic words);
is accompanied by the flourishing of the internal linguistic form, the appearance of motivated words (such as bullfinch, sunflower)",
th—historical, when sound and meaning are combined without an intermediary, since the internal form disappears from consciousness. It is only a point at which sound and meaning come into contact, a point without extension and content - zero form.
Steinthal's doctrine of the internal form looks more harmonious than that of Humboldt, for it reflects the moments of the absence of the internal form, its origin and “extinction”. In general, the philosophy of language in his works was subordinated to individual psychologism. If Humboldt spoke about the primacy of the people over the individual in speech activity, Steinthal regarded language as an individual product of the activity of the spirit. His theories were speculative and did not agree with real linguistic facts.

Linguistic views of Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya

The most important works of A.A. Potebnya are “Thought and Language” (1862) and “From Notes on Russian Grammar” in four volumes (1874-1888
Potebnya’s focus was on semantics and syntax (while his comparative predecessors focused on phonetics and morphology).
The creative individual and the creative people are two areas in which Potebnya studied the forms of verbal creativity.
He denies polysemy, distinguishes between the immediate and further meanings of a word, and raises the question of the internal form of a word in a new way.
Language is “energy”, activity, writes Potebnya, therefore a word must be judged not by the dictionary, but by its actual life in speech.
it has no more than one meaning, since in speech a word corresponds to one act of thought.
Speaking about polysemy, we represent a word regardless of its meaning, says Potebnya, i.e. the word means only sound, and the unity of sound and meaning should then be understood as nothing more than the unity of the hollow and the birds that nest in it. It is not polysemy that is real, but “the monotony of different words.”
The closest meaning, he believed, is popular, since it is, firstly, formal (in the sense that it includes only the most general, that which, together with the presentation, allows the speaker and the listener to understand each other), secondly, it is common knowledge. Further meaning is personal, since it,
Potebnya concretized Humboldt's teaching on the internal form of the word. At the same time, he rejects Steinthal's teaching about three periods in the development of language, since the formation of words cannot stop, and in this process the internal form plays the most important role.
The internal form is related to the meaning as a sign is to the signified. When we say that A means or means B, for example, when, seeing smoke from a distance, we conclude: it means there is a fire burning there, then we know B through A.
Meaning is a complex set of human-recognized attributes; the internal form is only one of all signs: “A sign in a word is a necessary (for the speed of thought and for the expansion of consciousness) replacement of the corresponding image or concept; it is the representative of one or the other in current affairs of thought, and therefore is called representation.” But the linguistic term Potebnya’s representation does not equate with the psychological.
The internal form is always connected with the meaning of the previous word (cf. bel - protein). But the internal form can also be forgotten. “The internal form of a word is the relation of the content of thought to consciousness; it shows how his own thought appears to a person. This alone can explain why in the same language there can be many words to denote the same object and, conversely, one word, completely in accordance with the requirements of the language, can denote heterogeneous objects" [Potebnya 1862, p. 114]. In other words, internal form is the representation of thought.

The internal form not only gives the “objective” meaning of the word, but is also used to describe historical semantic transitions: “In a series of words of the same root, successively following from one another, each preceding one can be called the internal form of the subsequent one. For example, the word ulcerate, taken in a figurative sense, it means actually inflicting ulcers, wounds..." [Potebnya 1862, p. 11
A word is the unity of a sign (i.e. internal form), meaning (i.e. content) and a sound shell (i.e. external form).
In accordance with these meanings, all words in the language are divided into two groups: 1) real and lexical words (nouns, verbs); 2) formal and grammatical words (prepositions and conjunctions).
ignores the social nature of language in general and words in particular.

TEACHING ABOUT THE GRAMMATICAL FORM OF A WORD
He began by refusing to understand grammatical forms as the sound expression of grammatical meaning, i.e. opposed the identification of form with affixes—expressors of certain grammatical meanings. Potebnya equates grammatical form and grammatical meaning. Not recognizing lexical polysemy, Potebnya just as decisively rejected grammatical polysemy.
For example, he believed that every new use of the instrumental case is a new case
Moreover, he insisted that languages ​​evolve, not become obsolete.
SYNTACTIC VIEWS
He believed that in reality there is no single isolated word, and a word taken out of speech is dead, does not function, does not reveal its lexical, much less formal properties, because it does not have them. “There are incomparably more grammatical categories than logical ones” (Ibid., pp. 167-168).
he names two essential features of an Indo-European sentence: 1) the presence of parts of speech in general,
presence of a conjugated verb. At present, this point of view cannot be recognized as true (cf. indivisible, nominative, genitive, interjection and other sentences).
The parts of the sentence developed in parallel with the parts of speech.
They mutually influenced each other: a clear differentiation of some led to the improvement of others.
Potebnya develops a theory of the growth of verbality in Indo-European sentences: “In Russian, as in other related languages, towards our time the opposition of name and verb is increasing.
The sentence, according to Potebnya, is the main linguistic cell in which semantic shifts occur and in which all semantic categories of language are formed.
Being a supporter of the psychological trend, Potebnya invariably emphasized historicism as the most essential feature of linguistics and literary criticism:
Questions for self-control
What were the prerequisites for the emergence of a psychological trend in comparative historical linguistics in the mid-19th century? Who can be considered the founder of the psychological field?
On whose works did G. Steinthal rely, laying the foundations of the psychological doctrine of language? What is the essence of his psychological view of language? What branches of linguistics did he study?
How did G. Steinthal develop W. Humboldt’s ideas about the relationship between language and thinking? about the development of the spirit of the people and the perfection of languages? about the relationship between the individual and the people? about the internal form?
Did Steinthal manage to create a new science of ethnopsychology? If not, why not?
What influence did G. Steinthal have on the development of comparative studies in the 19th century?
What is the place in Russian science of the 19th century? occupies A.A. What about you? How were his linguistic views formed? In which works were they most fully reflected?
What is the novelty of A. A. Potebnya’s teaching about the word? What did he understand by the immediate and further meaning of the word? Under lexical and grammatical meaning? Give a critical assessment of this teaching.
How was the doctrine of internal form transformed in the works of A. A. Potebnya? What is unique about his understanding of grammatical form in general? How are grammatical form and grammatical meaning related in his works?
Explain the essence of the syntactic teaching of Potebnya.
What new did Potebnya introduce into the doctrine of the Indo-European proposal? Assess Potebnya's syntactic concept from the point of view of the current state of syntactic science.
What theoretical principles of Potebnya have been adopted by modern science?

Report

"Linguistic directionsXIXcentury: psychological direction

Novosibirsk - 2004

Psychological direction

Psychological direction in linguistics

1. What caused the emergence of this direction?

The psychological trend in linguistics arose as a reaction to the teachings of representatives of the naturalistic and logical schools. We find its origins in the concept of V. Humboldt, who emphasized the active and semantic nature of speech activity. The connection between mental activity and the psychology of speech is characteristic of all schools of linguistic psychologism. However, over the course of more than 100 years of development, various aspects of the psychology of speech and the doctrine of activity and speech behavior have emerged.

2. Fundamentals, ideas, theories. Specificity of this direction

Main schools of linguistic psychologism

The founder of the psychological movement is considered to be Gaiman Steinthal (1823-1899). His main works are: “Classification of languages ​​as the development of the linguistic idea” (1850), “The origin of language” (1851), “Grammar, logic and psychology” (1855), “Characteristics of the most important types of linguistic structure” (1860). Steinthal's concept will be discussed in more detail below.

Rejecting Schleicher's linguistic biologism and Becker's logical grammar, G. Steinthal developed the doctrine of language as an individual activity and a reflection of folk psychology. He believed that the laws of the movement of ideas come down to the study of the formation and development of language and thinking of the individual (that is, speech-speaking and the ability to speak) and the origin and development of language in society (that is, the totality of linguistic material among individual peoples), since “language is self-awareness, worldview and logic of the spirit of the people.” Linguistics should rely not only on the psychology of the individual, studying his speech, but also on the psychology of peoples, studying their languages.

The influence of Steinthal's work can be found not only in Potebnya and Paul, but also in Baudouin de Courtenay and de Saussure, Sapir and Shcherba. However, linguistic psychologism has developed heterogeneously.

In the concepts of Potebnya and Paul, psychological foundations served primarily to explain the semantics of a sentence, grammatical categories and types of lexical meaning. The connection between language and personality and nationality, whose language was interpreted as a cultural and historical phenomenon, was also explained psychologically.

The social nature of speech activity was emphasized by Baudouin de Courtenay and de Saussure. In these same concepts, the difference between individual-lexical and socio-grammatical, associative and linear connections was recognized as essential. Psychological schools of the late XIX - first third of the XX centuries. We also discussed the problem of language and speech, language functions, the structure of language and speech activity.

The functional-structural aspect of linguistic psychologism was reflected in the works of A. Marti (“Research on the Justification of Universal Grammar and Philosophy of Language,” 1908), A. Gardiner (“Theory of Speech and Language,” 1932), K. Bühler (“Theory of Language,” 1934 ). However, psychological ideas are used to substantiate different schools and areas of linguistics, and psychologism in understanding speech activity is combined with the ideas of symbolic logic in understanding the structure of language and methods of linguistic analysis.

Psychological components are found in the teachings of various schools of structuralism, in the theories of ethnolinguistics and semiotics. The revitalization and isolation of the psychological direction itself is associated with the emergence of psycholinguistics. So, in 1954, a seminar of US psychologists and linguists was convened in Bloomington; in 1957, C. Osgood published the book “Dimensions of Meaning,” and in 1961, S. Saporta published the anthology of the most important psycholinguistic works, “Psycholinguistics.” American psycholinguistics draws on descriptive and transformational text description, on behavioral psychology, especially Osgood's “three-level model of behavior,” and on information theory, that is, the mathematical theory of communication. This is described in more detail in the book by V.I. Kodukhov. General linguistics.

Semantic-psychological consideration of speech activity, the structure of a speech act, the situation of speech and context has become the subject of study in many countries. So, in Russia, this issue, according to V.I. Kodukhov, were engaged in L.V. Shcherba and L.S. Vygotsky; at the time of writing this book, the psycholinguistics group was headed by A.A. Leontiev (“Psycholinguistics,” 1967; “Psycholinguistic units and the generation of speech utterances,” 1969, and “Language, speech, speech activity,” 1960). In England, the context of the situation, the situation of speech and the speech context are studied by the Furse-Holiday school. In Japan there is a school of "linguistic existence"; It aims to study language in conjunction with human activity, which involves the study of the linguistic act and oral speech. Since language is understood as an instrument of cognition and communication, the linguistic act is recognized as the starting point of research. A linguistic act is a socially habitual human action, consisting of expressing thoughts and feelings using linguistic signs and understanding this expression.

In linguistic psychologism, which arose as a negation of naturalism and logicism, varieties are subsequently identified that will combine psychologism with the study of other aspects of language, speech activity and thinking. The psychological approach can be found among representatives of sociolinguistics and structuralism, linguosemiotics and mathematical linguistics.

Thus, the understanding of speech activity as a psychophysical act and the ability of the speaker largely recognizes the physiological basis of speech. Thomson also emphasized that the “real” concept of language is that “language is only at times when we speak or listen, a physiological activity of our body together with a mental one; and at all times language exists in us in the form of a known mental and physiological ability” (Kodukhov V.I. General linguistics. M., 1974, p. 43). The physiological basis of speech activity was recognized by Bloomfield and psycholinguists, who replaced historicism with transformations and the level nature of the statically considered process of speech generation.

The main schools of linguistic psychologism are ethnolinguistics and psychological sociology of language, semantic psychologism and psychological structuralism, psychology of speech and psycholinguistics. Their differences are to a certain extent based on different psychological teachings and schools. Moreover, representatives of the psychological trend in linguistics are often known as psychologists.

Association of representations and speech behavior

The greatest influence on the development of linguistics was exerted by associative psychology and behaviorism. This is described in more detail in the book by V.I. Kodukhov. "General linguistics".

Associative psychology is one of the main directions of psychology of the 17th – 19th centuries. The concepts of “association of representations” and “apperception” were introduced by Locke and Leibniz. Linguists of the mid-19th century were directly influenced by the German psychologist and teacher Johann Friedrich Herbart (“Psychology”, 1816, Russian translation 1895; “Psychology as a science based on experience, metaphysics and mathematics”, 1824). Believing that the accuracy of the method lies in quantitative definitions, such as those found in mathematics and mechanics, Herbart builds a “mechanics of ideas and concepts”, in which consciousness is interpreted as a process of “statics and dynamics” of ideas - the primary atoms of consciousness (Kondrashov N.A. History of linguistic teachings. M., 1979, p. 64).

The mental activity of an individual as a thought process is an association of ideas. The simplest associations are connections by contiguity, arising as a result of their temporal or spatial coincidence. More complex associations are associations by similarity and contrast. In addition to associative connections, the following are also recognized: assimilation - the unification and consolidation of identical or similar ideas and apperception - the determination of new perception and understanding by a mass of ideas already existing in consciousness.

The doctrine of the associative mechanism of mental processes contributed to the development in linguistics of the doctrine of the internal form of the word (the term “internal form of the word”, according to V.N. Alpatov, author of the book “History of Linguistic Doctrines” on page 87, belongs to A.A. Potebne, as and, for example, the term “material meaning”), about the types of figurative meanings of words, about the actual meaning (meaning) of words and sentences, about associative and syntagmatic relationships.

In the twentieth century, the problems of associative psychology were inherited by behaviorism (from English - behavior). Even Wilhelm Wundt, experimentally studying apperception as the basis of all mental activity, emphasized that it is a volitional action. D. Watson, first in the article “Psychology from the Point of View of a Behaviorist” (1913), and then in the book “Behaviorism” (1925), tried to interpret mental activity as a system of visible and invisible (hidden) motor reactions according to the “stimulus-response” scheme, as a process of skills formation. Consciousness as a function of the brain is rejected, and thinking is identified with speech, which is considered as a speech motor act. J. Mead drew attention to the sociality of behavior that develops in the process of communication.

Behaviorism has influenced the study of speech acts. At the same time, behaviorism, like the psychological theory of associations, is moving closer to mathematical logic, which studies the law of associativity. It occurs in propositional calculus and the study of complex propositions composed using conjunction, disjunction, implication and equivalence.

At that time, Soviet linguists overcame the mechanism and idealism of associative psychology and behaviorism by carefully analyzing the factual material and the social nature of speech activity, using modern achievements (at that time) of the physiology of higher nervous activity and social psychology. The physiological basis of associations, and apperceptions in particular, is explained by the teachings of I.P. Pavlova about the closure and preservation of temporary connections and the systemic nature of higher nervous activity. Psychology of consciousness, developed in Soviet science by L.S. Vygotsky, S.L. Rubinstein, A.N. Leontiev, overcomes the limitations of associative and behavioral psychology, emphasizing at the same time the social conditioning of mental activity.

Psychologism in linguistics

3. Strengths and weaknesses of this direction

The most complete psychologism in linguistics is considered in Zvegintsev’s book. Along with the rapid development of comparative historical linguistics, the accumulation of new factual data and the establishment of particular laws of language development, the search for general theoretical concepts continued, on the basis of which it would be possible to explain the known data and methodological guidelines used by linguistics. Schleicher's naturalistic concept turned out to be too one-sided and caused protest. The principles of logical grammar were abandoned after Humboldt's speech. His understanding of language as a continuous process, as a creative activity, as a constant living reproduction of speech facts was most consistent with the dominant historical approach to language. However, from Humboldt’s rich, dialectically rich creativity, only individual theses are developed. In particular, the concept of “linguistic activity” has been reduced to considering language as one of the functions of the human body. And this inevitably led to the identification of the essence of language with the concept of psychophysiological processes carried out in the individual process of speech. The basis of linguistics could be either physiology or psychology. The psychological interpretation of the essence and processes of language development became predominant in the second half of the 19th century.

The most prominent proponent of the psychological trend in linguistics was a follower of Humboldt, the German linguist and theorist Hermann Steinthal (1823-1899). In his book “Grammar, logic and psychology, their principles and relationships” (1855), Steinthal strictly defined the boundaries of linguistics and logic and at the same time substantiated the close connections between linguistics and psychology. The latter problem is discussed in more detail in his “Introduction to Psychology and Linguistics” (2nd ed., 1881). In his other works, Hermann Steinthal helped popularize the typological classification of languages ​​developed by Humboldt. These are “The Origin of Language” (4th ed., 1888), “Classification of Languages ​​as the Development of a Linguistic Idea” (1850), “Characteristics of the Most Important Types of the Linguistic System of a Language” (1860), “W. Humboldt’s Provisions on the Philosophy of Language” ( 1848).

Steinthal believes that “the subject of linguistics is language or language in general, that is, the expression of conscious internal, mental and spiritual movements, states and relationships through articulated sounds.” The total content of the inner world, which is thought to precede language and must be expressed through language, is the second thesis of Hermann Steinthal. Thus, in Steinthal's concept, the main and determining interaction is the interaction of individual speech and individual thinking.

The psychological concept of language by G. Steinthal is contrasted, on the one hand, with the experiments in constructing a logical grammar, which received the most vivid expression in K. Becker’s book “The Organism of Language,” 1841, and, on the other hand, with the biological naturalism of A. Schleicher. At the same time, G. Steinthal tried to rely on the philosophy of language of W. Humboldt, but in fact he largely moved away from it.

In many of his works, G. Steinthal acts not as a researcher of specific languages ​​or linguistic phenomena and facts, but as a theorist and systematizer. In 1860, he, together with M. Lazarus, founded the journal “Journal of Ethnic Psychology and Linguistics,” specifically dedicated to the development of problems put forward by the psychological direction.

Through the study of the phenomena of individual psychology, G. Steinthal strives to comprehend the “laws of spiritual life” in various kinds of groups - in nations, in political, social and religious communities - and to establish connections between the types of language with the types of thinking and spiritual culture of peoples (ethnopsychology). The fulfillment of this task is stimulated, in his opinion, by the fact that the internal form of the language (which determines the national type of language) is directly accessible to observation only through its external form, that is, mainly through the sound side of the language, which is why it should be taken in the first place into account when studying language and its characteristic features (“We have no right to talk about linguistic forms where they do not correspond to a change in sound form”).

Some provisions of the linguistic theory of G. Steinthal were assimilated and developed by young grammarians.

Humboldt's teaching about the complex relationship between language, consciousness and reality is replaced by subjectivism and individualism. To explain the connection between individual language and thinking, Steinthal used the associative psychology of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841), who proceeded from the teachings of the subjective idealist Fichte. Herbart reduced all the activity of human consciousness to the self-motion of ideas, governed by the laws of assimilation (that is, the unification and consolidation of identical or similar ideas), apperception (the determination of a new perception by the mass of ideas already existing in consciousness) and association (the establishment of connections of various kinds between ideas). Based on these laws of movement of ideas, Steinthal tried to explain the formation and development of language and thinking in the individual; the same laws, in his opinion, caused the origin and development of language in human society. With such a psychological and individualistic approach to language, its social essence was ignored; in fact, language was divorced from thinking and it was impossible to explain the relationship between the individual and society. Steinthal focuses on the individual act of speech.

G. Steinthal could not ignore the role of language in society. Therefore, he wrote: “We absolutely cannot imagine a person other than as a speaker and, as a result, a member of a certain national collective, and, therefore, we cannot imagine humanity otherwise than as divided into peoples and tribes.” In his opinion, initially they thought only together, each connected his thought with the thought of his fellow tribesman, and the new thought that arose from this belonged to both one and the other, just as a child belongs to its father and mother. Similar physical organization and similar impressions received from the outside produce similar feelings, inclinations, desires, and these in turn produce similar thoughts and similar language. Mental formations arise in the individual, complexes of ideas that, without the influence of other people, either would not have arisen in him at all, or would have arisen very late (such as, for example, proving the Pythagorean theorem for the first time or learning it from a textbook). Such a “psychology of peoples” (ethnopsychology) turns out to be far from the social activities of people.

Thus, in the struggle between the two main directions of general linguistics - supporters of the theory that language is a physical, natural phenomenon, and their opponents, who argued that language is a mental phenomenon - the latter temporarily won. The neogrammatical school proceeded from Steinthal’s thesis: “Since the spirit of a people lives only in individuals and has no existence separate from the individual spirit, then in it, as in the latter, only the same basic processes are naturally carried out, which are more closely explained by individual psychology.” . Steinthal was followed in his theoretical book “Principles of the History of Language” (1880) by the head of the neo-grammarians, Hermann Paul.

In Russia, a prominent representative of the psychological trend in linguistics, an original linguist-thinker, was Professor Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya, whose life and work is connected with Kharkov University.

Linguistic concept of Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya

A.A. Potebnya (1835-1891) is a major Ukrainian and Russian philologist who had a huge influence on the development of domestic linguistics and literary criticism. His main works: “Thought and Language” (1862), “From Notes on Russian Grammar” (1874-1888). Potebnya created the Kharkov linguistic school (his direct students were A.V. Vetukhov, A.G. Gornfeld, V.A. Lezin, B.M. Lyapunov, A.V. Popov, V.I. Khartsiev), whose teachings received the name of Potebnianism.

A.A. Potebnya contributed to the development of linguistic psychologism and comparative historical linguistics. He believed that Humboldt “precisely laid the foundation for transferring the issue to psychological soil with his definitions of language as an activity, the work of the spirit, as an organ of thought” (Potebnya A.A. Language and nationality. - “Bulletin of Europe”, 1895, book 9, p. . eleven). Based on the works of Humboldt and Steinthal, A.A. Potebnya created an original concept that considers language as a historical phenomenon and speech-thinking activity.

At the first stage of his scientific activity, A.A. Potebnya is influenced by the ideas of W. Humboldt and G. Steinthal, but very soon grows into a major and original linguist-thinker.

Regarding general theoretical issues, Potebnya paid a lot of attention to the concept of language as an activity, during which the language is continuously updated. Connected with this is his interest, on the one hand, in the problem of speech and its role in the life of language (in particular, its semantic aspect), and on the other hand, in the problem of artistic creativity in its relation to language. Potebnya is characterized by an individualistic solution to these problems (“In reality, there is no one isolated word. There is only speech in it... A word torn out of connection is dead, does not function, does not reveal its lexical, much less formal properties, because it does not have them ").

Unlike G. Steinthal, A.A. Potebnya did not separate language from thinking, but at the same time emphasized the specificity of logical and linguistic categories. (“Language is also a form of thought, but one that is not found in anything other than language...”)

One of the first A.A. Potebnya pointed out the need to study the phenomena of language in their relationships, thereby contributing to the formation of the concept of a language system.

Potebnya’s general theoretical principles are associated with a thorough analysis of a large amount of linguistic material. This side of his scientific activity, most clearly presented in his famous “Notes on Russian Grammar,” A.A. Potebnya is notable no less than for his theoretical ideas.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the works of Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who noted the social nature of language, but was a pronounced psychologist, gained great fame. Wundt studied language as a product of the collective life of people along with myths, which include the beginnings of religion and art, and with customs, which include the beginnings and general forms of development of law and culture. Wundt studied this syncretic spiritual creativity on the basis of psychology, and he repeatedly stated that he was interested in the facts of language from the point of view of their usefulness for the psychologist. In his main works “Psychology of Peoples - Language” (1900), “History of Language and Psychology of Language” (1901) (polemically directed against B. Delbrück), “Elements of the Psychology of Peoples” (1912). Wundt sought to subject to a psychological interpretation all the problems that neogrammarians dealt with: phonetic and semantic changes, word forms, the origin of language, differentiation in language, etc. Rejecting Herbart's associative psychology, Wundt created a system of voluntarist psychology, which considers will, rather than intellect, to be the basis of human mental life. Wundt sharply opposed the individualism of the neo-grammarians, in particular G. Paul: “Paul does not take into account at all the fact that language, myths, customs are created precisely by society and during their development, society determines the individual in all essential respects; the individual does not determine society even in any indirect way” (Kondrashov, m. 65). However, the general social orientation of Wundt’s psychological system—collective psychologism—is not much different from individual psychology. In both cases, language is considered not as a means of communication between people, but only as a tool for expressing thoughts. Therefore, A. Meillet’s characterization is only partly true: “The nineteenth century was a century of history, and the successes achieved by linguistics using a historical point of view are amazing. The social sciences are now taking shape, and linguistics must take the place due to it in accordance with its nature.”

Psychologism in linguistics

The psychological direction in linguistics is not a closed school limited by certain linguistic doctrines. The psychological interpretation of language phenomena is characteristic not only of G. Steinthal or A.A. Potebne, young grammarians, but also representatives of the Kazan and Moscow linguistic schools, etc. However, if, for example, it seems possible to unite neogrammarians into one group on the basis of methodological and methodological principles common to them, which include a certain component of the psychological interpretation of the facts of language, then this cannot be done with respect to a number of linguists. They are outside the schools and, although in their linguistic works they widely involve the mental factor (which is a unifying principle), they are so different from each other that it is difficult to confine them within the narrow framework of a particular school. Such linguists include G. Steinthal, A.A. Potebnya, V. Wundt and some others.

Development of the Humboldtian tradition

The works of V. von Humboldt gave rise, as Alpatov notes in the book on page 82, to a fairly influential tradition in linguistics. First of all, this applied to Germany, but linguists, one way or another guided by Humboldtian ideas, worked in other countries, including Russia. It should be borne in mind that the general change in the scientific situation, manifested in the ideas of A. Schleicher and other comparativists, also affected the development of the Humboldtian tradition. The philosophy of language occupied less and less place, but the influence of biological sciences was felt. This influence was associated not only with Darwinism, but also with the significant development of such science as psychology. Since the middle of the 19th century, this science has transformed from purely speculative to experimental, and a method of psychological research was developed for the first time. The progress of psychology also influenced the science of language.

All linguistic traditions, including the European one, developed in connection with the concept of norm, that is, they were closely related to evaluation; Even at the time of the “Grammar of Port-Royal”, the evaluative approach was not strictly distinguished from the “cognitive” one. But in the 19th century, purely theoretical linguistics, not connected with practice and not allowing for any evaluation, had already received significant development; First of all, this approach, of course, manifested itself in historical and comparative historical research. Therefore, in general, Steinthal believes that linguistics is a cognitive science: for him there are no such problems as the truth or falsity of a statement, its beauty or ugliness, the morality or immorality of its content. Even the problem of linguistic correctness is connected with linguistics only indirectly.

But, according to Steinthal, there is one exception: “Linguistics takes on an aesthetic, evaluative character in a discipline that is a very essential and integral part of it, namely the systematization or classification of languages. At the same time, it is not satisfied with uniting languages ​​according to the common characteristics found in them into classes and families, but from these classes it forms a school, a system of ranks. Consequently, it evaluates here the importance of languages, their dignity as a product of the mind and at the same time as an instrument of mental development.” Here he continued Humboldt's approach. However, no modification of this approach could be proven.

The most similar to Steinthal is the Indologist and language theorist Ivan Pavlovich Minaev (1840-1890), professor at St. Petersburg University. He spent several years on expeditions in India, studied Sanskrit, was the first in our country to study the Pali language and the Burmese language, the Indian linguistic tradition, and prepared a school of Indologists. He distinguished between three ways of classifying languages, highlighting genetic, morphological and psychological classifications. Genetic ones eliminate “all subjectivity,” but they are not enough. The morphological classifications include the classifications of Schlegel, A. Schleicher, where, according to I.P. Minaev, only the linguistic form is taken into account. The highest rated are the “psychological” classifications of Humboldt and Steinthal, which take into account “the perfection with which language expresses thought.” Like his predecessors, he proceeds from the standard of classical and/or languages, believing that the closer a language is in structure to these languages, the more perfectly the thought is expressed in it. But Minaev, like Humboldt, was forced to admit that from this point of view, the languages ​​of the American Indians with a rather complex morphology turn out to be more perfect than Chinese, although the Indian languages ​​are poor in “general concepts”, and the level of development of the Chinese language is visible already from what has been translated into it Sanskrit monuments. Thus, the principles of stage typology turned out to be contradictory and unproven.

The development of the Humboldtian tradition continued at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when, in general, positivist, primarily neogrammatical, linguistics dominated world science. The main direction that sought to continue the traditions of Humboldt during this period was the so-called school of aesthetic idealism in Germany, founded by Karl Vossler (1872-1949) and his student Leo Spitzer (1887-1960). These were specialists in Romance linguistics, their specific research was mostly devoted to historical stylistics and the study of the language of writers. Ideas close to aesthetic idealism were also expressed by the once popular Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866-1952).

Vossler and his school emphasized the creative, aesthetic nature of language. Creativity that is always individual. They differentiated from linguistic development, which has a collective nature and depends on the “general spiritual predisposition” of the speakers of a particular language.

An outstanding domestic representative of psychologism - A.A. Potebnya (1835-1891) - professor at Kharkov University, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, laureate of many awards for philological works, recognized foreigner. and fatherland. authority. [Lingu. psychologism is felt in Potebney’s interpretation of the essence of language, which he sees as a continuous spiritual activity. Language appeared as a result of a person’s spiritual activity, as the embodiment of spiritual life in language, it further exists as a continuous activity to improve forms, renewal, development, as continuous verbal creativity. In this regard, the researcher’s interest should be focused not on frozen ready-made language structures, but on the functioning of the language. An isolated word is dead; it does not reveal all its qualities. Only in speech does it acquire its true (only one) meaning, corresponding to a given act of thought. Thus, each act of speech is individual and unique, just as a person’s mental activity is individual and unique. The content of speech is subjective, and so is understanding, because... the thoughts of the speaker and the listener are different. Potebnya, therefore, shares Humboldt’s point of view that “all understanding is misunderstanding.” At the same time, Potebnya develops the thought of Humboldt, for whom this phrase means a deviation from the speaker’s thoughts. Potebnya believes that this is not a deviation, but an understanding in its own way, the listener bringing his own experience, perception of the world, psychological characteristics, creativity, etc. into the expressed thought. What is heard for the listener is not a way of transmitting thoughts from one person to another, but a reason for the appearance of his own thoughts. “To speak does not mean to convey one’s thought to another, but only to arouse in another his own thoughts.” Psychologism is felt in Potebnya’s interpretation of the problem of language and thinking. Unlike Humboldt, Potebnya separates these concepts. These are different things in ontological terms (by origin). Language arises on the basis of sufficiently developed thinking, a phenomenon of spiritual life that precedes language. On def. stage they inevitably and objectively receive embodiment in linguistic form; Having arisen, language influences spiritual activity. Language and thinking are also different in their functioning. “The area of ​​language is far from coinciding with the area of ​​thought,” for example, in creative activity, wordless communication occupies a large place. At the same time, only in the word does thought receive its place in the system of human knowledge. “Wordless” thinking is based on thinking associated with the word.] In Potebnya’s linguistic theory, a central place is occupied by the doctrine of the internal form of words. According to Potebnya, the internal form of a word is the mechanism through which the connection between linguistic meaning and linguistic form occurs. Under internal by form, Potebnya understands the original, etymological meaning of the word, the embodiment in the word of our idea of ​​the object designated in this word. Because he's a linguist. - continuous action, then new meanings are superimposed on this original meaning, the internal form of the word. The word takes on further meaning. Etymologist. the meaning is forgotten, although it remains in the word. In addition to further meaning, the word is layered with a subjective impression. However, the root cause for the embodiment of a particular meaning in a given form remains its etymologist. meaning, i.e. internal form. % in the names of berries “blueberry”, “blueberry” is clearly visible internally. the form “black”, “blue”, which reflects our idea of ​​these berries. It is a phenomenon. etymologist. the meaning of these words, although now we may not consider color their main feature. Moreover, it is most often forgotten and lost. % "lingonberry" - "red". Int. form of the word yavl. the basis on which function and meaning are connected in language. Means. place in his theory is doctrine of supply. Evolution of proposals also associated with evol. psychic activities Early stage psycho. actions are characterized by concreteness of perception =>primary sentences. there were nominal constructions (not my sadness), the verb appeared. Later. Parts of speech also developed according to the same logic: first appearing. nouns, which reflected objective thinking, then adj., which reflected the characteristics and quality of objects, which was important for practice. actions, then appearing. verb as a reflection of actions and processes.

As a phenomenon of the psychological state and activity of a person or people. At different periods in the history of linguistics, representatives of linguistics. interpreted the initial concepts, subject and objectives of the study differently. The system of views on the psychological nature of language changed significantly. Therefore, we can talk about a number of psychological directions, schools and concepts, united by characteristic features: 1) general opposition to logical (see Logical direction) and formal schools in linguistics; 2) orientation towards psychology as a methodological basis; 3) the desire to explore language in its real functioning and use.

P.n. arose in the depths of comparative historical linguistics in the 50s. 19th century under the influence of the philosophy of language of W. von Humboldt (see Humboldtianism) as a reaction to the prevailing logical views on the essence of language. Founder P. n. - H. Steinthal. In Russia, its largest representative was A. A. Potebnya (see Kharkov linguistic school). Already in the first period of its development, P. n. dissociated itself from the previous logical school: the categories of grammar and logic are as poorly correlated with each other as the concepts of circle and red; logic is universal and cannot reveal the specifics of the language of a given people (Steinthal); logic is a hypothetical science, while linguistics is genetic, i.e., it studies the “process of saying,” in which logic is not interested; “logic is such a formal science that, in comparison with it, the formality of linguistics is material” (Potebnya). Psychology was opposed to logic as the methodological basis of previous linguistics. Following Humboldt, Steinthal saw in language the expression of the “spirit of the people” - folk psychology, thereby emphasizing the social nature of language. However, the psychological science created by that time (I. F. Herbart) was individualistic. In order to create social psychology (“ethnopsychology”), Steinthal and M. Lazarus founded the “Journal of Ethnic Psychology and Linguistics” (1860). However, they were guided by idealistic and naive ideas about “ethnopsychology” as a manifestation of “sympathy” between people. At the beginning of the 20th century. W. Wundt made another attempt to create the science of people’s psychology as the methodological basis of linguistics (ethnopsychology), but it did not take place as a science. At the same time, the desire to rely on social psychology contributed to a broad view of language, awakening interest in folklore, mythology, and customs of the people, expressed in proverbs, sayings, riddles and other speech forms that embody folk wisdom.

Remaining true to Humboldt's basic postulate, P. n. considered language as a historical and dynamic phenomenon, eternally developing, which is consistent with the purpose of the comparative historical method. In an effort to transfer psychological concepts and terms of associative psychology into language, representatives of P. science. showed attention to the speech acts of a living language, to the inner side of the language, to the meaning of words and sentences. Observations of living speech, in their opinion, allow us to understand the essence and origin of language, for in speech processes we find “a constant repetition of the first act of creating language” (Potebnya). Approaching language from the psychology of speakers, P. n. emphasized the close connection between language and thinking. Steinthal argued that language is thinking. But in contrast to objective thinking, which operates with ideas, linguistic thinking is based on the internal form of language, i.e., on representations of ideas (Steinthal) or a sign - the relationship of the meaning of a word to the meaning of the previous word (Potebnya).

Attaching great importance to the concept of “internal form”, representatives of P. n. applied it to the history of language. Steinthal believed that in the prehistoric period languages ​​had a rich internal form, and in the historical period they gradually lose it. For representatives of P. n. the internal form is a consequence of the processes of word formation. They paid great attention to the processes of formation of linguistic units. Trying to psychologically explain these processes, they talked about such laws of psychology as assimilation, association, apperception, etc. Hence their interest in syntax, its leading position in research practice. Thus, the formation of parts of speech was considered on the basis of identifying the members of the sentence. In contrast to supporters of the logical school, who saw in a sentence the result of a combination of two (or several) concepts, the founders of P. n., on the contrary, saw in it an expression of the division of a general idea into its component parts (Wundt) with their subsequent synthesis (Potebnya). It should be emphasized that in P. n. For the first time, attention was drawn to the importance of Humboldt's thought on the need to use a coherent text in linguistic research.

On a number of significant issues, the Russian school of P. n. diverged from the German one. Thus, Potebnya emphasized the specific qualities of grammar, its formal properties. Steinthal and Wundt paid more attention to the psychological side, trying to discover rather language in psychology than psychology in language. Founders of P. n. exaggerated the role of psychological factors in the development of language, and often identified psychological and grammatical categories.

Awareness of the weaknesses of P. n. this period led to the 70s. 19th century to the formation of neogrammatism, which shared ideas about the psychological nature of language, studied living languages, but rejected ethnopsychology as a scientific fiction, considering the only reality given to a linguist to be an individual language. Therefore, the neogrammarians (Leipzig school) called for studying not an abstract language, but talking man. Individual psychology was recognized as the only methodological basis of linguistics, but neogrammarists did not dissolve the essence of language in psychology, seeing its physical or physiological side, which they relied on in their doctrine of phonetic laws. The ideas of psychologism were partially shared by representatives of the Kazan linguistic school, but they were not satisfied with the one-sided focus on individual psychology. They tried in different ways to emphasize the social essence of the speakers' psychology.

In the 1st half of the 20th century. Linguistic psychologism is being replaced by sociological and formal trends, primarily structural linguistics, which focuses on the static aspects and synchronic cross-section of language. However, the traditions of the psychological approach to language have not been lost: under the influence of new ideas both in psychology and philosophy, and in linguistics, separate concepts focused on the psychological principles of language analysis arise in different countries. So, at the beginning of the 20th century. A. Marti created a theory of universal grammar based on psychological principles. He saw the possibility of creating such a grammar in the fact that all languages ​​express the same psychological content and are built on the same foundations, since all people, regardless of the language they speak, have a common psychophysical organization. According to Marty, the main task of linguistics is to accurately analyze and describe mental functions and their content, which are expressed in universal linguistic means. The distinction proposed by Marty between autosemantics (self-sufficiency of language components) and synsemantics (their semantic insufficiency), with subsequent detailing and linking to parts of speech and other units, has not lost its significance to this day.

In the 30-40s. 20th century the egocentric concept of the field by K. L. Bühler appeared. Arguing against the “worn props” of traditional formal grammar, Buhler proposes to turn to some concepts of contemporary psychology - the concept of field and situation. He discovers some “fields” in the language (for example, the demonstrative field of personal pronouns, pronominal adverbs, etc.), which are put by the speaker in accordance with the communicative situation.

In the 40s. 20th century a theory of the psychology of language was developed (F. Kainz, E. Richter and others), aimed mainly at describing the psychological conditions for the use of linguistic means. L. V. Shcherba largely adhered to the psychological orientation towards language, especially in the first period of his activity; his works and the experimental methods he proposed objectively contributed to the effectiveness of the study of not only the language system, but also speech activity.

A qualitatively new stage in the development of P. n. in a broad sense, it emerges in the early 50s. 20th century psycholinguistics. Having inherited the strongest aspects of P. n. (considering language in inextricable connection with the speaking person, taking into account social factors in the formation and functioning of language, emphasizing the dynamic nature of language), psycholinguistics has put forward qualitatively new ideas - a broader subject of research, a deeper understanding of the social nature of language, the development of experimental methods, etc.

Developing under the influence of psychology, linguistic psychologism has had and continues to influence neo-Humboldtianism, ethnolinguistics, modern sociolinguistics, sociopsycholinguistics, partly on modern generative grammar, where questions of generation are often resolved taking into account psychology (cf., for example, the work of W. Chafe).

• Potebnya A. A., Thought and Language, St. Petersburg, 1862;
• his, From notes on Russian grammar, vol. 1 - Introduction, Voronezh, 1874;
• Bulich S.K., Essay on the history of linguistics in Russia, vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1904;
• Specht F., “Indo-European” linguistics from the neogrammarians to the First World War, in the book: General and Indo-European linguistics. Review of literature, trans. from German, M., 1956;
• Leontyev A. A., General linguistic views of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, “Questions of Linguistics”, 1959, No. 6;
• his, Psycholinguistics, L., 1967;
• Beloded A. I., A. A. Potebnya’s grammatical concept in the history of domestic linguistics, M., 1977;
• Murzin L.N., Logical and psychological interpretation of syntactic processes. (Russian linguistics of the late XVIII - early XX centuries), Perm. 1980;
• Steinthal H., Grammatik, Logik und Psychologie, ihre Prinzipien und ihr Verhältnis zueinander, B., 1855;
• Buhler K., Sprachtheorie, Jena, 1934;
• Marty A., Nachgelassene Schriften, I - Psyche und Sprachstruktur, Bern, ;
• Kainz F., Psychologie der Sprache, Bd 1-5, Stuttg., 1941-69;
• his, Einführung in die Sprachpsychologie, W., 1946;
• Arens H., Sprachwissenschaft. Der Gang ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Freiburg - München, ;
• Bumann W., Die Sprachtheorie Heymann Steinthals. Dargestellt im Zusammenhang mit seiner Theorie der Geisteswissenschaft, , 1965.