THE CATEGORY OF INSTRUMENTALITY: FUNCTIONAL AND SEMANTIC ASPECT

Abstract

The proposed article is devoted to the linguistic aspect of the category of instrumentality, analysing it as a display of the relationship between the action, the subject, the object and the means of its performance in linguistic systems. The study traces the evolution of the study of this category, starting from the analysis of case systems in the works of Ch. Fillmore, R. Jakobson and A. Wierzbicka, where instrumentality was associated with the instrumental case as a marker of the instrument of action, and ending with modern approaches within the framework of functional grammar, presented by Alexander Bondarko. Particular attention is paid to the historical and theoretical context: from the formal description of case forms in Indo-European languages (e.g. the social-instrumental meaning noted by Antoine Meyer) to the study of semantic functions and functional-semantic fields (FSFs). The paper shows how the category of instrumentality, having travelled from morphological analysis to the study of meanings, has taken its place among the key linguistic categories. The analysis focuses on the categorical situation of instrumentality. It includes a subject, a purposeful action and a means, with the allocation of three phases of the activity act (regulatory, executive and effective). The FSF of instrumentality is described as a polycentric field uniting means-objects (physical instruments) and means-non-objects (abstract methods). The article emphasises the role of a language in structuring the relationship between an action and an instrument, revealing universal features (e.g., the presence of instrumental meaning in different languages) and specific features. This approach enriches the understanding of human activity by demonstrating how language reflects human interaction with the world around us through the category of instrumentality.