LINGUISTIC-COGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS OF LEXEMES WITH SPATIAL SEMANTICS

Abstract

The turn to semantic problems, which for a long time were hidden under the layer of structuralist, generativistic and other descriptions of linguistic phenomena, where the study of the content side of language was forgotten, marked new directions in the study of the "phenomenon of meaning in all its complexity." We are talking about a cognitive approach to language learning, which involves not so much the study of the objective characteristics of its units and categories, as the ways of human perception of the world presented in linguistic semantics, that is, language learning through the prism of basic cognitive processes – conceptualization and categorization. Within the framework of the cognitive approach, the center of scientific research is the description of the meaningful aspect of linguistic phenomena, as a result of human mental activity, and modeling of the structure of lexical meaning, in which the cognitive processes of categorization and conceptualization of the surrounding world are represented. The study of the semantics of linguistic units, which reflect the general cognitive mechanisms of perception of the surrounding world, the explanation of their functioning, as well as the identification of the role of language to describe the processes of cognitive and social activity of a person, are still in the focus of close research attention of scientists. The present article is devoted to the study of the role and place of perceptual, spatial and other characteristics that are "cognitive parameters" of the conceptual model of semantic relations in the thematic area of natural spaces in their various combinatorics and scope within the framework of the cognitive-discursive approach to the analysis of linguistic phenomena. These characteristics are directly included in the initial lexical meaning of the names of natural objects and constitute the "cognitive genesis" of the experiential knowledge of English natural space.