ЗАМЕТКИ ПО ФИЛОСОФИИ ЯЗЫКА
NOTES ON PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Summary/Abstract: The word is both a thing or a sign and a subject, and the problem of their correlation never loses its sharpness. The amplitude of approaches here is very wide: from absolute naturalism, seeing the word as an exact copy of reality to an absolute conventionalism,giving the language a complete autonomy. These are the extremes. It is well-known that they meet – it is possible to establish an intense and heuristically valuable dialogue (if not complementarity) between two positions, which would exclude the monopoly of any single stance. The author connects the genesis of language with poetry. He relies on the tradition established by Alexander Potebnya and Gustav Shpet, gives his own interpretation of the phenomenon known as the inner form of the word, and emphasizes the major role of an image or a metaphor in word formation. Being aware of the limitations of the onomatopoeia hypothesis, the author nevertheless comes back to it – he tries to bring new meanings into it, and to expand its capacity. Words can be created spontaneously– without rigid connection to the realities they represent. This leads to the existence of synonym clusters. However, since the beginning of time, culture has been telling us about non-randomness of the word, as if it is implicitly contained in the phenomenon!It does not matter whether it is an objective truth – the author values the axiological intention here: he sees the word as aesthetic reality – as a place for games or as a trope. Even if it only seems so. But in the consciousness of culture the word is inseparable from the signified – and their interdependence, even if established a posteriori, makes a poetic impression on us. Accentuating this obviously disputable aspect increases the role of the subjective and the suggestive. But it leads to the enrichment of the language palette.

• Details
• Contents