The problem of priority in the range of natural language functions

Abstract

Discussion of the generally accepted view. The author examines the idea of predominance of the communicative function in the spectrum of language functions; the idea was widespread among our linguists throughout the Soviet period of our history. It stemmed from Lenin’s formula “Language is the most important means of human communication” regarded as a definition of language. Meanwhile, Lenin did not position his formula as a definition of language. The formula does not meet the requirements imposed on definitions and was not initially intended as such. Statement of the author’s standpoint. The author holds the view that the communicative function is not the most important but only one of important functions performed by language. A person first models a fragment of reality in his mind, forming and formulating his thoughts by language means, then communicates them in verbal form to other persons who perceive and comprehend the information received, and all this is done by language means, too. Hence it follows that exchange of thoughts (i.e. communication) is only the middle stage of speech activity taking place in the coordinates of language space. Empirical confirmation of the author’s view. By way of proof the author analyzes a number of English lexical and phraseological fields and shows that their internal forms contain ethnically specific models of fragments of the world. The author shows by examples how language performs modelling and thought-forming functions. The author points out that the above-mentioned models of fragments of the world are drawn not from texts but from the language system. Whatever new ideas of the fragments may arise along the way, in the process of speech ontogenesis language lays in the heads of its speakers certain models of the fragments and sets the corresponding patterns of behavior. Judgments about fragments of the world are “crystallized” and fixed in the language system. Thus the megasyntagm of speech gradually solidifies, forming the megaparadigm of language. Language “codes” personality and culture, regulating human thinking and behavior. These processes are determined by interaction of thought-forming, modelling, communicative functions of language, none of them being undoubtedly dominant.