Communicative tact and compound words

Abstract

This article is devoted to the analysis of the transition from one way of thinking to the other by the speaker and by the listener in the communication process, reinterpretation of the terms used for the description of the communication (speech act, communicative tact), and also to the consideration of the communicative tact realization in Indian and European classifications of Sanskrit compounds. The speaker’s activity consists of three processes; 1) languaging – linearization of information with a transition from eye-mindedness to verbal thinking as sequences of language significata; 2) coding – is a transition from significata to signifiers; 3) objectification of signifiers – is a transition from language remote structures (invariants of signifiers) to surface – real manifestations, i.e. sounds and prosodic characteristics of speech (variants). The other side of communication is a listener who performs the same actions as a speaker, but in reverse order, that’s why the following trinary can be drawn up for him: deobjectification (transition from speech units, signifiers to language units) – decoding (transition from signifiers to significata) – delanguaging (from significata to concepts). The speaker’s and the listener’s actions in the communication process make up the communicative act, which is more preferable to use in a wider meaning instead of the term speech act. Communicative tact consists of two beats: downbeat which includes the speaker’s actions and unaccepted (weak) beat – the listener’s actions, the example of the realization if which are Sanskrit compounds. Classifications of these units are based on two approaches: Indian and European. The first classification is founded on the speaker’s grammar and describes the downbeat of the tact, the second on – on the listener’s grammar and describes the weak beat of the tact. These two conceptions can be synthesized on the basis of the facts that, firstly, they represent classifications of one and the same language units, secondly, they are built on the same principles (ontological, gnoseological and functional) and, thirdly, they describe the same phenomenon – communicative tact.