The problem of determination of cognitive and semiotic functions: notion – concept, sign – simulacrum

The paper focuses on logical relations between the terms concept and notion as well as sign and simulacrum in an anthropocentric conception of cognitive and language worldpictures. The author sets apart the first two terms on the basis of semantics and pragmatics considering notion as a semantic information unit and concept – as a cultural-pragmatic unit. The author suggests that the terms sign and simulacrum should be distinguished the same way: sign is every function that aims to semiotize a notion, whereas simulacrum is a sign, the pragmatics of which is of mythmakingcharacter, i.e. aims to create a simulation of verity of information during communication.

Specificity of the artistic conceptualization of the day period in small prose by M. Vinhranovskyi

In modern Ukrainian linguistics, given its general anthropological orientation, cognitive research is quite productive, including in the field of literary text, which allows us to describe the linguistic means of its interpretation at the level of conceptual structures. The basic concepts in the categorization of the world include TIME. The purpose of the study is to outline the means of artistic conceptualization of daily time and their functional and semantic load in M. Vingranovskyi’s prose texts, to consider the artistic conceptualization of daily time in view of idiostylistic features of the writer’s language. In the discourse of M. Vingranovskyi’s short prose, artistic time is not reduced to the reproduction of the properties of physical time. M. Vingranovskyi’s model of time is deeply rooted in the mythopoetic picture of the world and passed through the prism of the narrator’s individual worldview. Lingual expression of the idea of time occurs through the realization of individual temporal values. Carriers of temporal semantics in the text are often nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives. In addition, we consider detailed contexts with temporal content. As research shows, M. Vingranovskyi mainly resorts to the reproduction of the cyclical nature of time. Accordingly, the images of parts of the day become important. The concepts DAY, NIGHT, MORNING, EVENING in the language of the analyzed works are verbalized with words of different parts of speech, which contain the appropriate temporal sema. The nominative fields that form their artistic and semantic content are quite branched. For each of the concepts, the nucleus consists of nouns that name the parts of the circadian cycle (morning, day, evening, night), the synopsis zone includes their synonyms (dawn, predawn, twilight), adverbs to denote the duration of the action (at night, nights, by day), the initial time limit (since morning, before dawn; since evening); verbs that convey the state of nature in accordance with the time of day (to dawn; to grow dark, to get dusky, to darken). The near periphery includes nouns and qualitative adjectives, which, combined with temporal names, convey the visual, sound, tactile, psychological characteristics of parts of the day. According to our observations, the leading method of conceptualizing the time of day – the image of the time, the stretching of time. The far periphery in the expression of the analyzed concepts is formed by individual authorial figurative contexts with the names of celestial bodies, natural, spatial realities, names of animals, actualized in landscape sketches. The metaphors of movement, color and burning are the most revealing for the associative figurative conceptualization of parts of the day. It is worth emphasizing that in the perception of the time of day value markers are placed by the narrator. The specificity of the artistic conceptualization of the time of day is due to the author’s idiosyncratic guidelines, the attraction to cinematography. Images of natural time convey the idea of cyclicity, the natural harmony of time, the experience of the value of every moment of human life. Their embodiment is due to the perspective of the narrator, his emotional state.

Linguosynergetic model of a concept

The article focuses on linguosynergetic aspects of a concept as a cardinal unit of the conceptual picture of the world. This notion is so far the central and most controversial concept of modern linguistics, characterized by ambiguity of its interpretation, which indicates the diversity of its features and properties. The research deals with the structure of a concept aiming at making up such a universal model which would cater for all aspects and peculiarities of concept in linguistics. We believe that any definition of the concept should be embedded in its structure and correlate with all its features and properties. We state that structuring the concept in the form of a linguosynergetic model highlights not only the characteristics of the “original”, the hierarchy of its components, but the change of modes of its existence due to the fact that linguosynergertics suggests unique language of concept investigation. Guided by the laws of synergetics, we have built an integral scientific linguistic-synergetic model of the concept. Using the categorical-conceptual apparatus of synergetics in linguistics, we explained the mechanisms of self-regulation of the concept as a spontaneous equipment of the structure of a homeostatic hierarchical complex organized open nonlinear system. During the study, we proved the fractality of the concept and came to the conclusion that the fractality of the concept is manifested in the self-similarity of its structural elements: lexical-semantic variants (microfractals) in the process of their functioning can grow indefinitely thematically and become more complicated (or, conversely, collapse), while leaving an organized form. Recursiveness (recurrence) is manifested at the level of content (repeating the topic) and at the level of its reflection (repeating the form of presentation of information). Each microfractal can function autonomously. At the same time, the property of selfsimilarity ensures the fulfillment of the law of unity in diversity and generates a holistic perception of the concept.

The recent growing interest in cognitive linguistics, scientific works, monographs and textbooks written in this field are evidence of this. Language levels and trends in their development, structural approach to languages, language and speech issues, functional approach to language units, etc. the problems have begun to be seriously investigated. One such issue is the study of modern cognitive linguistics and lexical-semantic systems. Language is subject to various influences in the process of development. These effects result in changes in different layers of language, including the lexical layer. This process leads to the obsolescence of word meanings in the lexicon, the emergence of new meanings, the expansion of meaning, the narrowing of meaning, the diversification of meaning, and so on. This leads to the fact that the connection between the lexical and semantic meanings of words is also affected; new lexical-semantic word groups appear. The article is rich in quotes from the works of many scholars.

The Problem of Hybridity, Dual Consciousness and Self-Identification in Lahiri’s Novel Namesake

The present study explores the problem of the concepts of hybridity, dual consciousness, and, accordingly, self-identification and its multidimensional manifestations in Lahiri’s work Namesake. Notably, the writer delves deeply into the cultural encounters of diasporic and colonial subjects in his movement between the binary opposite of East and West. Based on the opinions of post-colonial researchers such as Yang, Baba, and others, hybridity and dual consciousness appear to be a prototype of the consequences of the experience of displacement and social exclusion. Consequently, Gogol’s problem is characteristic of the coexistence of the Eastern diaspora and colonised peoples with other Western peoples. This article concludes that hybridity, dual consciousness and the search for identity are fundamental concepts in post-colonial literature, representing a boundary model between the Western and non-Western worlds.