Language as a disseminator and carrier of knowledge

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UDC 81'1

Language as a disseminator and carrier of knowledge

Slabouz V.V.

State Higher Educational Institution

«Donbas State Pedagogical University»

In the article it is analyzed the problem of the role of language as a disseminator and carrier of knowledge of man. In the article it is also presented the definition of knowledge, the types of the acquired knowledge are clarified, it is proved the existence of ethnic language, it is uncovered the role of language in the process of transferring and mastering the knowledge. The author presents the ideas concerning the accumulation of the information in language and its units, and also its transmission to each new language individual of the given ethnos.

Keywords: language, knowledge, ethnic language, process of transferring and mastering language, language individual.

Анотація

У статті проаналізовано проблему ролі мови як розповсюджувача і носія знань людини. У статті також представлено визначення знанню, з'ясовано типи набутого знання, доказано існування етнічної мови, розкрито роль мови у процесі передачі та засвоєнні знання. Автор презентує міркування стосовно накопичення інформації в мові та її одиницях, а також її передачі кожній новій мовній особистості даного етносу.

Ключові слова: мова, знання, набуте знання, етнічна мова, процес передачі та засвоєння знання, мовна особистість.?

Аннотация

В статье проанализирована проблема роли языка как распространителя и носителя знаний человека. В статье также представлено определение знанию, выяснено типы приобретенного знания, доказано существование этнического языка, раскрыта роль языка в процессе передачи и усвоении знания. Автор представляет некоторые идеи относительно накопления информации в языке и ее единицах, а также ее передачи каждой новой языковой личности данного этноса.

Ключевые слова: язык, знание, приобретенное знание, этнический язык, процесс передачи и усвоения знания, языковая личность.

The selection of man out of the aggregate of the living is expressed in his innate and inherent inclination to social life. This expression is in the form of the process that occurs continuously: it is realized insofar as in its realization each individual takes place. The form of the realization is the process of the absorption by human society of each newborn man and transmission to him such properties that allow him to exist and function as a full member of society. The process of transformation of man natural to man social with the transmission to him all the necessary skills for society is called socialization. One of the basic components of the process of socialization of man can be viewed upon the process of the accumulation in his mind the basic knowledge that allows man to orient in nature and society, to understand others and be understood by others.

The relevance and the main aim of the article. The relevance of the article is caused and supported by the fact that mastering the native language, which is in the process of socialization of the individual, leads to the assimilation and assignment of huge in volume and diverse in quality knowledge that is stored in the units of the given language and is associated with them. Science cannot but be interested in studying the ways and means for thorough increasing the vocabulary of a speech individual. knowledge language ethnic

The analysis of the recent investigations and publications. The works by such famous scholars as M. Heidegger, W. von Humboldt, L. Vaysberher, K. Marx and others are devoted to the stated linguophilosophical problem.

The unsolved aspects of the problem. Achieving this aim involves solving the following tasks: 1) to give the definition of knowledge; 2) to ascertain the types of acquired knowledge; 3) to prove the existence of ethnic language; 4) to reveal the role of language in the dissemination and assimilation of knowledge.

The basic material presentation. The importance of language for the preservation and dissemination of knowledge has not been in doubt since the ancient times. Striking evidence of this fact is a variety of paremias and phraseologisms, which have fixed the human attitude to learning as a means of existence of man (Live and learn) and his intellectual development (Learning is the eye of the mind), have defined the difficulties that appear while learning (Train hard, fight easy), have drawn people's attention to the importance of communication to transfer knowledge (It is pleasant to speak with a clever man). The given examples fixed in the dictionary compiled by V. Dal have a great number of equivalents in other languages and ethnic culture. The thorough comparative and contrastive analysis of the paremias and phraseologisms that have fixed the man's attitude to the dissemination of knowledge will certainly help to reveal the facts both of versatile, universal nature and some individual thoughts that have cultural significance only for certain ethnos. But let us leave this area to the specialists-phraseologists and start viewing and analyzing the functions of language and speech which, in our opinion, are the basic ones in the process of the dissemination of knowledge.

The process of transformation of homo naturalis (a human natural) onto homo socialis (a human public) with the transfer of the necessary qualities for society is called socialization. As one of the main components of the process of men's socialization it can be seen the process of the accumulation in their consciousness basic knowledge that allows people to orient themselves in nature and society, to understand others and be understood by others. Concerning the individual knowledge can be considered as a unity of the informational units, which the human brains possess, a unity that is which is capable of self-organization, provides perception, understanding, evaluation, preservation, transformation, generation and transmission of information and determines all the individual's activities. Knowledge is information availability of the brains, in this regard, the process of the formation and reformation of knowledge is in the course of the whole life of the individual.

Consciousness of a newborn as proven by modern medicine initially contains certain information necessary for man to exercise his life activity and basic acts of behavior. This statement contradicts the thesis of the medieval science that there is nothing in mind but everything contains only in feelings, it also contradicts the opinion of John Locke about the complete impossibility of any pre-experienced knowledge. Meanwhile, if to emphasize not on the individual but on the tribal man, «all-man», according to V. Losskiy [6, p. 34], the problem that interests us, is clarified to the obvious. In particular, in this perspective, man appears as a form of the existence of the humanity: the humanity carries out its being through individuals who endlessly follow each other, who can be comparable to the cells of the body. Like any single cell, man from the very birth has some background information, which allows him to carry out his mission. This information forms innate knowledge of man. At the level of innate knowledge, man does not differ from animals. Innate knowledge is opposed to other types of knowledge as with this knowledge man is born, any other type of knowledge, which is a part of the mental baggage, is acquired by man in the process of his life activity, i.e. it is acquired.

The acquired knowledge is divided into several types. The knowledge of the first type is the reflection of the experience of the practical activity and the experience of the interaction of man with nature and society. Any sensual knowledge can be acquired by consciousness only in the form of some specific information, and the information can be presented in man only in the form of the informational units or language units of thinking. The first type knowledge despite the fact that it is stipulated by the practical activity becomes a property of consciousness with the help of language. Such a type of knowledge is common for man and animals but the man's sensual and activity way of gaining the knowledge differs from animals'.

The acquired knowledge of the second type is the data received from the oral and written texts by means of the process of comprehension. Its essence is, in our opinion, in the fact that under the speech influence the individual receives the information at the expense that from the dark area of consciousness into the light one the semantic «clusters» raise, and in it they are definitely organized or formed. The acquired informational chains are isomorphic to the speech work, which is perceived, because they are of theme-rheme nature and are built on the principles of predication. The received informational chains are assessed from the point of view of novelty and significance, and then are fixed in consciousness in the form of new information or erased as those, which are not interesting for a language individual.

The third type of the acquired knowledge is new data obtained by the individual as a result of his thinking. It allows the individual to go beyond the immediate sensual reflection and to gain knowledge about such subjects and objects, properties and relations that cannot be perceived by man directly.

At last, the fourth type of the acquired knowledge is the data which the individual receive in the process of mastering the native language that a child accumulates as one of the means of communication in the period of socialization. To master something it is necessary that «something» should exist as an ethnic language.

Moreover, does the ethnic language exist? The question is put purposefully as in the literature on the problem the thought of conditionality of the mentioned term has been repeatedly spoken out. First, let us remember I. O. Baudouin de Courtenay who shared this thought and wrote, «Language exists only in the individual mind, only in souls, only in psychics of the individuals who are the concrete language society. Language tribal and national is a pure abstraction, generalizing construction created from the really existed individual languages» [4, p. 71], or, «First of all language exists in the souls human. If all of us here present kept silent, if there were absolute silence here in the hall, would the human language in general and the Russian language in particular stop existing? There would be nothing for it to exist as it is not really as a whole. However, there exist the individual languages as continually existing wholes. And it is they that exist in our souls irrespective of the fact whether we speak or not» [2, p. 130]. The same way O. O. Shakhmatov treated this issue, «The language of each individual has its real being. The language of the village, city, region, nation appears to be a certain scientific fiction, an average conclusion of a certain number of individual languages» [7, p. 7], and some other linguists. But, on the other side, when I. O. Baudouin de Courtenay points, «Each language can be introduced into any healthy human head» [3, с. 139], or O. O. Shakhmatov titles one of his works «On History of Sound of the Russian Language», or an ordinary man speaks of his desire to learn a foreign language, it is very difficult to escape the impression that the word «language» means «scientific fiction» or «pure abstraction». What way to use to reconcile the obvious truth of I. O. Baudouin de Courtenay, 0.O. Shakhmatov and others, on the one hand, and the equally obvious reality of existence of the Ukrainian, Russian and other languages that are spoken by the people? In our opinion, the solution of this problem can be based on the correlation of man and the humanity. Really, if any individual can be viewed as a form of existence and one of the manifestations of the humanity, so the ethnic language can be considered as one of the forms of manifestations of the humanity, a somatic cell of the whole ethnic body. Everything that is characteristic of each ethnic man is a property of the whole ethnos, although the opposite is wrong. Out of the above-mentioned goes that the reality of the individual language, in which no one ever doubts, at the same time witnesses the reality of the ethnic language. The ethnic language exists as an essence, divided among separate ethnic individuals. From this point of view the given above the quotes by 1.O. Baudouin de Courtenay and O. O. Shakhmatov seem too categorical. The ethnic language is as real as the individual language, only it is introduced in the other form. Moreover, the individual language of every man can be appreciated as one of the manifestations of the ethnic language. The existence of the ethnic language in the form of the distributed among the language individuals the in-dividual languages defines the range of its distinct properties, such as the ability to ensure the temporal continuity and spatial boundaries of ethnicity, the ability to allocate, accumulate in the meanings of its units and to assign each member of the ethnos the most valuable elements of sensory, mental and activity experience of the previous generations and a number of others. All this makes the ethnic language the important ethnogenic factor. E. Benveniste emphasized, «In the world there is only a man with language, a man who speaks with another man, and language, thus, necessarily belongs to the very determination of man» [1, p. 293].

Thus, when we say that one of the sources of the acquired knowledge of man is his native language we mean the object, the reality of which is not in doubt. Mastering the native language is a process of gradual transformation of the genetic language into the individualized version of the ethnic language. This transformation takes place in the process of communication of a newborn who enters the concrete society, with the concrete number of adults, his parents who are the ethnic language speakers. Such communication among the above-mentioned subjects is caused by the needs of the life activities of any child, its involvement to the rule of life accepted in the given society.

The closest and visible result of this communication is the gradual acquiring by a child the abilities to respond adequately enough to the addressed speech and to «encode» information concerning its own state. Mastering the language includes a child to a certain ethnic society and can be seen as the first step in its transformation from homo naturalis to homo socialis, i. e. to a language individual.

Another important result of communication is in the cultural enrichment of a language individual. It becomes possible due to the ability of the ethnic languages to serve not only a significant tool for creating reports of facts, but also a memory device, which contains information about numerous instances of the linguistic and mental activity of a certain ethnos. Due to the language, the being, which the ethnos has already performed, remains alive to every native speaker, because it is reflected in the language. In confirmation of the above said the idea by M. Heidegger, «Language is the house of the being» [8, p. 61].

In the process of mastering the mother tongue it occurs non-violent and unconscious assimilation and understanding of the displayed in units and categories of language information about the surrounding world, which in scope and variety exceeds everything that man is able to get through his senses, that is, from his own experience. The most important consequence of such a process lies in providing the language personality with the specific to the given ethnos the cognitive orientation, in bringing it to the cultural traditions of the appropriate people. W. Von Humboldt noted, «Generations pass but language remains, each of the generations finds language already existed before it, and stronger and more powerful than the generation itself; none of the generations ever penetrates into its essence and lives it to the successors; the character of any language, its uniqueness are designated only in the course of the whole row of generations but it connects all these generations, and they reflect themselves in it; one can see by what language owes to a separate piece of time, to individuals but it remains unsolved what they owe to it» [5, p. 325].

What way is the information in language and its units accumulated, and its transfer to each language personality of the given ethnos? Both processes progress thanks to a great number of speech works in which the ethnos performs its historical being and communication with the surrounding world. These speech works are compounded of words. Using a word in the speech unit with incomplete or complete predication always suggests assigning to the object that the word indicates a certain trait. Since the speech works that describe the activities of the ethnos are infinitely many, in the semantics of words many signs that record all the acquired knowledge of the ethnos about the related objects are sunk deeply. The transfer of the knowledge to each new member of the ethnos ethnics is in the course of the socialized communication through teaching and learning of the formed language personality the right understanding and using of the units and categories of the mother tongue. Speaking in other words, the used in the socialized communication the speech works performs such transformation and structuring of the informational availability of man at the level of consciousness that allows him, on one hand, without mistakes react to the addressed messages, and, on the other hand, create his own messages, remaining sure that they are understandable for the interlocutor. The mentioned transformation is aimed at developing in the consciousness of the language personality that pass its formation, such patterns-configurations that would be similar to the patterns-configurations, correlative with the material shell in the consciousness of others who speak the same language. If understanding and using of a word prove to mastering the definite meaning, it means that the knowledge is connected by the ratio of adjacency of the corresponding sound complex that is it is contained in the word in the quality of its meaning.

Taking part in the speech works, the word, as a rule, realizes in each of them not its whole meaning but only the part of it. From this it goes that in some talk of the cognitive massive correlated with the whole knowledge of the ethnos of some named event it is necessary to orient to a number of speech works which are different from one another by the character of the lexical surrounding of the studied word. The more some word is used in the phrases the bigger is the value of knowledge of the corresponding object «enclosed» by this sound succession, and this means that in the consciousness of man the deeper informational transformation because of the assimilation of the word takes place. And if to take into consideration the fact that in the process of socialization and communication the speech personality masters and assimilates thousands of lexical units one can imagine how great and varied in quality, and in quantitative sense it is the knowledge that each ethnos transfers to its new member through language. Speaking in other words, in the process of mastering the mother tongue it takes place something like connecting the language personality to the language complex of the ethnos. It is important to emphasize, that if the mother tongue is assimi-lated in the set by nature period and observing all the minimum sufficient conditions, involvement in knowledge, reflected in the units and the categories of language is performed by completely natural and practically imperceptible way to the human. The mentioned naturalness can be explained by the fact that the process that we are interested in, is combined with the pre-established and anticipated process of implementation of the language ability, given to man by nature. From the above said it follows that all the knowledge, which is in herent in the language personality, to some extent is conditioned by language.

The inherited knowledge is defined by language in the sense that it is the genetic language performs within the mental-speech complex the function of collection, screening, sifting information and the formation of information units. Without language there is no sense to speak of any articulateness of thinking and consciousness.

The knowledge that the individual gets from the practical activity is connected with language as to be mastered by consciousness this experience should be presented in the transformed form, i. e. In the way of the informational formations that is impossible without language.

Conditionality by language the knowledge, we receive from the texts, is self-evident. It is useful to touch upon only one point. The presence of the text (the speech work) implies the existence of its creator (a sender) and recipient (an addressee). Obtaining the knowledge is carried out as a result by such text impact of the sender of speech on the recipient, which leads to the change of the information state of the latter. Herewith this transfer of knowledge contained in the texts is through focused excitation of the information availability, which is in the recipient.

The conclusions and suggestions. Analyzing language as a disseminator and carrier of knowledge has given an opportunity to express not only our attitude to the undoubtedly new and one of the most authoritative paradigm in the linguistic investigation but «clarify the relation» between onomastics and onymography as a scientific subject in the line of the onomastics studies and cognitive study, the expansion of which can be seen in this direction. The performed research allows to make the following conclusions. Firstly, in the so-called «protocognivistic» works it has been proved that the language units are able not only to point or to perform the functions of labels of the definite objects and phenomena but transfer in the process of the exchange of knowledge accumulated communicative experience, include, except the concrete speech features of the designated, the definite complex of conceptions concerning the social and cultural existence of the sign. From here the supported by us idea of the connection of Word as a phenomenon, as a man-ifestation of the human spirit with history and culture of the people is an axiom of linguistics. Secondly, the knowledge of an individual is the definite particularly organized unity of the informational units which it has and which motivate the activities of this human. Thirdly, there are different types of the acquired knowledge (some practical activities, the contents of the units and categories of the mother tongue, mental activity, heredity, oral and written texts), and what is the most important one, all the knowledge this or that way is stipulated by language. Fourthly, under the influence of the ethnic language man becomes the carrier of the definite culture and civilization that is an ethnic language personality.

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