Synopsis
The monograph shows that in the last 50 years theoretical linguistics remains a compendium of mutually contradicting doctrines on multiple levels: the level of general theories of language, the level of its main constituents (the lexicon, syntax, and the lexical-syntactic interface that connects them), and the lower levels of specific linguistic problems (such as lexical polysemy, grammatical meanings, etc.). The contradictions of contemporary linguistic theories are indicative of a deep crisis. Evolutionary-synthetic theory of language is aimed at overcoming this crisis. It implements a multidisciplinary approach that describes the language a) in evolutionary and ontogenetic development and b) in close interaction with other human subsystems: the mental representation of the world, human activity and social interaction. Language is defined as a dual system developing in ontogeny: 'universal sensory sublanguage + ethnically specific functional sublanguage' where the sensory sublanguage is used to describe the 'visible' world (accessible to the senses), and the functional sublanguage is employed to describe the conceivable world ('comprehended by human mind'). Within the framework of the approach presented, many problems are solved: 1) the cognitive (non-verbal) language for representing language meanings; 2) diversity and unity of languages (using the structure alternative to Chomsky's Universal Grammar); 3) the main (original) function of the language; 4) the cognitive language of thought (its basis is the lexical and grammatical meanings of the sensory sublanguage); 5) dual (functionally prototypical) structure of human categories; 6) mechanisms in the early acquisition of lexical and grammatical meanings; 7) the meaning (assignment) of the syntactic structure of a sentence, etc. The book deals with a wide range of issues related to human cognition, glottogenesis and anthropogenesis, universal cognitive structures for the representation of objects, actions and situations, so it will be of interest not only to linguists, but also to psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers.
About the Author
Alexey D. Koshelev. Education - Mathematics, PhD. in Mathematics. After defending his dissertation he worked in the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education in the laboratory "Mathematical Modeling of Mental Processes." He studied problems: automatic handwriting recognition (semantic and syntactic levels), presentation of linguistic meanings, generation of lexical polysemy, etc. In 1993, he founded the Publishing House "Languages of Russian Culture" ("LRC Publishing House"). Now he is the scientific editor-in-chief of this publishing house. Author of the monograph Cognitive analysis of universal human concepts (Moscow, 2015) and a number of articles on cognitive semantics, theoretical linguistics, lexical and grammatical polysemy, the history of linguistic theories, the theory of comic and laughter, human locomotions, general theory of development and related subjects. Selected publications are available on the website www.independent.academia.edu/AlexeyKoshelev
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