КОГНИТИВНАЯ ЛИНГВИСТИКА КАК РАЗВИТИЕ ЛИНГВИСТИКИ ФОРМАЛЬНОЙ

I am going to discuss something that is, in general, well known, even if it has not yet become fully established in the minds of many scholars and has been constantly debated as an arguable issue within the scope of scientific knowledge. I would like to address the question whether contemporary linguistics represents a continuation of the traditional approach or it is a kind of a “revolution” in cognition, as some are too hasty to claim. My answer is: here we have a good example of continuous cognition aimed at revealing the “mysteries of language” within the infinitely evolving system of transitions from the simple (external) to the complex (deeply internal) specifically in the field of language knowledge. The logical sequence representing the change of linguistic forms is given as an approximation to understanding the essence of the living language in its anthropological dimension.

Let us start with comparing the key differences existing between the formal and mental linguistics in their extreme, invariant differences, without indicating the gradations and nuances present in the works of separate researchers (in order not to increase the number of references, I am going to give below a collective summary of the distinctions, extracted from various works on cognitive and formal linguistics).

Formal linguistics as a scientific study had evolved for two centuries and passed the following stages in its development:The relationship between the word (sign) and the idea is given by constituent parts of the semantic triangle; the concept of the category is based on the same provisions. The syntagmatics–paradigmatics correlation is relative, since cognitive (mental) linguistics also relies on the syntax (see below); Lev Shcherba’s speech activity and the speech act of the western cognitive scientists both presuppose a special role of the syntax. The category of the Cause in formal linguistics serves as a category connecting all linguistic relations, as the basis of knowledge; in cognitive science, causality is used in a broader sense and the cause in this case is only a part of the causal sequence, the latter consisting of the basis as the original source (Leibniz: “Everything that exists in the world has its reason.”) and the constituent elements of the Causality which are connected with it, namely, conditions, reasons and goals. The Form of formal linguistics is contrasted with the Meaning as the fundamental principle of cognitive linguistics, which emphasizes not the form but the sense that adds to the sum of knowledge. Tropes in cognitive linguistics serve as a cornerstone matter of thought: see, for instance, the conceptual metaphor of western cognitive scientists and the increased number of works in the field of metaphor research in general. Finally, the historical approach to language studies has been replaced with the philosophical understanding of the language, which now is seen as accumulation of new knowledge, preparing the ground for a change of the scientific paradigm.      Several of the points above require further comment.

1. The historical-comparative method of the 19^th century replaced the purely descriptive method of school grammar; this became the condition for the scientific study of language with the following main task: “how did the language itself originate?”
2. The structural method of the early 20^th century became the cause behind the development of the scientific knowledge about language; it set the task of learning “how the language itself is organized”.
3. The functional method further developed the achievements of structuralism in order to accomplish the final purpose of the study: to understand “how this language works”.

Thus, formal linguistics had gradually exhausted all the tasks set before it. All four of the causes formulated by Aristotle as ultimately possible in a movement and stemming from each other, including the underlying cause, the basis, namely, the subject matter of the study – language, had been fulfilled. The development logic kept suggesting a new turn in the process of cognition. Any new development can always be found in the depths of previous developments, and this time was no different. In particular, the functional grammar stage formed the transition point towards cognitive linguistics of a new type. Something already in action is already in existence; the German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann expressed this idea more emphatically: “If there is existence, there is essence, and if there is essence, there is existence”. As a result, coincidence and interchangeability of existence and essence in their development “are directed by the shifting identities” and, therefore, sooner or later they become one and the same. In other words, if something exists, this means that its essence is also present. This directly follows from the requirements of philosophical realism: every event has its corresponding essence. In our case, if there is a form, there is also a corresponding content (essence). So what essence corresponds to the forms of language?

Language acts in the speech of the subject. Then the task is to determine the meaning of the subject’s actions, and this can be best achieved from the point of view of the subject himself. Thus, the research perspective is changed: the former reverse perspective, from language to the researcher, has been replaced with a new, linear perspective, from the researcher to language. Anthropocentrism of the position reaches the uttermost limits and no longer hides under the mask of pragmatic “objectivism”. We need to gain an insight into the essence of language.

This task can be achieved through a sequence of approximations.

In one of his work, A.V. Kravchenko [7] demonstrated how the study of language in western linguistics (exemplified by American linguistics) had walked the path “from a linguistic myth to a purely biological reality”, from a symbolic adaptation to a purely biological function of the body.

Every completed thing ultimately passes through three stages of development (the author calls them “waves”); the same happens here as well. I am going to present these stages in a comparative table, providing for now just their typological description, again without mentioning any names (the overall presentation of the distinctive characteristics in question has not yet been completely verified, so additions and adjustments are possible).

The comparison of items presented in the table shows that the movement of the research thought from the first “wave” towards the third, represents the narrowing of the viewpoint from the ontologically real to gnoseologically ideal, with transition from the reverse perspective (“from the thing”) to the linear perspective (“from the subject”). Simultaneously, there has been a transition from the disconnectedness of the thing to conceptual forms of the objects (from events to facts); from the reflection of the world in images - to its explanation with concepts; from the adaptation of language - to its transformation within its own environment, etc., and, ultimately, to the progressive development of consciousness “on the wings” of language, which has been constantly developing the reflective capabilities of human beings. The most important and fundamental achievement of the third wave is the establishment of the “impulse” mechanism in the development of the mental action, i.e. determination of the organism (and not the mechanism!) that launches the sequence of semantic movements. According to the authors, these are the neuronal chains in the composition of human DNA. This is the extreme view of the “essence” presented in the organic form. This is not the final result but just a first approximation to it; my concept of the conceptum as a “first-sense=first-image” also requires further improvement [6], but unlike the neuronal theory, conceptum is a more ideal unit of consciousness, which makes it possible to preserve it within the limits of philosophical realism, while reference to neurons returns us back to the domain of nominalism. Objectivism presumes understanding language outside the subject, as envisioned by Ferdinand de Saussure, “in itself and for itself”. Subjectivism maintains a close connection between language (“language is embodied”) and the subject; it exists in the subject of speech. The “third way” allows for a median line of connections: language is present in the subject but it also reflects the objective “environment”. External dualism represents an approach, according to which language and thought are in direct opposition, while internal dualism means that language is simultaneously a part of cognition and a part of the world. Monism (recognition of singleness) presupposes their oneness in their wholeness (holism). There is also a presumed difference in the philosophical approach to the object through the forms of language: the first “wave” is nominalistic (notions denote only concrete entities); the second “wave” works within the framework of conceptualism (it also accepts existence of general notions independent of concrete entities); the third “wave” is (neo)realism (it accepts the objective existence of general notions – universals). The general term conceptum here means the “grain of primary sense”, the “impulse” that gives momentum to the elements of the concepts. The triangle means the semantic triangle, which unites the thing, the idea and the sign through a synergistic (jointly acting) connection; here it is only possible to replace one set of elements with another. The square is the conceptual square with its meaningful forms (image, symbol, concept, and the primary sense of the conceptum), which can only interchange, exchange places, while remaining the same. The circle means the psychological circle (the so-called Eysenck’s circle), which, when turning, draws a spiral with added new knowledge at every new turn. The meanings of other items in the table are clear from their definitions.

It should be borne in mind that all three stages (“waves”) refer to the actions of contemporary cognitive linguistics and cover the last fifty years. The meteoric development of cognitive science could seem breath-taking, unless we take into account that what we see is not a consecutive development happening in “waves” but a typological chart, summarizing the results achieved by different schools of thought and scholarly traditions of American linguistics working simultaneously: N. Chomsky, G. Lakoff, R. Langacker, H. Maturana and their contemporaries. 

How can these results be compared to the work of Russian linguists? This has become all the more important now because of the constant tendency to look up to the innovative western research, typical of many Russian linguists working in the fields of Germanic and Romance studies. In this case, a conclusive answer would be hard to give. Creative potential of our scholars is high enough, with one difference lying in the fact that they are less formal in their results and are quite realistic (in the philosophical sense). The only difference is that western scholars are prone to constant self-refection and they accurately register all successive steps of their development [8], while Russian scholars, due to a certain lack of organization in their conceptual thinking (in favour of visual-and-symbolic thinking), typical of the Russian mentality, are represented by a loosely connected mass of research works, which, however, occasionally prove to be of higher quality than their foreign counterparts. It is characteristic of the Russian mentality to avoid final results in the form of “totals” and pantologies, since openness of scientific knowledge for further additions is always presumed: science is constantly moving forward.

All three “waves” of western linguistics in the field of cognitive studies can be easily mapped against the results of the Russian research – one to one against contensive, cognitive and conceptual linguistics, which are actively developed today. Again, without mentioning any names or going into much detail, I will define the differences between them – against the background of the three “waves” of western cognitive linguistics. First, however, let me describe the differences between these three “waves” of the Russian cognitive studies.

The successive development of research methods with transition from the concrete to the abstract and then back to the concrete has followed two courses:

comparative linguistics > structuralism (semiotics) > functionalism >

The first line is given in reverse perspective from the object of description, and the second – in linear perspective from the subject, which is also understandable, since the studies focus on the mechanisms of his (the subject’s) cognitive process aimed at acquiring knowledge.  The ⧖ sign indicates the original connection with the types of formal linguistics. Thus, the study returns to its starting point, which is, however, augmented now with the understanding of the unity of form and content.

The chronological framework for the development of a particular school of Russian cognitive linguistics can only be approximately determined.

The earliest approach to the problem was the intrinsically “Russian” one – the conceptual approach based on realism. It can be approximately dated back to 1928, when the article on Concept by S.A. Askoldov was published [1]. An approximation to this can be traced back to 1909, when Askoldov published his thesis where some themes of his classic 1928 publication can already be found, as well as other accompanying works by the same author. Then there was silence, which can be attributed to extra-linguistic reasons, until in 1993, D.S. Likhachev, when reminiscing about his teachers, drew attention to Askoldov’s work in an academic journal and introduced the new term: the sphere of concepts [9]. This sent a signal for consolidating numerous but isolated efforts of various university scholars, who up until then had worked in that direction, mainly in the field of semantics, but without their own separate “flag”. Thus, conceptology was formed.

The year 1945 should be regarded as the date of birth of contensive linguistics: this is when the fundamental new book by I.I. Meshchaninov [11] was published; the book summarized the results of studies into “grammar categories”; even this school, however, was at a standstill for a while, again due to political discussions. The research work continued within the field of functional linguistics and picked up momentum after the publication of A.V. Bondarko’s Grammatical Category and Context [3] and S.D. Katsnelson’s Typology of Language and Verbal Thinking [5], as well as a number of other works that followed, and the creation of the Leningrad Academic Group for research in this direction. The key participants here were mostly Germanists, hence the general tendency towards a nominalist approach in their studies.

The preliminary date for the appearance of cognitive linguistics can be recognized as that of the publication by Y.S. Stepanov of a small book entitled Semiotics , but serious research in this direction started in the Moscow Academic Group headed by N.D. Arutyunova after 1986. In 1988, the first part of the multi-volume collective work entitled Logical Analysis of Language was published, which provided an impetus for further research in the field. This group included many Romance linguists, which explains their tendency towards conceptualism as a form of cognition typical for Romance nations.

All three schools of cognitive studies developed gradually and possess their own research roots. Contensive linguistics has developed from functional linguistics on the structural basis. Cognitive linguistics descends from the old culturological research, touching upon the problems of mentality and culture (linguistic culturology). Conceptual linguistics is connected with the semantic studies of the 20^th century and is also associated with the mental research from the beginning of this century. The studies of the 19^th century, for instance, A.A. Potebnja’s works, correlate to all three “waves” on the principle of initial syncretism.

Thus, the first academic school of the three, with respect to time, was contensive linguistics (from the word “con­tent”), which was ahead of its time and was not appreciated; in fact, it was mercilessly discredited by its academic rivals. Contensive linguistics first emerged as functional linguistics; this is what A.V. Bondarko himself calls his research work.

The main aim of this linguistic school was to study the process involved in the development of meaning in a certain context (“meaning is given form”). According to contensive linguistics, function is an action, while meaning is the content of the signs. Meanings do not exist in ready-made form; they are formed by the subject. In in this statement, we can see the first “departure” towards cognitive science. The research focuses on semantic categories, also known as logical universals (initially called “notional categories”). Since all this happens in a certain environment, a philosophical duality takes place: grammatical categories are seen as manifestations of the system (for instance, aspect, time, voice, etc.) and form the core of the semantic field of this environment (aspectuality, temporality, and functional-semantic voice, respectively). This is not an instance of realism, as one might have imagined taking into account the corresponding pairs like aspect – aspectuality. System and environment here are equally material in the conceptual expression of the material world, which is still a manifestation of philosophical nominalism. The collective total of features is close to those that we find in the “first wave” of western cognitive studies, which is close to contensive linguistics also in a number of secondary characteristics. Interestingly enough, representatives of this school were among the first critics of N. Chomsky: the similarities between the two approaches helped to see more clearly the shortcomings of the American version.

The similarity of initial mental approaches and research goals for all representatives of contensive grammar lies in the following: 1) analysis that is primarily aimed at studying the content of the categories under consideration; 2) a correlation between the content and the linguistic form that aims at determining the influence of the form on the representation of the identified meaning; 3) a tendency to study language means at different levels.

“Contensive typology” is still not a well-established linguistic discipline. Its foundation is a system of notional functions (“categorization of functions”), which is based on speech activity and which manifests itself in an utterance, specifically in a sentence. Representatives of contensive linguistics emphasize the “primacy of syntax in language and logic on the basis of valency types”, and this determines the scope of “cognitive categories” (here and below, [5]. They study the process of expressing the thought in speech, which is distinctly contrasted with the language as a means of forming the thought. They speak about three stages of thought formation, and their dominant interest in the language form determines their main thesis: “The form is given meaning”. This is the position of the “listener”, which reveals the nominalist tendency in research. The meaning is understood as expression of reality; the meaning and the word are autonomous, since “the word itself does not say anything about real facts”, and every word correlates to its “denotation” (=referent, thing) through the meaning (=the signified). The basic difference is seen as the semantic opposition in the presence of formal identity of the lexical meaning and the notion; the first reflects the specific national understanding, while the second reflects the “universal” one. They distinguish between presentive (referents) and attributive (the signified) meanings of words; the first type is represented in presentive words (a house, a table, etc.), while the second type can be found in abstract words (white, whiteness). Following A.A. Potebnja, they argue that “abstract nouns are a special way of representation in language”, when an attribute is conceived as independent from any specific set of features. Presentive meanings are associated with notions, while the “lexical” meaning (the signified) correlates to symbols. They speak about “deep cognitive structures” and “hidden categories of language”; a specific research unites all three cognitive categories: language and cognition (understood as co-knowledge) are represented as “aggregates of knowledge about the world” through cognition in categories and notions that “reflect the object originally and in contradictions”. There is an interesting statement about image-breaking notions such as the white house: “attributive meanings perform the functions of actualization”, which is correct. Thus, the replacement of notional forms of the concept with notional function in speech, results (among other things) in negation of general meanings in language and their replacement with central meanings.

Cognitive linguistics in the narrow sense (in a broad sense, all three schools fall into cognitive studies) examines the concept not for the purpose of cognition (as contensive linguistics does) – it is its tool, but with the aim of achieving knowledge, within the notional environment of the discourse – unlike conceptology, which studies conceptum of primary sense within the concept (“the generic element” of the semantic approach). In this way, conceptology is closest to the “third wave” of American linguistics, which exclusively studies the initial point of the development of meaning that “starts up” this development.

As a research field (being a type of epistemic cognitive science), cognitive linguistics is broader than conceptology, since it does not limit itself to just the field of language and extends to all areas of verbal and cogitative activity, which is clearly seen from its focus on knowledge, which can essentially be obtained in a variety of ways. “Unobservable mental entities” are ultimately nothing else but “general human universals”; therefore, the predominant interest focuses on the concept – the notional level of knowledge, enriched with additional meanings (for instance, as a result of metaphorization), which corresponds to the views of conceptualism. In this sense, however, cognitive linguistics is narrower than conceptology which does not stop at the figurative-conceptual side and also studies the figurative-symbolic world of consciousness. The fact is that our contemporary consciousness is forever subordinate to the concept as a materialized form of “primary sense”; concept is at the centre of knowledge, and obtaining knowledge is the main goal of cognitive science. Hence the general focus on all real relationships with the world – the linear perspective; the colour as the shade, and not brightness or intensity; the action limits of sound and any sensory perception in general. We live in the world created by our mind. Science submits to this pressure, forgetting about the past achievements gained exactly with imaginative perception and traditional symbols.

Let us now describe cognitive linguistics in its comparison with contensive and conceptual linguistics.

Unlike conceptology, cognitive linguistics, in essence, does not need ontology, as it is interested only in the “process of conceptualization” of the external world (corresponds to the “second wave”; see the works by R. Langacker). Everything that a cognitive linguist has to deal with is the “world unconsciously created by the thought”; this is the world “designed by consciousness”. This is essentially American instrumentalism in its final form, with ontology being replaced by epistemology (the modern form of the theory of knowledge). In some cases [4], cognitive linguistics is simply reduced to the hermeneutical interpretation of the text. This is an obvious narrowing of cognitive linguistics in favour of the passive grammar of the listener. Broadly speaking, the main postulates of cognitive linguistics as a separate approach come down to the following three [12]: 1) studying not the observable actions, symbols or strategies, but their mental counterparts, 2) in connection with their real notional content, 3) based on the influence of the cultural environment which shapes the human being.

A conceptualist firmly believes in the existence of central meanings, which are rejected by representatives of other branches of cognitive science. The central meaning is always present in the conceptum and is a permanent element of the concept; for instance, in the concept of the HOUSE, this central meaning is “abode” (Какое общее значение в английском концепте «дом» я не знаю, так как в тексте речь идет о русском концепте, а значит для английского концепта скорее всего необходимо свое исследование). Cognitive linguistics rejects the concept of central meanings, suggesting instead a network of word meanings, which in their hierarchy create the sense of the sign. This school limits itself to the autonomous knowledge of events, directly connecting them with language, while conceptology studies the causal sequence of events, presenting them as the facts of consciousness (the facts are conceived, as opposed to the real events which they express by reflecting them).

Essentially, any distinguishing feature, whether it be “waves” or types, is not absolute, since this is always a feature that is transformed and developed as a result of a clash between the schools of thought. Let us take for example one of the most important features of speech activity – the syntactic feature. Syntax is the focus of research for the first wave and its grammar (Chomsky and his followers); it is further developed by the second wave (cognitive science, for instance, G. Lakoff and especially R. Langacker); in the third wave, it represents an active component of the “environment”. Our contensive linguistics is based on syntax and proceeds from it, while for cognitive linguistics it is just a supportive factor. However, one should not forget that the first Humboldtian “mentalist” A.A. Potebnja paid a lot of attention to syntactic questions, while A.M. Peshkovsky and A.A. Shakhmatov created two versions of formal syntax, both implicitly “mentalist” in their essence; L.V. Shcherba specifically recognized the concept of speech activity, which in the West is known as the speech act.

The following question then arises: what was the breakpoint of the dominant formal tradition that led to the transition from formal to mental linguistics? When did the mainstream development of linguistic knowledge come to the conclusion that the Text as a form was no longer sufficient, and the term “discourse” appeared as the mental counterpart of the real “text”? Text and Discourse have a certain thing in common – their notional unity. However, while Text is logically sequential, Discourse represents a kind of notional swirling fully consistent with the meaning of the Latin discursus: a running to and fro, a running about, a swirling motion; expansion, branching.

According to the “best to date definition of discourse” (Y. S. Stepanov), given by V.Z. Demyankov, “discourse is an arbitrary text fragment consisting of more than one sentence or one independent part of the sentence... It is centred around a certain key concept; it creates an overall context…, being determined … by the world that is shared by the creator and the interpreter of the discourse and that is “built” in the course of the discourse development, - this is the view of the “ethnography of speech” [14].

The key words used here - the text fragment, arbitrarily selected by the speaker, the shared world that is being built and the concept which determines the meaning – form the semantic triangle system, in which the idea is replaced by the concept, the sign is replaced by the text fragment, and the thing is replaced by the shared world. The ultimate goal of discourse development is to determine the national ethnography of particular speech on the basis of the texts featured. We can see a certain similarity with the process of elaborating a semantic constant, in which the text fragment is the condition, the shared world is the cause, and the concept is the purpose.  In this case, we should agree with the interpretation given by Y.S. Stepanov, who defined discourse as “language inside language”, represented in the social givenness and equal to the style in the Russian grammatical tradition. Discourse is “a different language with its specific rules of truth and its own etiquette” built on the plane of the text – “a possible (alternative) world” in the full sense of this logico-philosophical term. Discourse is a new feature in the image of Language as it appeared to us by the end of the 20^th century” [14]. In other words, Discourse is a reflected form of the text in its mental interpretation, and in the 1970s, “Anglo-Saxon linguists realized that ‘discourse’ is not only the ‘givenness’ of the text but a certain system behind this “givenness”, particularly the grammar system” [14, P. 37}. Indeed, the term discourse is connected with the transition in research from the form to the meaning, when the category of Meaning assumed its unique representation of “conceptual unity” – both in form and in content at the same time. Thus, contensive linguistics proceeds from the Text, while cognitive linguistics proceeds from the Discourse.

A conceptualist sees conceptualization as a living process that consists in generation of new meanings in the substantial forms of the concept. For a cognitive scientist, however, it is something that results from generalization of things within the mental frame, while the conceptual metaphor is no more than an analogy used in comparing objects with similar meanings. A conceptualist uses the “descending” principle (from the concept to the image), while a cognitivist prefers the “ascending” path (from the image to the concept).

The “descending - ascending” paths should be clarified in more detail.

The Nonpossessor Nilus of Sora, when outlining his concept of cognition at the very end of the 15^th century, in the spirit of medieval symbolic thinking, expressed an idea that in the 20^th century and at a higher conceptual level was voiced by cognitive science: the key concepts of cognitive linguistics are essentially conceptualization and categorization. Nilus, a simple soul, express this idea the Russian way, with an emphasis on ethics: “descending is better than ascending.” One would wonder what connection can be found between these two statements divided by half a millennium. Actually, they have a lot, if not everything, in common – but in terms of the mental aspect and not only in the verbal form of expression.

The two positions essentially coincide. What I mean here is the ascent towards the notion (categorization, in terms of contemporary linguistics), shaping the conceptual hyperonyms of modern literary languages, and the descent from the abstract notion to the image (penetrating into the symbol of the conceptum; finding the “grain of primary sense”, i.e. conceptualization), preserving the metaphoric system of “natural speech”. This opposition, dating back to ancient times when the simplest equipollent oppositions were still widely used, is highly significant. This is not just a logical opposition but a representation of the antinomy of knowledge, which in its dialectical connection will probably never be resolved. 

Contrasting of the two approaches has now achieved the level of an opposition. At the level of the communicative act, this is the opposition between the speaker and the listener, at the logical level – the opposition between denotation and sense, at the ethical level – the opposition between consciousness and conscience, which once (in the times of Nilus) were seen as something whole, as one and the same, etc.; ultimately, the opposition between the essence and the phenomenon – the opposition so significant for a realist. Hence another important difference between the designated cognitive approaches: contensive linguistics is typological in character, while cognitive linguistics is comparative (it is within cognitive science that concepts from different languages are studied in comparison); conceptology is historical in its essence: it does not compare different languages in space but studies its native language in time.

In general, the correlation between all the described approaches in the history of Russian linguistics can be represented in the following way.

All these approaches are in complementary distribution, and each of them is responsible for its own task. Contensive linguistics studies the notional meaning of the texts; cognitive linguistics is interested in the enrichment of the concept with a new meaning (new knowledge) given in the discourse; conceptology is trying to unravel the substantive mystery of the concept through its primary meaning.

Thus, here we have described the development in the science of language (the basis - what?) within two traditional branches of linguistics – formal and cognitive, working in the process of cognition in order to obtain accurate and reliable knowledge. The aggregate answer to all four questions of the Aristotelian causes, described in terms of the semantic constant, projects the acceptable development paths for contemporary linguistics. Ultimately, the logical sequence in the change of linguistic forms is given as an approximation towards understanding the essence of the living language in its anthropocentric dimension. The “three waves” of formal linguistics in their analytical dualism have been replaced with the “three waves” of cognitive linguistics in the synthetic unity of meanings. There has been a change in the research approach: from the passive “language” of the listener to the active “language” of the speaker.

The semantic constant can be constructed in the following way.

The sequence in which linguistic features manifest themselves is organized as a sequence of substantive forms of the concept: image - notion - symbol - image - notion – symbol. The sequences in which logical features manifest themselves is the following: concrete - abstract - concrete - abstract - concrete - abstract. When the logical and linguistic features are combined, for instance, in the cognitive sector: contensive linguistics expresses the abstract image as a reflection of the thing (nominalism); cognitive linguistics expresses the concreteness of the notion as an expression of the idea (conceptualism); conceptual linguistics expresses the abstract meaning as the embodiment of the sign (realism). Combining the logical and the linguistic is the basic feature of cognitive science; the logical sequence of transitions from one state to another is the principal characteristic defining the development of the research method that is guided by the change (but not the replacement!) in the development of research paradigms. Such is the sequence of the described methods in their invariant forms (works of separate scholars sometimes combine several approaches).

Thus, in the most general terms, the development of linguistics follows the “law of four causes”, which are connected with the consecutive change of results.

The emergence of comparative-historical studies of language, by answering the “what is this?” question, formed the basis of linguistics as a science; structural linguistics, by answering the “how does it work?” question, became the condition for further development of language studies; functional linguistics, by answering the “why does it work?” question, created the cause for the development of a new approach – cognitive linguistics, which has removed the opposition between the linguistic and the cognitive, and this, in the most general terms, provided the answer to the “what does it work for?” question – the ultimate purpose of the preceding movements of the science.

Today scientific development happens so fast that within one century, or even within half a century, linguistics in different countries has progressed significantly, and now we are able to identify the steps that were made in the field of linguistics almost simultaneously. Contensive linguistics, studying surface notional categories, answers the “what is this?” question and forms the basis of cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics (in the narrow sense of the term), focusing on the figurative and the metaphoric side of language, answers the “how does it work?” question and creates conditions for the development of new research schools, particularly, cultural linguistics. Conceptology gets the insights into the essence of language, speaking about the “engine” driving the linguistic forms (formerly represented in the vague concept of the “inner form”) and answering the “why does language develop?” question. Now we are faced with the need to answer the fourth question, “what is all this for?”, and to define the ultimate purpose in the development of language. Answering this question, however, will take our science to a new level of development, with its own answers to the questions posed.

After “generating” a complete organism in the current development of ideas, “the history stops its flow.”  A change in research paradigms is required. A part of the new paradigm manifests itself in conceptology – through the introduction of the “fourth dimension”, namely, time, in an attempt to answer the “what for?” question. It can be assumed that this new paradigm is going to be neither flatly formal nor dimensional like cognitive linguistics but rather a stereoscopically represented synthesis of its spatial and temporal qualities, states and units.

Science is cumulative; it diligently collects all its achievements and sometimes employs old methods, depending on the question that needs to be answered. What is more, starting scholars sometimes resort even to prescientific collecting methods, such as used by comparative and descriptive linguistics. Theories eventually condense into methods, and these methods are used by everyone, as they see fit. In a higher sense, however, in the philosophical sense, the movement of linguistic methods described here reflects the onward progress of human consciousness towards getting an increasingly deeper insight into the mysteries of language. The only requirement for fruitful research is the opportunity for a scholar to independently search for such new turns in scientific investigation which, through combined effort, can lead to the next turn in the development of our science.