THE BIG ROLE OF “SMALL WORDS” (on the material of the English language)

Abstract

The object of research in the article is functional parts of speech, and the subject matter is their role in the language realization of its main functions: cognitive, communicative and interpretive. As the author states, functional words have been thoroughly studied in the context of structural paradigm whereas their role in the reconstruction of the work of consciousness calls for a more detailed analysis which is the aim of the article. The analysis is carried out on the material of the English language with occasional references to the Russian language. The main methods of analysis are introspection and semantic interpretation, inferential and context-situational types of analysis. As the analysis shows the functional parts of speech contribute greatly to the language realization of its main functions: cognitive, communicative and interpretive. The history of the determination category, constituted by the opposition of the definite, indefinite and zero articles, reveals that articles reflect the cognitive development of a human being, the transition from the perception of a single object to categorization, i.e. from concrete to abstract thinking. The participation of the article in the actual division of the sentence reveals its contribution to the language realization of its communicative and interpretive functions. The main function of the prepositions consists in forming the scaffolding for our thought on its way to verbalization in the sentence as a special format of knowledge about a situation of reality. Prepositions serve as language markers of the roles of participants of the event, presented in the sentence. Besides, the variation in the choice of a preposition manifests the difference in the focus of attention during the perception of an event as well as the difference in the perception of the same event by different types of language consciousness. Conjunctions as markers of the character of relations between the components of a composite sentence as a special format of knowledge manifest the possibility of different interpretations of the relations between the events of reality presented in the proposition of the composite sentence as a mental analog of reality. The study of conjunctions in the cognitive aspect enables us to get knowledge about the cognitive development of a child as well as about the specificity of discourse patterns in different languages related to ethnocultural factors. Reflecting the deep relations between the events of reality, conceptualized by the individual mind, conjunctions carry out an important function in the fiction text, participating in the expression of its dominant meanings and the plot development.