LINGUISTICS OF COICIDENCES

The article maintains the general theoretical position that modern science finds itself on the verge of a new revolutionary quantum paradigm. Such a paradigmatic shift has effected changes in language scholarship too - through expanding its subject area, among other things. The paper shows that new subjects in linguistics include coincidences - pairs of events or phenomena that are close in meaning without being brought about by cause-and-effect relationships. In analytical psychology, the phenomenon is called synchronicity. The aim of the study is to solve the problem of the initial cognitive realization of the idea of coincidence in different linguistic mentalities and thereby to clarify its cognitive foundations. The onomasiological, structural-semantic and comparative analysis of words with the semantics of coincidence in the languages of different families made it possible to identify regular features that recreate a general cognitive portrait of such synchronistic thinking in Russian and, effectively, in Indo-European linguistic consciousness. It is assumed that the totality of such properties constitutes a cognitive universal. It is noteworthy that the revealed features are incompatible from the point of view of classical logic. In particular, they are as follows: “duality”, “singularity”, “causal autonomy and uncontrollability”, “belonging to a different space-time structure”. All this shows that the phenomenon conceptually defined as coincidence is deeply rooted in cognition; it carries an idea of the inner reality lying beyond the scope of human conceptual thinking. The authors sum up the results of the study in Conclusion section of the paper. In particular, it is asserted that the concept of COINCIDENCE proves extremely productive in terms of reconstructing a person’s deep-seated cognitive attitudes. Besides, coincidence is regarded as a most significant phenomenon in physical reality since it is directly related to its foundations and core principles. Finally, the revealed cognitive characteristics of the COINCIDENCE concept allow us to draw cautious conclusions regarding the proximity of the phenomenon of coincidence to the special type of reality defined as quantum reality in physics. Considering coincidences from this point of view provides a unique research perspective.