The word in the mind of man

A word (lexeme) is a unit of the lexical level of the language structure. We will look at it in the light of the achievements of psycholinguistics. We will try to answer a number of questions: how are words located in the linguistic consciousness of native speakers? on what basis are they related to each other? How does the speaker manage to find the necessary lexeme at the time of speech production? etc.

Answers to these questions give the results of a variety of psycholinguistic experiments. One of the most simple and effective methods of obtaining material for analysis is an experiment using the free association method . It consists in the fact that the subject is offered a stimulus word, to which he must respond with the first word that has come to his mind or a word combination. The reaction word will be the lexeme associated with the stimulus word. Relationships between words that occur in the mind of a person are called associative connections, or simply associations.

In order to make sure that such associations are common to all speakers of the Russian language, conduct an experiment with relatives and friends. Let your “guinea pigs” write down on paper the first words that came to mind in response to stimuli:

Russian poet - ? Part of the face -? Fruit - ?

In most cases the answers will be the same: Pushkin, nose, apple. These are the connections between these words in the mind of the Russian person.

It must be said that associations of different cultures on the same word may not be the same. This is natural: behind the words are concepts, behind concepts is the life experience of people. So, for example, according to psycholinguist A. A. Zalevskaya, Russians often have word-reaction salt for the word-stimulus, French for wine , Germans and Americans for butter , and Uzbeks for tea.

The commonality of associations within, so to speak, the “collective consciousness” of a nation or ethnic group makes it possible to create dictionaries of the associative norms of various languages. There are dictionaries of the associative norms of English, German, French and other languages. Domestic scientists created a dictionary of associations in the Russian language. We give an example of an article from this dictionary.

“STUDENT - poor 43; part-time 33; eternal 13; Excellent student 12; hungry, institute 11; smart student 10; cheerful, medic, teacher, philologist 9; martyr, university, man, i 7; applicant, young, session, studies 6 ", etc. (out of 563 answers)

As can be seen from the above article, associations differ in the nature of their connection with the word stimulus. The most frequent links are of two types: syntagmatic and paradigmatic .

Syntagmatic: student - poor, eternal, hungry, intelligent, funny, learns , etc.

These include reactions that with a stimulus enter into syntactic relations, forming either phrases or the grammatical basis of a sentence. Syntagmatic links reflect syntactic patterns of speech activity, which we will discuss in one of the following chapters.

Paradigmatic: student - part-time student, excellent student, institute, student, physician, philologist , etc.

This group includes words that belong to the same grammatical class as the word stimulus. It is these associations that most clearly demonstrate the systemic nature of the relationship between the lexemes in the linguistic consciousness. Paradigmatic associations can form relations of synonymy (friend - comrade), antonymy (friend - enemy), hyperonymy (student-student), hyponymy (student - honored student), and so on; However, as the observations of scientists have shown, it is possible to distinguish the third type of associations, phrasal ones, when the word - a stimulus in the mind does not arise a word, but a whole sentence (or even part of the text). For example, the student may issue the word “student exams,” “student body time is a fun time,” and so on.

Associative links between words are motivated not only by the characteristics of the culture to which a native speaker belongs. They reflect the social being of a person: his profession, place of residence, age, social origin, etc. Thus, for a brush word stimulus, a resident of the Volga region usually responds with the word rowan , and a resident of Dushanbe responds with grapes . The conductor answered this word - smooth, soft , the artist - paints, hair , and the nurse - amputation .

Associations in the linguistic consciousness of people form associative (semantic) fields in which words similar in meaning} are combined into groups. The nature and originality of semantic fields is well shown by another, also becoming a textbook, type of associative experiment - psychophysiological. A series of brilliant experiments showing the possibilities of this technique, conducted together with his student O. S. Vinogradova, A. R. Luria. The experiments were based on some features of a person’s physiological reactions to a painful stimulus (in the form of electric shock). The consequence of such irritation is the constriction of the blood vessels of the head and

fingers. Scientists have identified three types of reactions to external stimuli:

- neutral (zero) - the vessels of the fingers and heads do not contract and do not expand.

- approximate - the vessels of the fingers are compressed, the vessels of the head dilate.

- protective (the strongest, when there is a mobilization of the body’s forces to resist) - both the vessels of the fingers and the vessels of the head are compressed.

The nature of human vascular reactions during the experiments was recorded using special sensors.

The experiment began with the fact that the subject repeatedly, at the same time as the stimulus word was pronounced, was struck with a light electric shock. This procedure was repeated until a person developed a conditioned reflex (like Pavlov’s dog) - a protective vascular reaction to a certain word (two words were used - “cat” and “violin”). So, it was enough to utter a word-stimulus, as (already without painful irritation) the vessels of the test subject's hands and head contracted.

Having formed a conditional reaction to a word from a participant in the experiment, the researchers proceeded to the main series of experiments.

1. The subject was presented with words that are closely related in meaning to the word stimulus. For example, to the word violin - cello, mandolin, double bass, bow, etc. (everything related to the concept of "stringed musical instruments").

For all the above words, a defensive reaction was observed, that is, exactly the same as the word violin.

The conclusion that can be made on the basis of this part of the experiment is that we can state in the linguistic consciousness the presence of semantic fields, which include words that are united by a common concept (in this case, "musical instruments").

2. The second stage of the experiment consisted in the presentation to the subject of words with the meaning “non-stringed musical instruments”, for example: accordion, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, etc.

In this case, the vascular reaction becomes weaker: approximate comes to the place of the defensive reaction (when the vessels of the hands are compressed and the vessels of the head dilate).

The second conclusion: in the identified semantic field, you can divide the center and periphery, where the connections between words are weakened.

3. The experiment continued. The subject was now presented with words that were in no way connected with the world of music: a boot, a wardrobe, a cloud, a roof, a chimney, a stove.

As one would expect, these words entailed a neutral reaction (i.e., the absence of any reaction).

Pay attention to the word-incentive pipe. If in the second stage of the experiment it (used in a number of musical instrument names) caused an approximate reaction, now, when its meaning was specified by the neighboring words “roof” and “stove”, the reaction to it was absent.

This allows us to make a third conclusion: the meanings of words that enter into various semantic fields are specified in a speech context.

4. The experiment did not end there. Next, the subject was presented with words that are associated with the original stimulus word, not in meaning, but in sound (for example, a clip).

It turned out that such lexemes can also cause a weak orienting reaction of the vessels.

From here comes the fourth conclusion: the words in our consciousness are connected not only in meaning, but also in form. Moreover, the connection in form (in sound) is much weaker than the semantic connection.

A different picture was observed in experiments using a similar technique with mentally retarded native speakers.

So, in children with a deep degree of mental retardation (imbeciles), words that are in one semantic field do not cause any vascular reactions at all. Words similar to the original in sound form cause an approximate reaction of the vessels. In children with a weak degree of mental retardation of morons, lexemes that are close in meaning, and lexemes that are close in sound, evoke the same (approximate) vascular response.

It is interesting that, as shown by the results of experiments, the response of moron children depended significantly on the child’s general condition, in particular, on the degree of fatigue. In the first lesson, when the student is not yet tired, semantic relations prevail in vascular reactions. After the fifth lesson, when the auxiliary school student is already tired, the sound connections (like imbeciles) dominate in the reactions.

Features of the structure of the semantic (associative) field, well shown by the story of AP Chekhov "Horse surname"; As the reader remembers, the plot of the story is built on the fact that the clerk Ivan Evseich cannot recall the name of a Saratov tooth-tinkering specialist. He only remembers that the surname is "horse." The process of remembering, speaking in scientific language, by creating an associative field of words with the general meaning “relating to the horse”: Zherebtsov, Loshakov, Konyavsky, Hysteria, Merinov, Bulanov, etc. The reason for the difficulty is that the real name of the doctor is Ovs - located on the periphery of this semantic field, meanwhile active word searches are carried out in the central part of the field.

Associative relations arising in the linguistic consciousness of a native speaker manifest themselves in everyday speech activity. The vivid illustration here can serve as reservations (reservations), which the speaker admits in his speaking. Most of these substitutions of some words by others are motivated by the semantic proximity of interchangeable lexemes. Older people, for example, very often confuse the nouns “TV” and “refrigerator”, “bath” and “kitchen”, “keys” and “clock”, “coupe” and “cabin”, etc. Reservations seem to show the way , in which the speaker moves in search of the desired word. A lexeme denoting a concept is replaced by another, located in the same associative field.

Much less often, the slips are motivated by the phonetic closeness of words. Let us take an example from Boris Yustinovich Norman, a book by a prominent psycholinguist, “The Grammar of the Speaker”: “Children's resort, children are all in sweets ... that is, panama girls” (from conversational recordings). Other examples: “hose” instead of “cord”, “genocide” instead of “carcinogenic”, “dilemma” instead of “problem”, “bolero” instead of “bolivar”, etc. Reservations according to the phonetic principle most often occur with the so-called an altered state of consciousness, that is, when a person is sick, extremely tired, intoxicated, and so on. In such cases, semantic connections are weakened and connections are formally similar to the foreground. An excellent illustration of this kind of enlivening of various connections in the altered consciousness can be found in Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. Recall the scene when Nikolai Rostov, tired of his campaign, falls asleep in the saddle, and in his

the word begins to emerge various associations. He looks at the hill and sees some white spots.

“There was a white spot on this hill, which Rostov could not understand: was it a glade in the forest, lit by the month, or the remaining snow, or white houses? The snow must be a stain; the spot is une tache, ”thought Rostov. “So you don’t have a tash ... (....) Natasha, sister, black eyes. On ... tashka ... Natashka ... tashka take "... On-tashka to attack ... to blunt on ... skoy? Hussars And hussars and mustaches ... This hussar with a mustache rode across Tverskoy, I also thought about him against the Guryev house itself ... Old Guryev ... Yes, this is nothing, and most importantly - do not forget what I thought, yes Natasha, us-stupid, yes, yes, yes. It's good"

Tolstoy brilliantly depicted the destruction of semantic connections between words in the linguistic consciousness of a tired person, replaced by connections in form. Nikolai Rostov is looking at a hill - “there must be snow, this is a spot”. The spot in French is “une tache” (let's not forget that the French language for Russian noblemen at the beginning of the 19th century was the language of everyday communication). The French word evokes a similar sound in consciousness - “Na-tash, Na-tashka, Na-tashka”. On behalf of the sister, the association for formal similarity - “take the tashka (leather bag that the hussars carry)”; “Come” (an association from a harness that hussars wear), “blunt us (whom?) - hussars, and gusrs - a mustache” (again playing up sound links), etc.

We have considered the peculiarities of relations and relations between words in the linguistic consciousness. And now let us touch on another problem of the emergence of new words in live speech, important for psycholinguistics.