Grammatical categories, constructions and forms take part in cognitive activity. They contain and transmit in a generalized and concentrated form the experience accumulated by previous generations. Research in this direction, started by American linguists (Ch. Fillmore, R. W. Langacker, R. Jackendoff, G. Lakoff, etc.), is continued by scholars from Slavic countries (J. S. Stepanov, E. S. Kubryakova, A. Wierzbicka, M. Ivic, P. Piper, etc.). The article examines the role of syntactic patterns, as well as subordinating and coordinating relations, in the transmission of information. The structure of predicate-actant model and peculiarities of its realization are analyzed. Examples are given, in the form of quotations from Russian fiction, which demonstrate the participation of grammatical forms in the process of communication. The constituent part of the model, the semantic function, or actant, does not always appear in isosemic form; it can also be expressed in an atypical, occasional form (e.g., ???????? ???????? ??????????, where the last word plays the role of the object). This is due to the metaphorical or metonymic rearrangement (reorganization) of the syntactic structure in consciousness. The cases of neutralization of the functions such as ?place? and ?direction?, as well as ?purpose? and ?cause? are specially considered. The human cognitive experience also manifests itself in the rules of coordinative relation. Ideally, this connection unites words belonging to the same thematic sphere and the same level of generalization. Yet within the framework of an utterance, it is also capable of ?equalizing? in syntactic status those words that, within the language system, were quite distant from one another (e.g., ????? (?forks?) and ????? (?poems?)). A comparison of the material from Slavic languages reveals a nuclear part ? the general syntactic stock, and a periphery ? syntactic models specific to each language. This allows us to speak about the dynamics of the syntactic system, about the participation of grammatical categories in the diachronic development of the linguistic worldview.
Boris Norman (Wed,) studied this question.