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“UNDERSTANDING FROM THE INSIDE”: THEORY OF LANGUAGE DETERMINANTS BY RUSSIAN SCIENTIST GENNADIY P. MEL'NIKOV (1928-2000)
Abstract
In our article we would like to dwell on ‘the system typology of languages’ created by the Russian scholar G.P. Mel’nikov. He revealed ‘the internal determinants’ of four morphological types of languages as four internal forms which characterize morphological types of languages selected by V. Humboldt: a situational – incorporating languages (or polysynthetic) (qualitatively) indicative – agglutinative type, eventive – fusional (inflectional) type, occasional – root-insulating (analytical or root-insulating languages) type. This made possible to explain functional relationships between semantic diversity of the language and the characteristics of communication in the language team, which entails appropriate modification of the functions of language. The ratio of the tenets of modern linguistics, which is a direct continuation of the ideas of the founders of systemic linguistics (V. Humboldt, Baudouin de Courtenay) concepts and categories of materialist dialectics allowed G. P. Mel’nikov to present the principles and concepts of the systemic typology of languages and to show their relation to the principles and concepts of other typological concepts. The proposed typology, as the scientist hoped would have to answer queries "in the creation of a unified scientific meta-language that allows to compare heterogeneous types of linguistic communities and to identify their historical and systematic relationship". We guess that Mel’nikov’s systematic approach has great explanatory power for a wide range of linguistic issues in, for example, in theory and practice of translation, language varieties, others, and also in the case of all-pervading power of English. In present article the methods of study and generalization, analysis and synthesis (methods of theoretical level) are used along with the method of surveillance (as one of the methods of the empirical level) and the descriptive method.
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