Когнитивная лингвистика как развитие лингвистики формальной

environment here are equally material in the conceptual expression of the material world, which is still a manifestation of 
philosophical nominalism. The collective total of features is close to those that we find in the “first wave” of western cognitive 
studies, which is close to contensive linguistics also in a number of secondary characteristics. Interestingly enough, 
representatives of this school were among the first critics of N. Chomsky: the similarities between the two approaches helped 
to see more clearly the shortcomings of the American version. 
The similarity of initial mental approaches and research goals for all representatives of contensive grammar lies in the 
following: 1) analysis that is primarily aimed at studying the content of the categories under consideration; 2) a correlation 
between the content and the linguistic form that aims at determining the influence of the form on the representation of the 
identified meaning; 3) a tendency to study language means at different levels. 
“Contensive typology” is still not a well-established linguistic discipline. Its foundation is a system of notional functions 
(“categorization of functions”), which is based on speech activity and which manifests itself in an utterance, specifically in a 
sentence. Representatives of contensive linguistics emphasize the “primacy of syntax in language and logic on the basis of 
valency types”, and this determines the scope of “cognitive categories” (here and below, Katsnelson, 1972). They study the 
process of expressing the thought in speech, which is distinctly contrasted with the language as a means of forming the 
thought. They speak about three stages of thought formation, and their dominant interest in the language form determines their 
main thesis: “The form is given meaning”. This is the position of the “listener”, which reveals the nominalist tendency in 
research. The meaning is understood as expression of reality; the meaning and the word are autonomous, since “the word itself 
does not say anything about real facts”, and every word correlates to its “denotation” (=referent, thing) through the meaning 
(=the signified). The basic difference is seen as the semantic opposition in the presence of formal identity of the lexical 
meaning and the notion; the first reflects the specific national understanding, while the second reflects the “universal” one. 
They distinguish between presentive (referents) and attributive (the signified) meanings of words; the first type is represented 
in presentive words (a house, a table, etc.), while the second type can be found in abstract words (white, whiteness). Following 
A.A. Potebnja, they argue that “abstract nouns are a special way of representation in language”, when an attribute is conceived 
as independent from any specific set of features. Presentive meanings are associated with notions, while the “lexical” meaning 
(the signified) correlates to symbols. They speak about “deep cognitive structures” and “hidden categories of language”; a 
specific research unites all three cognitive categories: language and cognition (understood as co-knowledge) are represented as 
“aggregates of knowledge about the world” through cognition in categories and notions that “reflect the object originally and in 
contradictions”. There is an interesting statement about image-breaking notions such as the white house: “attributive meanings 
perform the functions of actualization”, which is correct. Thus, the replacement of notional forms of the concept with notional 
function in speech, results (among other things) in negation of general meanings in language and their replacement with 
central meanings. 
Cognitive linguistics in the narrow sense (in a broad sense, all three schools fall into cognitive studies) examines the 
concept not for the purpose of cognition (as contensive linguistics does) – it is its tool, but with the aim of achieving