Word as a lexical unit the main functions of lexical units

2.THE MAIN FUNCTIONS OF LEXICAL UNITS
Occupying a central position in the entire language mechanism, lexical units have the largest number of functions compared to other units of the language. The function of a language unit is its purpose. To have a certain function means to be destined to carry out something. The functions of lexical units differ from each other, firstly, in terms of content, and secondly, in terms of the degree of their inherentness in lexical units. From the point of view of content, some functions reflect the relationship of lexical units to the objects of the surrounding world and therefore they can be called external, while others reflect the relationship of lexical units to each other and to the language system - internal functions. The former include nominative, generalizing-cognitive, information-accumulative, deistic, emotive, symbolic, communicative, contact, aesthetic. To the second - synthesizing, stylistic, metalinguistic, constructive and distinctive. According to the degree of inherentness of different functions to lexical units, they can be divided into proper and non-proper. A proper function is such a function of lexical units, the main carrier of which is precisely them. In other words, proper functions include functions that are characteristic primarily of lexical units, and only then of some other linguistic entities. The proper functions of lexical units are nominative, generalizing-cognitive, information-accumulative, deictic, emotive, sign, synthesizing, stylistic and metalinguistic. Briefly about each of the listed functions. The first and main function of lexical units is the function of naming objects and features, i.e. nominative (representative) function. Lexical units serve, first of all, to fix the results of a person's knowledge of the surrounding reality. Acting in this world, reflecting on it and on himself, a person isolates more and more pieces of the surrounding reality and gives each of them a specific name. This means that the very appearance of a lexical unit is due to the need to name something that is singled out by a person and realized by him as a separate one. Here it is important to pay attention to the fact that the reality presented in words consists not only of those that really exist, i.e. objects perceived by our external senses. Along with them, it also includes a huge number of separate parts of a completely virtual nature, i.e. those that do not have a physical embodiment (cf., time, number, freedom, happiness, beauty, etc.). Such objects are mental artifacts. They reflect, firstly, the connections and dependencies of really existing entities, their existential, consumer and other properties, and secondly, the objective diversity of a person's spiritual life. Thus understood, mental artifacts make the reality opposing man intelligible and much more friendly towards him. The nominative function is characteristic of lexical units related to nouns, adjectives, numerals, verbs and adverbs. The problems associated with the naming of the surrounding reality are being developed by onomasiology. Onomasiology [from Greek. oposha - 'name' and logos - 'science'] - a section of lexicology that studies the means, methods, patterns and features of denoting objects of reality with the help of lexical units. In the linguistic literature, one can find statements that onomasiology, the foundations of which were laid at the beginning of the 20th century. in the works of German scientists belonging to the scientific direction "words and things" (Wörter und Sachen), by the middle of the 20th century. finally developed into a separate science. This is, of course, an exaggeration. Despite the fact that in the spirit of the onomasiological approach throughout the 20th century. indeed, several based on their results of work, onomasiology has not become an independent branch of linguistics. The second most important function of lexical units is a generalizing-cognitive (significative, classifying) function. The fact is that a lexical unit usually names not one specific object (attribute), but a whole class of objects (attributes). For example, the word book is the name of any object that is a ‘printed work in the form of bound sheets of paper with some text’, regardless of its size, color, language in which the text is written, etc. In order for a lexical unit to be able to name a whole class of objects (attributes), it must have the property of being correlated with a small circle of attributes that are present in all the objects that make up this class without exception. In quantitative terms, there are usually exactly as many such features as necessary so that it is possible to distinguish objects (features) of a given class from objects (features) of all other classes.⁸ Therefore, naming any fact of reality, the lexical unit at the same time classifies it, i.e. included in a particular class. The German philosopher E. Cassirer drew attention to the connection between naming and classification: “Classification is one of the fundamental features of the human language. The very fact of naming is based on the process of classification. Giving a name to an object or action means referring it to a certain class of concepts. Thus, the cognitive-generalizing function of lexical units is based on the fact that they generalize and consolidate the cognitive activity of people who speak the corresponding language. As a result, in the mind of a person, each lexical unit is associated with a certain idea of ​​the object or feature denoted by it. The sum of such representations, associated with all lexical units known to a person, forms his knowledge of the surrounding real and virtual reality, or, as they sometimes say, his linguistic picture of the world. If, in accordance with the nominative function, the lexical unit correlates with objects and features of the surrounding reality, then the generalizing-cognitive function emphasizes their relationship with ideas about these objects and features. The famous Russian psychologist A.R. Luria writes: “The word not only denotes an object, but also performs the most important function of analyzing the object, conveys the experience that has been formed in the process of the historical development of generations”.⁹ The above thought, emphasizing the generalizing cognitive function, also highlights another closely related and very important function of lexical units, namely information storage. Information-accumulative, or cumulative (from Latin shpiMu - ‘increase, accumulation, accumulation’), function reflects the remarkable property of lexical units to fix, consolidate and accumulate in their content various kinds of information associated with the named object (attribute). In other words, a lexical unit has a memory: it, like a sponge, absorbs and stores all eventual, emotional and other information about the traditional social attitude of the speakers to the corresponding important subject (feature), the place of this subject (feature) in national history and culture, etc. As a result, there is a cultural and historical "infection" of many lexical units denoting both the most ordinary objects and very important moral, social and worldview guidelines. The deictic function, or simply deixis (from Greek - 'indication'), is the function of indicating, correlating with objects or signs that are in one way or another related to the speaking person or moment of speech. The area of ​​deixis includes: a) an indication of the speaker and the listener , b) an indication of the object of speech, c) an indication of the degree of separation object of speech, d) an indication of the temporal and spatial localization of the object of speech. The deictic function is characteristic mainly of pronouns and pronominal adverbs. Pronouns, as you know, unlike other significant lexical units, do not designate objects, their attributes, quantity or order in number, but only point to them. Emotive (from the Latin eshowege - ‘excite, excite’) is the function of expressing emotions, feelings of the speaker. Thanks to the emotive function, the speaker can, with the help of lexical units, express his attitude towards who or what he is talking about. To the greatest extent, the emotive function is characteristic of traditionally understood interjections, which, as you know, do not name anything, but only express some kind of emotion or feeling. In addition to interjections, the emotive function is characteristic of any lexical unit characters that are characterized by an emotionally expressive coloring, for example, nonsense (joking), foppery (disapproving), rogue (contemptuous), terribly ( terribly tired), (amplifying), etc. The sign function implies the possibility of considering a lexical unit as a sign, and a language as a system of signs. The need for such a consideration arises either in connection with the construction of various kinds of language models, or in those cases when the language and its units are analyzed within the framework of a broader conceptual context, covering heterogeneous means of communication of thoughts, intentions, feelings, etc. (music, painting, road signs, etc.). The synthesizing function of lexical units is based on the fact that they are the source and carrier of phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic and stylistic properties, which together constitute the content of the corresponding tiers of the language system.¹⁰ The concepts themselves, for example, phonemes, morphemes, case, aspect, control, meaning, seme, etc. could appear and appeared in reality only as a result of the analysis of lexical units and observation of their use. The presence of a synthesizing function in lexical units makes it possible to use them for various applied purposes. For example, if we want to create a morphological minimum of a certain level, this can be done as follows: a) take the lexical minimum corresponding to this level, b) attribute (based on authoritative dictionaries and grammars) to each lexical unit in this minimum all its grammatical characteristics, c) to summarize, properly order these characteristics and present them in a systematic way. The stylistic (register) function is based on the fact that, on the one hand, there are lexical units assigned to certain areas of speech, and on the other hand, lexical units that are freely used in any area of ​​speech. The former are called stylistically related (stylistically marked, stylistically marked), while the latter are called stylistically neutral. For example, the word ask is stylistically neutral, and its synonym for solicitation is stylistically related (it is assigned to official business speech), the word spend is stylistically neutral, and squandering is stylistically related (fixed to colloquial speech), etc. When we say “the word conveys information, the word serves to convey information, the word conveys the thoughts and feelings of the speaker”, etc., we must clearly understand that a metaphor is hidden in such sentences, they cannot be taken literally. Words are not birds fluttering between the speaker and the listener with thoughts in their beaks, and not airplanes carrying information. The role of the word in communication (it performs this role primarily with the help of its material shell) is to excite in the mind of the listener (reader) that or approximately the information state that the sender of the speech wants to communicate to him. The constructive function is based on the fact that words, on the one hand, participate in the construction of phrases and utterances, and on the other hand, they are entities, the analysis of which makes it possible to single out units of a lower level, in particular, morphemes. In addition, among the words, a separate group of lexical units stands out in relief, for which the constructive function is the main one. We are talking about such service words as prepositions and conjunctions, which are known to be used to connect significant lexical units, sentences or parts of a sentence. The primary carrier of a constructive function is a morpheme.¹¹ Finally, the distinctive function is that lexical units allow you to distinguish one phrase or sentence from others, for example, I have a dog, but I have a book, but You have a dog, but I don’t have a dog, etc. The primary carrier of the distinctive function is the phoneme. Knowledge of the repertoire of the functions of lexical units makes it possible to establish a clear and reliable idea of ​​what is due when describing a language both in the mode of general and in the mode of pedagogical linguistics.