ON THE COMPLEX NATURE OF A SIMPLE WORD: A DIACHRONIC LINGUOSYNERGETICS VIEW

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the historical dynamics of the morphological structure of a few simple (from the point of view of modern English) words. The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the mobility of morphemic boundaries in the course of the historical development of the English language as a synergetic megasystem. The object of the investigation is the morphologically simple words of modern English; the subject is the formation of the morphological structure of the selected words in retrospect. Methodologically, the work is based on the main categories of diachronic linguistic synergetics, including the theory of fractality of the language system organization. Linguistic synergetics is considered to have emerged as an interdisciplinary research program in language study based on the categorical apparatus and synergetics methods. It is defined by the author as one of the methodological approaches to the description of the dynamic space of a language; the latter is understood as successive shifts of the states of the ever changing language megasystem. Without denying the systemic organization of the language, linguistic synergetics complements the philological tradition with a view of language as an open, non-linear, changing, self-organizing system. At the same time, the process of development is understood as a multi-staged phase regulation of some kind of structural integrity. The article mentions the wide applicative potential of synergetic methodology in modern studies of language and speech, text and discourse. A particular emphasis is placed on the use of categories of synergetics in re-analysis of historical changes in the morphological composition of words.

The article includes such structural components as an introduction, three sections and conclusions. The introduction outlines the purpose, object and subject of research, as well as the methodological foundations of the latter. The first section contains the definition of synergetics as an interdisciplinary science and lists its main tasks. In the second section, attention shifts to the heuristic potential of implementing the categories of synergetics in philological research on the whole and in language change study in particular. The main purpose of the diachronic linguistic synergetics is seen by the author in modeling the evolution of a particular language system and / or its subsystems with predicting options for a further possible change due to multi-vector bifurcations and the variety of potential attractors. The third section of the article lies within historical lexicology and is devoted to the consideration of the dynamism of the internal boundaries of the word in the course of the development of the English language. The findings indicate that the derivational system of the English language exhibits a synergetic property of fractality and demonstrates the dynamism of internal, namely inter-morphemic, boundaries. Further research may include the analysis of the morphological composition of words belonging to other languages, followed by comparison of the results obtained.