Tambov
SCIENTIFIC SERIES
“COGNITIVE STUDIES OF LANGUAGE”

THE ECONOMY PRINCIPLE AND ITS MANIFESTATION IN LANGUAGE

THE ECONOMY PRINCIPLE AND ITS MANIFESTATION IN LANGUAGE


Author:  S.B. Ulanova

Abstract:  The principle of least effort very often becomes a guiding force for the process of communi-cation. It manifests itself in human desire to save time and effort, to say much in little and influ-ences changes in language and speech. The linguistic economy principle is constantly realized by homo loquens and homo scribens. This issue has an obvious appeal among scholars as we are going through the period of rapid technological progress, immediate exchange of information and even information wars. The article discusses the principle of economy in the English language in cognitive and prag-matic aspects, examines its role in the process of categorization and conceptualization and follows the way it manifests itself in the context.

Keywords:  the principle of linguistic economy, recategorization, grammatical semantics, cognitive and pragmatic aspects.

References

Martine A. Osnovy obshchey lingvistiki // Novoe v lingvistike. Vyp.3. Tipologicheskoe izuchenie yazykov / Sost. V.A. Zvyagintsev. – M.: Izdatel'stvo inostrannoy literatury, 1963. – S. 366-566.
British National Corpus // http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ (BNC).
Marks J. More about Verbing and Nouning //  http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/more-about-verbing-and-nouning
Merriam-Webster Online: Dictionary and Thesaurus // http://www.merriam-webster.com (MW).
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary // http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ (OALD).
Rundell M. Learning about pragmatics: a useful life skill // http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/learning-about-pragmatics-a-useful-life-skill
Shakespeare W. Love's Labour's Lost. – British Library, 2007.
Zipf G.K. Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1949.

Pages:  535-540

Back to the list