The Cognitive Nature of the Formation of the Russian Verb Grammatical Tense Category
The article is in line with the anthropocentric approach to the linguistic studies that is thought to be one of the most relevant in the modern scientific paradigm, namely in the framework of cognitive linguistics; the formation of the grammatical tense category is studied through the prism of the relationship between language and thinking. The object of the study is the system of temporal verbal forms of the ancient and modern Russian language as a means of morphological representation of the concept of time. The subject is the structural and semantic changes in the tense category as a consequence of the evolution of the Russian cognitive model of the world. The paper consideres the cognitive nature and cognitive causation for the development of the verb tense morphological category to be the main aspects wherein the identification of the key features of grammatical forms and particular meanings of the category becomes possible. The aim of the research is to analyze the cognitive mechanisms of transformation of the grammatical tense category. To achieve this goal, the article successively explains the essence of the cognitive approach to language wherein the basic notion of cognitive science - the concept - is defined as a result of human cognition. It is emphasized that the concept of time forms the basis of the functional-semantic field of temporality, the center of which is the category of time. The author notes that the conceptual structure of the tense category has undergone changes along with the evolution of the cognitive picture of the world of ancient and modern Russian speakers. The study suggests that the main cognitive mechanisms of the grammatical representation of time are generalization and abstraction: these key processes in human thinking characterize the cognitive formation of the Russian verb tense category resulting from the reduced number of verb forms and the expanded range of their meanings.