Categorization and its linguistic representation

Abstract

The cognitive science approached categorization from merely linguistic perspectives — the researchers focus on categorization, linguistic means of its representation (articles, pronouns, verbs, word order, intonation), while the process and the results of categorization are verbalized and language means employed in this cognitive operation are still not well studied. We aim to build the categorization frame, reveal the principles of profiling and language means of verbalization employed while describing the process. The research starts with gathering the lexical units from the Russian-Russian Dictionary by Sergey Ozhegov that describe the process of categorization. Then the authors build a categorization frame — first, the objects are classified, second, the speaker rationalizes his/her decision, then, the categorizing per se goes — the objects are referred to some class, the speaker expresses the extent of his confidence of the decision, the extent to which the object is assigned to the class, or correlates the object with the members of the class without ‘establishing the membership’. The research resulted in the typology of items that describe categorization, profiling operations with the focus on the way of acquiring knowledge (oboznachat’, vyglyadet’), circumstances, aspects of the decision making process — hesitating (vsyo-taki), doubting the decision (vrode, kak budto), estimating the degree to which the object meets the requirements to the members of the category (identichnyj, pohozhij, nastoyashchij), while other language units establish similarities between objects of different classes (pohozhij), emphasize the result of such a cognitive operation as likening (mnimyj, lozhnyj, shozhij), or a weak correspondence between the object and those properties that allow it to be assigned to a particular class (the “worst” representative of the class: zauryadnyj, zahudalyj, nikudyshnij).