Shift in the Focus of Attention Projected onto Language and Speech

Abstract

This article considers the connection between cognitive and speech activity through the prism of the concept of shifting the focus of attention. The object of the research is language and speech material that reflects the results of shifting the focus of attention within the framework of information being communicated. The study is aimed to identify and generalize such phenomena as well as analyse the mechanism bringing to the front the most important part of information in an utterance. The shift in the focus of attention, related to the cognitive sphere, projected onto language and speech results in multiform processes that are associated with units of different levels and implement the said intention. Among the most obvious linguistic projections of the shift in the focus of attention, the article describes lexical metonymy in its classical and broader sense, transfer of attribute from one component to another, changes in the lexical content of the positions of the grammatical subject and object, introduction or omission of arguments of a predicate, functional sentence perspective, converse terms, expansion of the metaphorical image as a means of conceptualizing one and the same denotative sphere, etc. Comparison of projections of the shift in the focus of attention onto units of different levels of the language system allows us to identify a general mechanism that ensures the communicative effect of bringing to the front a certain element of the content of an utterance. The general condition for this mechanism is contiguity between the elements of an utterance or the elements of a situation. At the cognitive level, the contiguity of elements is determined by their belonging to one and the same concept, in the case of the phenomena under study, primarily by belonging to the proposition as a type of concept. Based on this, a consistent multilateral variation occurs among the elements associated with the structure of an utterance: words, sentences, concepts, etc. Variation is observed in the form, semantics and denotative reference of a unit. As a result of the analysis, a conclusion was made about a strong community of completely different systemic linguistic phenomena that are associated with bringing to the front a part of an utterance; in other words, they perform one and the same cognitive function.