O językowym obrazie świata – niekognitywnie, a może tylko kognitywnie inaczej

Abstract

This article addresses the classical theory of linguistic picture of the world which was introduced by W. Humboldt. According to this approach, every language, characteristic for a certain speaking (speech?) community, has a specific way in which the world is perceived (Weltansicht). Polish linguists working on the so-called Linguistic Picture of the Wold framework departed from this initial notion, what was criticized by a number of scholars, who warn about inprecise interpretation of the Humboldtian term. The article aims at showing that it is possible to systematically explore the Linguistic Picture of the World (in the classical meaning) via contrastive examination of the structure of language; this should be extended with a cognitive interpretation of the observed phenomena. The text is illustrated by examples taken from Polish and German. Such a method – combining structuralism and cognitivism - proved to be fruitful some time ago: two linguists (from Poland and Germany), working separately, came to same conclusions regarding Polish verbal aspect. Their work opened a new perspective on translation equivalents of the Slavic aspect to the so-called aspectless languages. Subsequently, the possibility of systematic analyses (in the classical sense) is underlined. Among such methods a contrastive comparison of language structures, enriched by the cognitive interpretation, could be recommended. Different samples, taken from Polish and German language, serve as examples in this text. Similar method, based on combining these structural and cognitive methodologies, has been successfully used in the past. Simultaneously. The results of their work offered a completely new prospects for indicating translational equivalents of the Slavic aspectual verbs in the non-aspectual languages.