PRINCIPLES AND APPROACHES IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL METHOD

Abstract

In the structure of the linguistic method, it is expedient to distinguish three components: ontological, operational, and teleological. The ontological com ponent of the method includes a series of principles and approaches. For the comparative-historical method, the principle of historicism is leading. Alongside the principle of historicism, in works of the comparative-historical direction, the principles of causality and systematicity play a significant role. These principles, together with the principle of historicism, can be interpreted as the specification and manifestation of the principle of general connection of phenomena. The mentioned principles correspond to certain approaches (historical, causal, systemic). The principles of comparative-historical research are correlated with the concepts of synchrony and diachrony. At the same time, the concepts of synchrony and diachrony have a purely cognitive character; they relate to the sphere of methodology of linguistic research and can be transferred to the language itself only conditionally, taking into account the continuity of linguistic changes. Synchrony, as a certain state of language in relation to the real language, is a scientific abstraction, while the real existence of language belongs to the plane of diachrony (O. S. Melnychuk). It should be noted that, as O. S. Melnychuk emphasized, from the point of view of historicism, the opposition of synchrony and diachrony in linguistics should be admitted only as a conditional, artificial methodological technique, behind which the continuous process of language development should not be lost sight of. According to V. M. Rusanivsky, diachronic research of language phenomena does not eliminate the concept of systematicity; on the contrary, works on the history of language should be based on a systemic approach to language, its units, and categories. On the other hand, synchronous description cannot completely eliminate the concept of language evolution. The lack of a diachronic, historical view of language cannot satisfy modern linguistics, as such a one-sided approach to language contradicts the dialectics of cognition.