The Pragmatic Principles in the Grammar Descriptions

Abstract

The text of the article is dedicated to the development of means of describing grammatical categories. In the first place, attention is paid to categories that are capable of conveying nominative, or lexical, meaning, such as the category of number which conveys the opposition of meanings "one" and "many". In Russian grammar, the rules for the use of the grammatical category of verb aspect are considered the most complex case. The semantic component of this category is contradictory and requires a large conceptual apparatus. However, even in this case, not all cases of real use of aspectual forms receive a consistent interpretation. Many "difficult cases" can be reinterpreted with the help of new concepts related to modeling speech activity. The article demonstrates the possibility of using pragmatic tools, in particular Grice's postulates and the principle of relevance, to describe the most complex fragments of the language system. An attempt is made to analyze the most complex cases of the use of Russian verb aspect, which is not always reduced to the opposition of completed and incomplete action. Cases of competition - context in which the choice of aspect is not related to the main aspectual meanings, causing difficulties in learning Russian - are meant. Examples are described where the choice of aspect can be explained by the speaker's desire for clarity and comprehensibility in accordance with pragmatic principles. This approach - interactive, i.e. considering the interaction between speaker and listener - allows not only to formulate rules for choosing aspect in cases noted in practical textbooks, but also to explain why the rules from textbooks may not work, not predict the real correct use of aspectual forms.