Terminology at the border of linguistics and psychology: to the problem of strict definitions

Petrov Dmitriy Vladimirovich ORCID: 0000-0002-1046-3522 Postgraduate Student, Department of Modern Russian Language and General Linguistics, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod 603022, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region, Nizhny Novgorod, Gagarin Ave., 23 dvp.95@mail.ru

Introduction

In fact, the text is nothing more than a set of written signs imitating speech. It should be understood that because of this, conversations about the "content" of the text are always conditional.

Human thinking is adapted to symbolic perception ^{[1, p. 231]}, and a person who speaks usually immediately perceives a word as its meaning, and a phrase as its meaning, ignoring the supporting shell if possible. Inevitably, in the human imagination, there is to some extent an identification of the sign and the object, the conditional equivalent of which is the sign.

Due to the fact that this involuntary confusion is not reflected, children often endow words with the properties of objects designated by these words ^{[2, p. 131]}, and speakers of underdeveloped cultures often take linguistic metaphors literally and, including under the pressure of tradition, believe in a strange mythical reality that contradicts what they observe directly ^{[3, p. 189]}.

Perhaps, from the same distortion of perception, an erroneous traditional definition of the text (as well as words) occurred, in our opinion as a kind of two-sided phenomenon that exists according to its own logic (see, for example: ^{[4, p. 8; 5, p. 90]}).

Thus, we consider the phrase two-sided language sign, traditionally used in linguistic works, to be logically incorrect. Whatever is meant by the "two-sidedness" of any sign, this characteristic is obviously meaningless. Any object can act as a sign, and the number of any "dimensions" of this object is not important. It is only important that the object performs the role of a sign, which the subject gives it, and no physical or any other parameters of the object are important.

If the "second side" of a linguistic sign means its meaning, this is simply logically false. If we have agreed to perceive object N as object M, i.e. we have agreed to designate object M as object N, i.e. we have agreed that object N is the sign of object M, and object M is the value of object N, it obviously does not follow that object M is the second side of object N.

"Two–sided", which is also obvious, is only the "meaning - sign" pair, whatever term we call it.

The more obvious is the illogicality of the "two-sided" characteristic for a word (language sign) when it designates a purely mental object. Primary language sign (sounding word) – these are fluctuations in the air. The meaning of this sign (when referring to a purely mental object) is some kind of image or set of images, some elements of memory. The vibrations of the air and the images of objects exist in different "worlds", and one cannot in principle be a side of the other if one takes the expression literally.

To take the meaning of the sign for the second side of the sign as a theoretical convention is, in our opinion, a meaningless, excessive complication.

By analogy with the term two-sided language sign, we consider the traditional terms plan of expression of the word (text) and plan of the content of the word (text) to be untenable.

The plane of expression is a sign (signs), and the plane of content is no longer a sign (not signs).

The concept of a separate neuropsychic level of linguistic meanings, the "linguosemantic" level of the psyche, also seems to us to be an excessive complication. That is: it seems implausible to us that in the neocortex, for (or as a result of) the verbal designation of objects of reality, additional "truncated lexical images" are formed from the images of these objects, which are already associated in memory with words and become "lexical meanings" as such.

Such a system seems to us implausible precisely from a biological point of view. Economy is a basic biological principle, and the brain of any organism saves its resource at the first opportunity – on everything possible (see, for example: ^{[6, 164-172]}). As we are sure, it would be extremely uneconomical from the point of view of brain morphology to form an intermediate link in the memory system between the mental correspondences of signs and images of objects designated by them, when it is possible to associate "signs" and "images" directly (of course, if it is possible to weaken and eliminate some connections if they are not needed).

In other words, we assume that if we conduct an experiment using fMRI (or another suitable method), where the subject will be asked to designate the same well–known object using different signs - not only with a word, but also with gestures, a drawing, etc., then with high probability the brain of the subject will be activated (among others) the same part of the neocortex responsible for the memory of this object. And the same thing, accordingly, will happen not only when the subject hears a word known to him, denoting an object known to him, but also when he recognizes this object in a drawing, in an image with gestures, etc.

That is, generalizing, verbal language as an adaptation functions due to the same neurobiological basis as other sign systems and thinking in general, without forming an additional physical layer in the brain.

With the above, we wanted to illustrate as clearly as possible that there is no meaning as a kind of universal, capable of existing anywhere except in the memory of the subject, an entity that can have once and for all given the only correct interpretation. The lexical meaning of a word is only an abstract name for everything that can be associated in the speaker's mind with a specific word (that is, a set of speech sounds, or rather, an impression of it) – in a specific context (situation), more or less individually and arbitrarily, more or less closely. The interpretations of meanings in dictionaries are only generalizations formulated with an eye to accessibility (to one degree or another).

It is obvious that due to speech experience, a significant part of words are firmly associated in human memory with specific images. But if a word and a meaning in a person's memory represented one essence, an inseparable unity, people, for example, could not perceive words and expressions in figurative meanings, ironically, and also simply use words in different meanings. The existence of pronouns, by definition not intended to be closely linked to the objects of designation, would be in doubt. It would also be much more difficult for people to learn other languages, switch from language to language, since any familiar image would reflexively "respond" in the speaker's mind with a word from their native lexicon, preventing them from identifying themselves with a foreign word. For the same reason, it would be difficult to "relearn" any word if a person had previously interpreted it falsely, which in principle would call into question the adequate development of speech by children.

In addition, if words in a person's memory were clearly associated with specific images, there would not be many typical obstacles in communication (whether domestic or scientific) that occur when the same words cause different reactions in people's minds. By the way, misunderstandings between people usually arise due to the fact that:

a) a specific word is not familiar enough for a person, and he does not have time to remember its meaning, perceiving the flow of speech;

b) a person has a weak idea of the meaning of a word, so the word is also "lost" in speech, being perceived simply as an indistinct or random image;

c) a person does not always perceive a polysemous word in a meaning adequate to the context;

d) a person understands the word falsely, "in his own way";

e) a person simply does not know the meaning of the word, and the meaning of the phrase is also blurred for him.

In general, a person is not always motivated to speak accurately and clearly, simply because he can achieve what he wants without it. Exclusively in specific needs, the speaker – not necessarily according to the rules of grammar – designates specific images in his mind with the help of words, and the listener, based on what is being spoken, imagines such images as possible and draws as accurate conclusions as possible about the speaker's experiences – his desires, thoughts, etc. The designated images, of course, never leave consciousness the speaker and the writer do not interact in any way with the consciousness of the listener and the reader, and even more so they cannot be recognized in sets of sounds and letters by a machine if there is no similarity of these images in its database.

Moreover, we do not see any point in talking about a certain self-sufficient lexico-semantic plane, a certain network of semantic relations of words in the dictionary of the language, which could be statistically identified.

For a computer, the value of each character set is an unknown variable. Operating with a "digital" word as a set of symbols, a machine cannot recognize the meaning of a word, simply because it cannot have subjective experience, is unable to observe reality as a complex organism.

No algorithm will reveal any "deep" scheme of semantic relations of words, no matter how extensive the text base on which the algorithm is trained is, simply due to the fact that in a modern computer the value of at least one of the thousands of variables (words) that are analyzed cannot be represented in any way the algorithm. With the help of the algorithm, it is only possible to identify the frequency and average distance of the juxtaposition of words in the text, the patterns of juxtaposition of individual words. But people learn the meanings of words based not on these indicators, but on situations and contexts, while already having an idea of the meanings of some set of "variables", at least the most basic ones.

The meaning of a word is simply an object (or rather, its image in memory), which is indicated by the word in a specific context (situation). This object can relate to any subject area – household, professional, general scientific, special scientific, etc., and in fact the question of determining the meaning of a word is a question of ownership of a specific topic. From where, by the way, it is obvious that lexicography is a fundamentally meta–scientific, interdisciplinary, and encyclopedic field.

We have given detailed arguments above in support of a rather trivial, but fundamental idea in the context of the article, that the entire "meaningful" side of the text, as well as in the whole speech, exists exclusively in a mind prepared for this (which no machine currently possesses).

This idea, in turn, is intended to confirm that, when talking about the "content side of the text", we are talking exclusively about mental phenomena and that in order to analyze the "content of the text", especially machine analysis, it is necessary to have at least a general but unambiguous understanding of the aspects of the human psyche related to the fact that we call them meanings and meanings. We need this approach primarily for a more precise differentiation of processes within the framework of sentiment analysis, which can be automated and which cannot be carried out without the participation of the subject.

Following B.N. Golovin (see, for example: ^[7]), we consider it fundamental to specify how we understand the words we use with non-obvious, controversial interpretations. Therefore, anticipating our subsequent research texts, we would like to clearly define what we mean by such words as consciousness, subject, object, reality, impression, sensation, feeling, emotion, thoughts, thought, image, sign, abstract, abstract thinking, concept, sign, word, meaning of the word, the phrase, the meaning of the phrase.

In addition, the research space, in our opinion, should be outlined within the boundaries adequate to the subject area under study, and described as exhaustively as possible. Only in this case is it possible to have confidence in the conclusions being drawn, and the conclusions may not just be indicative. Only in this way will the research be intuitively and logically associated with the researcher's existing experience, including everyday experience, experienced directly, and not only abstract, and will not be self-contained and isolated from all other accumulated knowledge. In addition, the more detailed the course of thought is, the more obvious the weaknesses of the research and the more accessible it is for criticism.

This is all the more important when the arguments relate to the sphere of consciousness, which is extremely inconvenient for reflection and research of which has not yet provided answers to the questions that worried both L.S. Vygotsky, R. Descartes, and Plato (see, for example, a review study on the "difficult problem of consciousness": ^[8]).

Despite the fact that modern specialists have really serious and detailed information about the structure and functioning of the brain, based on this information they formulate quite convincing explanations of various subjective processes, this field of knowledge is still poorly popularized. According to our impression, in the mass consciousness, the human psyche as a phenomenon is still little reflected and is usually something loosely related to human physiology. Mental states, whether emotional fatigue or happiness, people often explain to themselves with the help of morality, esotericism, mystical philosophy, folklore and mythological stereotypes and noticeably outdated mythopoetic theories about eros, Thanatos, etc., and not purely biologically, and scientists and even doctors are not an exception here.

Anyway, the degree of development of modern anthropology and the accessibility of its achievements allow us to give more in-depth interpretations for the above words and phrases than was possible even a quarter of a century ago.

Starting with the terminological analysis, we would like to note that our understanding of brain and psyche issues was influenced by texts and public speeches by such authors as: K.V. Anokhin, S.V. Drobyshevsky, V.A. Dubynin, A.V. Kurpatov, A.V. Markov, S.V. Saveliev, A. Set, E.V. Timonova, T.A. Chernihiv, S.A. Shumsky and others.

Analytical review

Raising the question of the nature of consciousness, thinkers and researchers from different centuries, as we understand it, argued in essence about what our sensations are physically, what their "material" is and why a complex organism cannot live its normal life without having consciousness, that is, receiving information through the same channels, processing it and acting in accordance with it, but not feeling anything.

The most profound of the modern definitions of consciousness known to us looks something like this: a controlled (normally) hallucination, which forms the most likely assumptions for the brain about aspects of its own state important for self-preservation, the state of the organism it controls, and the environment in which the organism is located ^{[9; see also: 10]}.

Of course, the above definition explains the functional meaning and – to some extent - the nature of consciousness, but still does not explain the essence of subjective perception, why specific electrochemical processes in my brain create "me" here and now, why "I" disappear when the brain starts working in a different mode, and what is the fundamental structural difference between a living body and a piece of stone, in which, as it seems natural, no semblance of "I" can arise.

Consciousness, as well as reality, we will call everything that the subject feels in the present moment. Both the first and the second, in our opinion, are literally one entity, simply denoted through different aspects.

The concept of objective reality (reality), following the thinkers of the past (see, for example: ^[11]), we consider exclusively a theoretical convention, a product of intellectual culture. Therefore, in the expression subjective reality we see a kind of semantic redundancy.

We cannot observe the "general reality" even within the boundaries of humanity, because, having the opportunity to observe the objective world common to all in an approximately identical way with other people, a person is able to observe only his own psychological world, and can only judge the rest. At the same time, people's judgments even about the observable object world almost never completely coincide, not to mention that at each moment in time people observe the object world from different points in space. As a result, each person has a reality (except for which he has nothing) It is individual in almost all aspects. The "general reality" remains for a person an image that he can more or less adequately shape for himself. We do not deny that "everything as it really is" exists, but it makes no sense to speak about it as something that is available to us, and we consider the very use of expressions such as the objective world, genuine reality, real reality pretentious, unfounded. Therefore, in principle, we do not see the point of using such expressions outside of narrow philosophical reasoning.

In the most general terms, we will call the subject an object with consciousness. An object, also in a broad sense, is what the subject's attention is directed at; what the subject's attention has highlighted as a whole, an independent unit. I.e., we consider the phrase object of attention to be a complete synonym for the word object.

Note that we use the term object as a generic term in principle for any term and word in general. That is, anything can become an object, because simply anything can be in the subject's field of attention: not only an object, but also, say, a random section of wall, the movement of water in a river, a feeling of cold, a desire to sit down, an abstract idea of a quark, etc. – absolutely any concrete and abstract entity. The non-obviousness of such a perception may be influenced, among other things, by the structural similarity of the word object with the word object.

In order to cover all directly experienced, uncommunicative manifestations of consciousness, we could identify ten types of subjective processes:

1) receptor sensation – as an experience formed by cellular receptors (e.g., auditory, musculoskeletal, thermal, physical pain);

2) a background feeling is like a background experience expressing some kind of side of the general state of the body and formed mainly in the brain (e.g., hunger, boredom, contentment, fatigue);

3) emotion is most often a short–term experience that is a reaction to something, most often evaluative, and is formed exclusively in the brain (e.g., irritation, disgust, embarrassment, surprise);

4) motivation – as a feeling of being focused on possessing some object, on carrying out some action, influence, on experiencing some state; feeling, in principle, interested in some change in the observed reality (e.g., interest, desire, idea, intention);

5) the feeling of provoking one's own physical action;

6) a sense of control over something.;

7) the feeling of concentration on something.;

8) the feeling of one's own volitional effort;

9) thoughts are like synthetic experiences formed on the basis of existing experience exclusively in the brain, most often aimed at passively living some scenarios (past, expected, desired, etc.), solving some tasks, understanding what, and in principle the implementation of actual motivations (mainly retrospection, fantasy, planning, reflection, analysis, modeling);

10) a complex experience (e.g. falling in love as a combination of background feelings, motivations and thoughts).

Note that for paragraph 1, we did not use just the word sensation, because in ordinary use this word can be called anything from the list. For the same reason, we did not use the word feeling for paragraph 2.

We also understand that some words can be used to describe both background feelings and emotions. For example, disgust, stress, anxiety, fear, depending on how long and intense the experience is for the subject, can be called both a concentrated reaction and a lasting state, although by nature these will be somewhat different phenomena.

We do not see any point in building the listed manifestations of consciousness into some kind of hierarchy, because in any case, each of the points is only artificially isolated elements of one non-discrete stream. In addition, we hold the view that all conscious animals have all of the above types of experiences, with the possible exception of the penultimate point. That is, we cannot name some types of experiences evolutionarily more complex in order, again, to arrange them in some kind of logically strict scheme.

We did not separate impression into a separate category, because in principle memory is a mental function common to all of these experiences. In addition, subjectively, not in a psychoanalytic generalization, any memories are literally the same experiences that they more or less accurately duplicate, just replayed and weakened. That is, any impression, memory can always be attributed to one of the ten items on the list.

Recall, voluntary or involuntary, is also felt by the subject as one element or a complex of elements from the list above. For example: a combination of concentration on something, one's own volitional effort and a receptor sensation when the subject aims to remember what the object felt like, or just a receptor sensation when the subject remembers it involuntarily. Both recollection and memory are speculative entities: we can imagine them, but we never observe them on our own.

We see a similar difference between the words of thought (meaning pluralia tantum) and thought. If the first word denotes a psychological phenomenon, then the second is already a cultural one. Even a simple thought expressed in the words I want to go home is not just a desire or some combination of experiences, but a meaningfully composed structure, which is what any cultural object is. In this case, the construction is intentionally composed of mental objects that alternately find themselves in the focus of attention: their own subject, their own motivation, and a spatial image. Already these objects, which represent a significant unity for the subject, are designated by words.

To be clear, such a series, as we are sure, cannot arise in the dog's mind: in her life there is no need to mentally build such rows, although this, of course, does not exclude the fact that the dog may want to go home and somehow express this desire. Nevertheless, she does not have the opportunity to influence the realization of her desire, by willpower or skill, by building such a series in her mind. The dog cannot voice this row, and, accordingly, it makes no sense for her to build it. In other words, thought as a phenomenon, in our opinion, appeared due to the development of speech.

Thoughts as an experience is a process, any division of which is conditional by default. At the same time, the discreteness, almost the objectivity of a separate thought (even formally expressed in the singular of the noun thought) – they themselves speak of a different, artificial nature of what is usually called thought. In addition, thought as an object cannot be naturally represented either in the external, three–dimensional world (as objects) or in the inner world of feelings (as thoughts), which is not fundamentally geometric - it exists in its own separately imaginary linear space, where its elements are located one after another.

We would not like to designate the described property of thought as abstractness. By abstraction, for greater clarity and unambiguity, we would like to understand the exclusively generalized nature of something.

So, by the image (of an object) we mean an average impression, a generalization of a certain set of similar impressions about an object or a number of similar objects (or already a generalization of images, if we are talking about complex images). In other words, an image is what remains after truncating all the insignificant fragments of similar impressions (or simpler images) conditionally "superimposed" on each other, truncating all the insignificant differences between objects when comparing.

Whether an image exists as a psychological entity in our definition, whether this entity exists as something of a different nature, whether this entity exists in principle in reality, and not only as a theoretical speculation, we cannot unequivocally assert.

Again, it is obvious that in everyday and generally in non–strict use, images are often understood simply as impressions or in general everything that can arise in consciousness, already in the imagination.

To clarify our definition, it is worth noting that, as far as we can tell, there is no single image of, say, a pear in a person's memory. Thinking about the same thing, at different times a person is likely to imagine different things, and, of course, when remembering, the imagination will creatively transform what was previously perceived.

When discussing something with another person, we always have the false belief that the same word resonates in our minds with identical impressions, even knowing that it is not so. Due to constant verbal communication, we are forced to take for granted that there are some common warmth, voice, clock, nevertheless, we never clearly imagine these generalized entities. And we also call them images, although in a slightly different, no longer psychic, but cultural sense.

In this regard, we note that the use of speech, in our opinion, more than any other factor, created for people the need to distinguish images as discrete, single entities.

It is also important to say that we see the point of distinguishing the image of a single object and the image of a class of objects synthesized from impressions of similar objects (or from simpler images). Let's note right away that the image of an object class is, in our opinion, not yet a concept.

Within the framework of this differentiation of impression and image, we consider the use of the term concept in linguistic contexts to be redundant. The fact that different impressions and ideas can be generalized both individually and culturally specific is completely natural. Therefore, the expressions the image of home and the concept of friendship in author N or in culture M seem to us equivalent to the same expressions with the word concept.

Another kind of abstraction, as we imagine, is the feature of an object. It seems indisputable that a feature is a part, a side, a property of an object that distinguishes it from the objects with which it is compared. In other words, these are fragments, elements that "do not match" when impressions of an object and some other objects are conditionally superimposed on each other (or already when images are superimposed).

When selecting a feature as a fragment of an object, everything outside of this fragment is truncated – everything that matches when overlaid. This is the abstractness, the generalized nature of a feature: in order to distinguish it as a unit, it is necessary to consider a set of objects (similarly with the allocation of an image).

When we mentally highlight the feature of an object, our attention is focused on the part, side, aspect of the object that distinguishes it from some other objects, and, accordingly, is distracted from the object as a whole. Therefore, we figuratively call any feature an abstract entity, or abstract, which is etymologically the same thing.

In both cases (the image of the object and the feature of the object), abstraction is the result of the overlap of a certain set of impressions (images) and the truncation of something that stands out when superimposed. More generally, abstraction is the result of comparing a certain set of objects and excluding what is either the same or different. This is how we imagine the mechanism, the concrete implementation of generalization, abstraction.

In this light, we agree with the definition of abstraction as a method of thinking, which consists in abstracting from a number of properties and relationships of the phenomenon under study while simultaneously highlighting properties and relationships of interest to the researcher ^[12].

Abstract thinking, we would call thinking, in which the subject, withdrawing (distracting) from the outside world, slowing down one's direct perception, on the basis of already accumulated experience, purposefully forms complex generalizations in the imagination: concepts, concepts, models, scenarios, theories, etc.

Speech experience does not allow us to say the concept of a clock or the concept of a bird outside of a special context, although both the first and second nouns can denote a class of objects. We cannot define a concept as an abstraction simply as a categorically generalized object.

Moreover, in general, not every complex, multilevel abstraction (where signs of images are distinguished, signs of signs, several images are generalized into one more complex, etc.) can be called a concept. For example, the word nonsense refers to a characteristic that could only be invented in a culture with a developed concept of logic. And yet, in common usage, nonsense is simply called something contradictory, and it is hardly possible to talk about the concept of nonsense. Although it is obvious that in many specific uses (ethnically, individually by author, by sphere of use) this word will name exactly the concept.

Note that, in our opinion, the statement that the concept of a square or a geometric figure of similar complexity can be formed in the psyche of experimental animals during experiments sounds strained. In the visual cortex of the brain of any higher animal, there are areas responsible for distinguishing such elementary properties of objects as color, size, orientation in space, including shape ^{[13, 14, 15]}. It seems natural to think that a rat or octopus, realizing that a path marked with something triangular or oval-like will lead them to food, distinguishes these shapes without interpreting them as something specific, just as children do who have not yet mastered not only the basics of geometry, but also speech.

A distinctive feature of the concept is often called the fact that it cannot be drawn, depicted in the usual way. At the same time, it is impossible to directly illustrate such words as, for example, pain, itching, which denote mental entities, but extremely uncommunicative, elementary ones. Moreover, we cannot unambiguously illustrate most elementary features, such as "large", "light", "elongated", etc. with the help of a single drawing, rather than conditionally graphically. At the same time, what seems obvious, it would be strange to consider signs as concepts.

Since the feature is highlighted during comparison, it is possible to depict it only with the help of a pair (or more) of objects, and the subject, even if it is simple, still has to guess what difference between the objects is implied in the diagram. The need for interpretation speaks no longer about the figurative, but about the iconic nature of such an image.

Thus, we cannot draw not only a concept, but in general any object that cannot be defined sufficiently without words, using only pointing to it.

Further, we cannot conclude what such a concept is based on the structural specifics of the definitions of words and phrases denoting concepts. It can be noted that the fundamental definition of any such unit looks like a noun, a pronoun, or a set of thematically related nouns, somehow distributed. That is, a concept in a verbal definition is always represented as a generalized object or a certain set of objects, concretized by a set of features. For example, this is how the interpretation of the word hypothesis looks in a Large explanatory dictionary: "a scientific assumption put forward to explain some phenomena and requiring verification, confirmation by experience" ^{[16; formatting - DP]}. An example of a definition with pronouns: magnitude (math.) – this is "all that can be measured and calculated" [ibid.; similarly].

In our opinion, we have formulated an extremely specific semantic structure of the concept, which can be distinguished based on the structure of definitions. But it is obvious that it is still too general and an identical semantic structure can be distinguished from most objects that are defined in both special and general dictionaries. In general, this and similar formal approaches to defining the essence of the concept seem to us hopeless. For example, the structural analysis given in the article "Concept" in the Encyclopedia of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science seems unsuccessful to us ^[17].

We also do not consider the development of the meaning of the word that the entity is named to be a specific feature of the concept. For example, the word source, according to a Large Explanatory dictionary ^[16], has four meanings, three of which were formed on the basis of the previous ones: a water source – a source of anything – a source of information – a scientific source. But in our opinion, even in the last meaning, the word source, which is not used in the phrase scientific source, simply calls a more complex image than in the previous three meanings. At the same time, even if we always perceive the word source in the fourth meaning as a designation of a concept, the boundary between the development of meaning sufficient and insufficient to consider the designated entity as a concept remains unclear. In any case, the quantitative criterion here would be clearly incorrect.

Ultimately, the only approach to defining the term concept that seems adequate to us is as follows: a concept is only the status of an image, just as a term is only the status of a word. If a particular object is considered in the context of a theoretical system, it can be considered and called a concept, and the word by which it is named can be considered and called a term. In other words, a term is a special word, and a concept is a special image.

For example, for us, what we call a dot in everyday use is not a concept. This is an elementary everyday image that can be illustrated even without a verbal description.

At the same time, in the context of mathematics or linguistics, it is no longer possible to explain what a point is by simply pointing at it: we must also somehow point out the signs of a point that are essential for determining its place in the system where it exists. It is precisely being in such a theoretical system – no matter within the framework of science or some professional, artistic, religious, etc. sphere - that always allows us to call the essence a concept.

Outside of theorizing contexts, we cannot say the concept of quality, the concept of magnitude, the concept of source, the concept of analogue. For each of the expressions, a continuation in (some area, topic) suggests itself. Outside of purposefully built systems, quality, analog, etc. will still be only complex images. So, a person's self–image is a very complex abstraction, but we would rather say "self-image" than "self-concept". On the other hand, it makes sense to talk about the concept of "I" in psychology.

So, an image becomes a concept when it becomes an element of a theoretical system. This characteristic is generally non-formalizable, and that is why we define the property of "being a concept" as a possible status of the image, and not some kind of full-fledged permanent property embodied in some independent entity "concept".

In connection with the above, the question arises whether such expressions as the image of arbitration, the image of contamination, the image of angular momentum make sense.

Despite the obvious unnatural sound of these expressions, we do not see logical contradictions "inside" them. All three terms, to which the word image is prefixed, denote objects, each of which can be represented as an abstraction of simpler images. All three expressions will sound more natural if you add, for example, the word complex to them.

At the same time, we note that the expressions image of nonsense, image of reward, image of supplement also do not sound natural, although the words to which the word image is attached here are not terms outside special contexts and denote entities that can hardly be considered concepts.

The perception of the concept as a kind of image is not obvious due to the fact that we are used to presenting the concept as something disembodied, detached from the objective world, exclusively speculative, while the image in our view is just something that has a concrete embodiment. Perhaps grammar also influences this: unlike the word image, the word concept has a neuter gender. In any case, the representation we have described is only a stereotype, from which it makes sense to distance ourselves: above we have given examples of images that are as "disembodied" as the entities that we used to call concepts.

Separately, we note that the idea of a special one-word term for "complex images" seems to us unsuccessful due to its haste. We still have the opportunity to unambiguously distinguish impression and image as mental entities in working definitions, but, as we are sure, it is currently impossible to justify strictly the structure of images within a specific "complex image" (of course, an individual structure, somehow observed from the structure or functioning of the neocortex of a particular person) and any criteria for determining the places of a separate image in this structure.

We observe each impression specifically considered as an imprint of a sensation directly, but we have defined the image as some kind of processed impressions that are not obvious to us – a conditional, hypothetical abstraction of a conditional set of impressions. Even if our concept of the image is adequate to reality, with modern technical and methodological capabilities, we will not be able to test our models of "complex images". Moreover, it is clear that there is little point in building hypotheses within a hypothesis.

In this regard, we note that any patterns of images – general psychological, universal, cultural, individually authored, etc., given today in psychology, cognitive science, literary studies and other humanitarian and cultural disciplines, we consider to be deliberately arbitrary, conditional, and their strict justification, respectively, is obviously impossible.

Next, it seems natural to consider the concept of a sign.

We are close to the approach of Y.M. Lotman, who defined a sign as "a materially expressed replacement of objects, phenomena, concepts in the process of information exchange in a team" ^{[18; formatting and declension – D.P.]}.

We would define a sign as in most cases a material object (an object, a material process, an artificial structure), which the subject perceives as the equivalent of an object.

To specify the definition, let's give examples of what we consider correct to call signs.

There is no doubt that the signs are gestures (material processes), money coins (objects), hieroglyphs (artificial structures). It is less obvious that the expression of emotion using the vocal cords (a material process) – it does not matter if it is a human, a chimpanzee, a cougar or a seagull, it is also a sign. An involuntary cry of pain, of course, is just a reaction, but when an attitude towards something is expressed in a voice signal (dissatisfaction with something or, conversely, joy), it is obvious that this signal, necessarily directed at someone, is the conditional equivalent of an emotion, not being, of course, neither by this emotion itself, nor its obligatory consequence. At the same time, the second subject, even if it is often not difficult, must guess what the first subject, who issued a growl, howl, squeal, chirp, wanted to express – and learns this from childhood. As we wrote above, when discussing the nature of the graphic representation of a feature, the need for interpretation is evidence of the iconic nature of the object.

It also does not seem obvious to us that a hieroglyph, denoting, as a rule, a word (sounding, an immediate unit of speech), is a sign of a sign.

We define a word (not a service word) exclusively as an articulatory sound or a combination of such sounds that the subject perceives as the equivalent of some object (somehow represented in the subject's memory).

Therefore, we define the meaning of a word (not an official one) as an object (somehow represented in the subject's memory), the equivalent of which the subject perceives the word.

In modern languages, there are many auxiliary words that do not mean anything, but affect what other words in the phrase mean. We do not consider it fundamental to take into account non-independent words in the definitions given above, although the wording could have been complicated. The system of a language with a developed grammar is obviously secondary to the original systems, where, as we are sure, any phrase consisted only of significant words, some of which only evolved over time into official ones. It is important that grammatical complication, in our opinion, does not change the original essence of the language (but, it should be noted, distracts from it).

The allocation of the designation, denotation, connotation, referent, interpretant, signifier, etc. inside the simply designated (within the framework of semiotics, and not, for example, the theory of speech acts) seems to us if not false, then empty – superfluous and confusing. Firstly, all these distinctions are arbitrary and inaccessible to justification, which already makes them scholastic, given how seriously and in detail they are presented. Secondly, in any case, we do not designate by signs "things in themselves", but our, loosely speaking, impressions of them, which are formed from feeling them, and not from themselves. The distinction between the "real" object and the "idea" of it in semiotics, and not in philosophy, only distracts from the essence. Neither in communication, nor in life at all, does a person encounter anything other than "ideas", which, if desired, he can somehow designate. Therefore, we see the meaning in a simple separation: the sign and the signified.

In particular, as already mentioned in the introduction, on the one hand, we do not share the point of view that a language sign is "two-sided", whatever is meant by this, and on the other, we do not see the point in a qualitative separation of linguistic meanings and any others. That is: the "primary" signs of language are the same material objects as any other signs, and in communication they, as we are sure, refer to the same "memory elements" as any other signs with similar meanings.

We define a phrase as a set of words denoting a thought, less often – simply expressing an emotional reaction.

In this context, we will define thought more precisely as a linear mental construction of images designed to indicate with words and communicate something to someone with its help.

Note that thought in our definition is also a sign (an artificial construct, if we talk about a variety), since the set of images built in it, again, does not communicate anything by itself, but requires interpretation (understanding what the subject wants to express with this set of images), which is possible only for the account of the biological similarity of subjects communicating in a verbal language.

It is clear that thought is usually called the message itself, and not the linear construction of images by which it is indicated in speech.

The meaning of the phrase is what the subject wants to communicate to someone using the phrase (and, accordingly, using the designated phrase of thought), or how the subject understood what the other subject wanted to communicate using the phrase (and the designated phrase of thought).

Just meanings, it seems to us, are usually called "messages" of subjects in any signs or "messages" that the subject sees in everything that he perceives as signs. It seems obvious to us that the concept of meaning began to be applied not only to phrases, but also to texts, gestures, images, films, and other cultural objects by analogy with verbal phrases.

It is clear that by meaning they also often mean the purpose, purpose of the action (more broadly, the process), and its usefulness. On the other hand, in a broad sense, the meaning of a phrase is exactly what it is spoken for, the purpose for which the subject utters the phrase.

So, taking into account all the above, we would depict our model of speech communication in the form of a diagram (see Figure 1).

Drawing 1. The scheme of speech communication

Conclusion

We plan to use the material presented above in line with the candidate's research devoted to the compilation of an original lexical thesaurus for machine sentiment analysis. As part of this research, we also plan to:

1) to consider the historical interrelationships of thinking, speech, abstract thinking and intellectual culture;

2) to make an analytical review of the current terminology of sentiment analysis;

3) to analyze the theoretical foundations of the compilation of lexical thesauri for machine sentiment analysis;

4) to present original ideas and solutions in the context of compiling lexical thesauri for machine sentiment analysis;

5) to present an original lexical thesaurus for machine sentiment analysis.