VARIABILITY OF ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES IN THE LIGHT OF THE LINGUISTIC CONCEPT OF G.P. MELNIKOV

Abstract

The article presents the authors’ attempt to explain the territorial and demographic impera-tive of the English language and variability of the Russian language from the position of the linguistic theory of Russian scientist G. P. Melnikov. According to the founder of the theory of World Englishes at the present time in there is no any appropriate methodological basis for the explanation of the English language’s “triumphal march” in linguistics. Many works devoted to the variation of the Russian language, as well as English are not considered from the standpoint of systemic linguistics. It appears to the authors that a sys-tematic approach G. P. Melnikov has great explanatory power in the issue of linguistic vitality of these two languages. The authors rely on the concept of internal determinant as a specific attribute of the system developing in the direction of optimal adaptation to the completion of the super-system functional request and the external determinant that conditions functional requirements of the super-system. The article con-tains the language situations analysis of the Russian language as a language with event determinant and the language situations analysis of the English language as a language with occasional determinant.

Keywords

• английский
• русский язык
• системный подход
• системная типология языков
• лингвистическая витальность
• территориальный
• демографический императив