A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CONCEPTUAL PLEXITY AND GRAMMATICAL NUMBER IN RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH

Abstract

The aim of the research is, first, to explain conceptually the differences in grammatical number of some Russian and English words, and second, on the basis of linguistic experimentation, to demonstrate in what way (if any) grammatical number in English differs from conceptual plexity. The main research problem is the nature of the link between conceptual plexity and the way it is encoded by language. Research findings revealed that there is no one-to-one correspondence between conceptual plexity and grammatical number, with the direction of the link being two-way. Borrowings from classical languages affect the discursive practice and the way grammatically plural nouns are used in texts. The number of functional parts an entity consists of affects both conceptual plexity and grammatical number. If a big number of small exemplars of an entity are in close proximity to each other (hair, grass, dust, etc.), the brain seems to perceive it as asingle whole, which is encoded in language by grammatical singularity.

Keywords

• грамматическое число
• концептуальная плексность
• множество
• индивидуализация
• ограниченность
• grammatical number
• conceptual plexity
• plurality
• individuation
• boundedness