Manerko Larisa A.

The presented material is dedicated to the outstanding Russian philologist, linguist and specialist in terminology Vladimir Leitchik, the founder of the new discipline known as Terminology (“Terminovedeniye”). At the beginning of his scientific career he was focused on the issues of word-formation in the French language but then continued to show the integration of different branches of scientific knowledge, including semiotics and computer science, lexicography and lexicology, phraseology and stylistics, patent science, translation and interpreting, neology and terminology. This last field became the leading one in his scientific life, in which the poly paradigmatic and cross-disciplinary aspects of his research perspective are fully revealed.

One of the ways of cognitive modelling of professional discourse and terminological nomination is revealed in this article — it includes the construal of the propositional structure representing knowledge. At first, the history of the notion appearance of proposition is traced back to the period of Antiquity. After that, we can find the contribution of some scholars to the evolution of this notion becoming a three-partial formula suitable for the study in different spheres of knowledge, especially in reflecting the surrounding reality in logics, psychology and linguistics. The central element of the propositional structure is the verb uniting two arguments. 

The aim of this article is to show how the proposition as a structure of knowledge is able to uncover text semantics and the semantics of a nominative unit. The most important aspect of this analysis comprises propositional analysis within the framework of the cognitive-communicative paradigm of linguistic knowledge, particularly the study of special discourse and terminological nomination. The propositional analysis is capable of revealing the conceptual underpinning of the propositional structure based on a special text and terminological nomination. 

Initially, proposition was used to analyze some text stretches, then as the main element of frame analysis revealing not only the subject knowledge, but also emotional and temporal pragmatic characteristics influencing the text development, later associating it with the construal of semantic sets and at last becoming part and parcel of cognitive-onomasiological modelling. 

English texts referring to scientific speech and complex units like compound words and word combinations are becoming the research material in the article. The author concludes that the propositional structure representing knowledge is one of the major constituents of cognitive modelling in the semantic sphere of nominative units in terminological domains of knowledge. Besides that this analysis has great potential in the search of basic concepts of professional discourse. All these spheres of application of propositional analysis are proved very useful in cognitive-communicative terminological science.

The article deals with examples of humour creation and their verbal and non-verbal peculiarities in English popular scientific discourse. These examples are known as TED lectures or TED talks. Humour is oft en used by speakers to attract the audience’s attention. It happens while establishing a contact or focusing attention on some concrete aspects in the lecture’s content. The information in the lecture is used for transmitting complex ideas, which in the process of perception may become not so sophisticated in English popular scientific discourse. 

The text of the speech is shaping the analysis of verbal mechanisms of humour representing orally popular scientific discourse, sometimes mingled with non-verbal features. The understanding of cognitive mechanisms of humour creation in the orator’s speech and the perception of it by the listeners is expressed by a verbal form and it is combined with the nonverbal and multimodal characteristics. It may help language learners improving their language skills and understanding of English as well as providing the better perception and comprehension of the professional speech in the English language. Besides that, humour studies in lectures aimed at the audience in English in TED lectures may reveal the way speakers use humour, and pointing which particular features depend upon the situational-pragmatic characteristics of communication. The authors of the article represent the difference between a special text and special discourse to perform a much deeper analysis of the discussed problems. The material of this research is based on the text of the lecture by the well-known American neurophysiologist Stuart Firestein (Firestein, 2013).