THE INFLUENCE OF SEMANTIC PROCESSES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE AND THINKING

The article analyzes semantic processes closely related to language and thinking. In particular, the article reviews the concepts such as polysemy, synonymity, paronymy, hyponymy which are currently the subject of numerous discussions among world class linguistics scientists. The author presents polysemy as a phenomenon in which a broad-meaning word under the influence of the development of thinking and the specialization of existing knowledge gradually breaks up into separate words formerly denoting parts of a whole concept. It is claimes that the feature of polysemy changes in the course of the evolution of consciousness - in particular, the pre-scientific stage of the development of cognition and the evolution of consciousness, polysemy takes the form of semantic syncretism, which is observed in the tribal languages of the Middle Ages. In regards to synonymity, some linguists classify as synonyms of the words that are identical and close in meaning, which refer to one part of speech. Other scientists believe that synonyms are only words that are close or similar in meaning, or, on the contrary, only words that are identical in meaning. The author considers that these points of view are one-sided and do not enable studying synonymity thoroughly; own vision of hyponymy and paronymy is suggested.