D. U. Ashurova m. R. Galieva cognitive linguistics

Chapter IV. Knowledge structures

4.1. The notion of knowledge structures and its types

The function of language intended to extract, store and transfer information necessitates the study of the ways and mechanisms of presenting knowledge in language. Knowledge and its representation are key issues of cognitive sciences in general, and cognitive linguistics in particular. From the point of view of cognitive linguistics knowledge is regarded as the result of cognition and categorization of the surrounding world, as an adequate reflection of reality in the human mind, as a product of processing verbal and non-verbal experience that forms “the image of the world”, on the basis of which one can make his own judgments and conclusions (Герасимов, Петров, 1988, c.14).

It should be mentioned that the notion of knowledge structures was first used by F. Bartlett, one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology. F. Bartlett claimed that humans have core knowledge in the form of unconscious mental structures and that this knowledge interacts with new incoming information and produce schemas (Bartlett, 1932). Later knowledge structures were reintroduced into modern cognitive science by M. Minsky (1975), who worked in the field of artificial intellect. He attempted to develop machines that showed human-like abilities and proposed that human knowledge is represented in memory in frames. Later, the notion of knowledge structures was widely used in Cognitive Linguistics.
Most cognitivists agree that knowledge in the human mind consists of mental representations constructed of concepts, analogies, images, relations between elements within a single mental space. It is acknowledged that knowledge is not an amorphous entity; it is structured to present certain blocks of information, and that conditioned the use of the term “knowledge structures”. It is worthy of note that this phenomenon is known under various names “depositaries of knowledge”, “encyclopaedic knowledge”, “knowledge-base”, “background knowledge”, “formats of knowledge”, etc. Despite some terminological discrepancy, on the whole knowledge structures are understood as blocks of information containing a system of interrelated concepts.
Many researchers assert that linguistic units represent discrete conceptual entities, properties, activities and relations, which constitute the knowledge space of a particular subject field (Sager, 1998:261). The concepts are embedded in complex knowledge structures, and in the process of conceptualization “linguistic units serve as prompts for an array of conceptual operations and the recruitment of background knowledge” (Evans, 2006:160). It happens due to the fact that meaning, as R. Langacker claims, is a dynamic and mental process that involves conceptualization (mental experience) (Langacker, 1988:50).
One of the key issues in Cognitive Linguistics is the problem of knowledge structures classification. There are many approaches to this problem since scholars provide different classifications taking into account this or that aspect of knowledge structures. Some scholars (Lakoff, 1987; Fillmore, 1988; Minsky, 1975; Болдырев, 2006; Кубрякова, 1992, 1994, 2004) study different ways of configuration of the conceptual system, i.e. revealing knowledge formats or models: frames, scripts, scenario, categories, etc. Others (Бабушкин, 1996; Болдырев, 2001; 2004; Карасик, 2002; Степанов, 2004) concentrate their attention on the linguistic means representing conceptual systems, i.e. concepts verbalizing national, ethnic, linguistic peculiarities. So, knowledge structures are based on the idea that people organize information into patterns that reflect the relationships between concepts and the features constituting them (Johnson-Laird, 1983).
As the survey of the theoretical literature proves the scholars differentiate various types of knowledge structures presented in opposition:

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