THE PICTURE OF THE WORLD AND THE CONCEPT: THE PROBLEM OF (RE)INTERPRETATION

The article summarizes the main theoretical principles of interpreting the terms lingual picture of the world and concept by analyzing primary academic studies in cognitive linguistics and by processing dialectal studies as phenomena of dialect speakers' lingual consciousness in the light of cognitive semantics. The author has made an attempt of interpreting – or rather reinterpreting – these terms due to the increased attention of today's researchers to these terms. The notions of scientific and naive, lingual and conceptual, lingual and dialectal pictures of the world are grounded and verified. The main approaches to understanding the term concept, its history, and basic definitions, typologies, and features have been under study. Special attention is paid to the form and content of the concept. The structure of the concept (verbal expression) constructs nominative space, which includes a system of nominations (lexical, phraseological, and syntactic units), while the content of the concept (semantic space) shapes the "assembled" semantics of concept nominations, covering semantic fields, subfields, micro fields, etc. The author also explores the systematic organization of concepts as well as the formation of the sphere of concepts (equal to the conceptual picture of the world), which is verbalized and transformed into a lingual picture of the world. She has elaborated an original algorithm for concept analysis as based on the nominative space of the binary concepts top / bottom in Ukrainian dialects (base words верх / низ; synonyms гора / діл, під; cognate words (derivatives and compounds); combinations of words, idioms with these keywords). The sources of the research are historical and regional dictionaries as well as texts and linguistic atlases. It is possible to identify the specific features of the perception of the world and differences in the worldview of dialect speakers, their knowledge and collective experience. It is also possible to represent the specific features of dialect nomination, derivation, and semantics. The topicality of the study is motivated by the controversial character of understanding the terms lingual picture of the world and concept in the linguistic paradigm as well as by determining relations between these notions and methods for their analysis.Keywords: Dialectal picture of the world, concept, nominative space of concept, semantic space of concept, sphere of concepts, binary opposition.