On the notion of continuum and its application in linguistics

Abstract

The history of the general notion if continuum can be traced as far back as classical philosophy, reappearing in scientific thought (from mathematics physics to psychology) until our times. As cognitive aspects gain more and more significance in modern linguistics, in this paper we review the application of such general notion in various linguistic domains and schools dialectology, sociolinguistics, diachronic linguistics, textlinguistics systemic linguistics. Also, often synonymously used with terms such as gradience for example, it underlines the fact that in many linguistic explanations it is hard do draw absolute borderlines between many grammatical and semantic phenomena. Due to its long usage, it is possible to take a critical view upon the application of the notion of continuum in certain domains and suggest further application in yet other contexts.

U ovom razvojnom trenutku opštelingvističke teorije istaknuto mesto pripada tzv. kognitivnim tumačenjima jezika, a jedan od osnovnih teorijskih pojmova koji se u tim kognitivnim pristupima poteže jeste pojam kontinuuma. Izlaganje koje sledi jeste pokušaj da se ukratko osvetli smisao i domet primene toga pojma u domenu jezičke nauke.