К вопросу о значении в языке и некоторых других моделирующих системах
Towards the Problem of Meaning in Language and in Other Sign Systems

Summary/Abstract: In the paper the problem of meaning of certain sign systems (such as rituals and myths) is considered. It is believed that there are some basic semantic structures that enter as a part in a code which contains all the information that is necessary for the generation of 'texts and which is called in the present paper "the collective memory", for being used by the society and for the fact that its elements as well as the relations between them have quite an obligatory character when creating the texts ("langue" of F. de Saussure). As myths and rituals function in a given society as reduced programs of behaviour it is possible to consider them as texts (messages) the semantics of which as a whole (and respectively the semantics of constituent elements) may be viewed as the relation of their symbolical content to their syntactic structure. This would permitone to complete the structural study of myth and ritual that was often limited to the study of their syntactic structures irrespective of the expressed content by discovering semantic structures pertaining to the collective memory. On the basis of these principles the structure of meaning of some myths and rituals of the Murinbata tribe (Northern Territory, Australia) as related in a series of articles by Prof. W. E. H. Stanner is studied. As Prof. Stanner shows, in the religious life of thé tribe under study the same paradigm, on the basis of which many ceremonies, rituals and myths are constructed, is often used. Because of the different character of symbolic languages used in the ceremonies, myths and rituals respectively, they are in a complementary relation to each other so that the deficincy of symbolical means of one symbolical language is compensated by the means of the other one. In this respect a special interest should be paid to the complementary relation of the language of the tribe, the semantical categories of which are extremely full of symbolical content, to some rituals of the same tribe where the spatial symbolism as well as the gestural one is used. An essential feature of this relation is the expression in the myth telling of some categories of the spatial symbolism by the verbal symbolism of the language. Further correspondences of the rituals and myths of the tribe some of which do not have mythical and ritualistic parallels respectively (amythical rituals and aritual myths) are also briefly considered.

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