Connotation Disorders as an Indicator of Disintegration of the Language System

The present study focuses on disorders of speech coherence and describes them using the concept of connotation. Connotation is the term that has become established in science with several meanings. The author makes a review of these meanings and shows how the phenomenon of connotation is associated with language disorders. Early studies on connotation in the philosophicallogical dimension go back to the 19th century and are connected with the works by J.S. Mill, while K. Bühler is regarded as the founder of the linguistic theory of connotation. Within linguistics, connotation was perceived in different ways, and knowledge about it developed with the development of this discipline. Studies by N. Chomsky show that it is formal and semantic relationships between words used in an utterance that determine its coherence. Chomsky himself did not use the concept of connotation but he presented two levels of coherence disorders in his works. The principles of connotation are presented there as rules of subcategorization and selection. The author of the paper emphasizes that the connotation properties of verbs are a factor that determines the syntactic pattern. The paper shows the proposal of including investigations on connotation in the issues of logopedics. The author draws attention to the occurrence of connotation disorders in schizophasia, aphasia, and dementia. It should be stressed that the disintegration of connotation relationships looks different in each of these disorders. Connotation disorders are related to the improper functioning of the brain, particularly to disorders in the frontotemporal region.