Structure of cognitive content and cognitive knowledge of Russian vocabulary

The article deals with the level organization of the semantic volume of a word and the meaning of such an understanding of lexical semantics for the development of Russian vocabulary in a Slavic classroom. The relevance of the research is due to the linguo-cognitive focus of modern research not only in linguistics, but also in the methodology of teaching languages. The goal is to describe the structure of the cognitive content of a word as opposed to its semantic structure. The tasks include the allocation of levels of the cognitive content structure, describing their characteristics, identifying the specifics of each level in closely related Slavic languages (Russian, Czech, Slovak), and the correlation of such a vision of the semantic content organization with the stages of its acquisition in a foreign-language (Slavic) classroom. The author examines three levels of the cognitive content structure: denotative, structural and conceptual. They not only describe the semantic volume of the word, but also demonstrate the sequence and logic of the semantic development of the lexeme. Taking these levels into account helps to structure the content of a lexical unit according to its cognitive development and, therefore, the cognitive knowledge about it. Such an interconnected and interdependent vision of the cognitive content and cognitive knowledge of lexemes is the novelty of this research. This approach to the content side of the lexeme has both theoretical and practical value, since it corresponds to the logic of its cognitive mastery by foreigners, contributes to the didactic organization of vocabulary when teaching Russian as a foreign language, and helps teachers to minimize and distribute lexical material in accordance with the stages of learning. This is of particular importance in a Slavic classroom due to the numerous lexical and semantic similarities and differences at all semantic levels, which the author demonstrates using the comparative material of the Russian, Czech and Slovak languages.