In Modern Standard Russian, the prefix/preposition pair u-/u is peculiar with respect to other similar pairs, due to the meaning mismatch between the two. While the prefix u- has an ablative meaning, as shown when it is prefixed to motion verbs, the prepositional phrase u+gen occurs in locative constructions, and other related constructions, such as predicative possession that is expressed via the cross-linguistically common Locative Schema. Etymological considerations show that the meaning preserved by the prefix is older. The only (...) type of occurrence which, according to the literature, preserves the ablative meaning for the u+gen construction is found with verbs of requesting, removing, and buying. Notably, however, in other Slavic languages putative ablative contexts are limited to verbs of requesting. Data from MSR, Old Church Slavic, Polish and Czech lead to the conclusion that the extension of the u+gen construction to verbs of removing in MSR is based on its use for the encoding of predicative possession. Extension to verbs of buying is better explained through the locative meaning of the construction. As a result of different developments, the u+gen construction has become part of the argument structure of a group of verbs including verbs of asking and requesting, verbs of removing, and verbs of buying, which are characterized by the common feature of taking human non-recipient third arguments. We argue that the different usages of the u+gen construction in MSR constitute an instance of constructionalization based on the merger of originally different constructions. We further argue that accounting for this development in constructional terms offers better insights in the relation among the various different usages of u+gen than simply focusing on the meaning of the preposition and its polysemy pattern. (shrink)

The problem of teaching and learning of Russian language and literature in schools with native language of teaching related to the implementation of the principle of dialogue between cultures. The article draws on the results of the survey of graduates of the two high schools of Kazan: School #2 with teaching in Tatar language and school #37 with teaching in Russian-language. The results of the survey are associated with the problems of bilingualism, multiculturalism and (...) bimentality. Graduates from Tatar language gymnasium are bilingual and fluent in Russian and Tatar languages. 97% of graduates of Tatar gymnasium speak, read and write free in their native language and 96% in Russian. Bilingualism acts in this case like one of the manifestations of inter-ethnic interaction, a particular manifestation of biculturalism. In the National School dialogue of cultures passes through a system of parallel study of both Russian and Tatar languages and literatures: the formation of a bicultural, bilingual, bimental personality able to perceive not only the native culture, but also other culture as the native is taking place. (shrink)

The focus of the article is the role of the Russian language in the world system of languages, the current status of the Russian language and the language policy measures that should be taken to preserve the Russian language and for the strengthening of its positions. The law ‘On the state language of the Russian Federation‘ adopted in 2005 should be supplemented by the list of grammar books and dictionaries of various (...) types as listed in the appendixes to the article. The main actions aimed at ensuring the effective functioning of the law ‘On the state language of the Russian Federation‘ are also enlisted in the article. (shrink)

This article discusses the pros and cons of the creation of a separate Ukrainian standard of the Russian language. Owing to the centralist and elitist history of the Russian standard language, the high variant of Russian that is used in Ukraine does not significantly differ from that of Russia, if at all. Low varieties, by contrast, are quite heterogeneous. The standardization of “Ukrainian Russian” would thus be very problematic at all stages: the selection of (...) norms and their codification, the implementation and elaboration of the new norms. All these steps would not only require considerable funding; in the long run, it would also undermine the status of Ukrainian as Ukraine’s sole state language. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the formation of linguistic, communicative and cultural competence among students bilinguals in teaching Russian language and speech culture. The authors put forward the thesis that the training of specialists in the conditions of bilingualism re quires not only a higher level of learning a second language, but also a qualitatively different level of comprehension. It is proved that the discipline ‘Russian and the culture of speech‘ assumes formation of communicative and culturological (...) competence of the higher education institutions, which are trained on two-profile offices taking into account a regional component. Relevance of research in this area is increasing each year since the treatment of the person as the center of all systems of cognition highlights in the pedagogical University the formation of the modern language personality, capable of effective professional activity. The functional approach provides detection of features of functioning of language units in different spheres of public work. The communicative principle means that acquisition of Russian as a means of communication happens in the course of speech practice most approached to process of communication in Russian. The detection of similarity and distinctions between languages, interlingual comparison promotes establishment and a lexical interference. The linguistic-cultural principle provides understanding of language as the phenomena of culture and is connected with ability to define national-cultural components of linguistic units - words, phraseological combinations, grammatical categories of the text. Involvement of regional component as a basis in practice of teaching Russian and culture of speech increases efficiency of all process of training of students of national branch. (shrink)

IntroductionThe Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development–third edition is one of the most widely used tools for assessing child development, and adapted versions of this instrument have been successfully used in many countries. No comprehensive psychometric studies of the Bayley-III have yet been performed in Russia.Materials and methodsThis psychometric study was part of the longitudinal study conducted by the Ural Federal University in 2016–2020. Within the project, the original Bayley-III manual was translated into Russian and then used in (...) a cohort of 333 infants to assess cognition, expressive/receptive communication, and fine/gross motor skills. For the purpose of psychometric analysis, we selected the data for four age groups of children from the longitudinal study database: 4–6 months, 10 months, 15 months, and 24 months. The development scores of the sample children were compared with the original Bayley-III norms in each age strata separately. Reliability and validity of the translated instrument were examined using correlation analysis, tests of internal consistency, and confirmatory factor analysis.ResultsThe average scaled scores of the examined children were generally comparable with the original Bayley-III norms, with the exception of those older than 1 year, who demonstrated 1.2–1.9 points better performance in cognitive development and gross motor skills and 0.9–2.6 points lower performance in expressive communication. The correlation of both raw and scaled scores between different scales was low to moderate in all age groups. Internal consistency tests confirmed high reliability of the translated instrument. CFA demonstrated a good fit of the three-factor model in all age strata.ConclusionThe Russian version of the Bayley-III proved to be a psychometrically valid and reliable tool for assessing child development, at least in a research context. The development of the examined children was close to the original US norms, with some deviation in cognitive, gross motor, and expressive communication scores mostly in older children, which could be attributed to the biased sample. (shrink)

On the basis of analysis of Russian and foreign scholars, the work is aimed at studying the specificity of the transformation of antique stories and images, which is the desired model in the art of the 20th century thanks to its fluidity and unlimited variability. Actualization of antique stories and images in the works of German-language writers account for life-changing moments of social life, the periods of losing of constant moral landmarks and the periods of looking for new (...) moral and aesthetic ideals. The analysis of the reception and transformation of mythological stories and images in the contemporary literature proves the conception of its polysemy. The built-in contradiction of myths is realized through the transformation of mythological stories and images in the literary works of contemporary writers and is explained by the individuality of writers and theirs aesthetic aims. On the one side, the absence de facto in German drama of the 20th century of interpretations of the story about Achilles and of the image of Achilles, and numerous variations on the topic of moral strivings of fearless and peccant Ulysses, on the other side, are proving the statements of classic aesthetic that the tragedy is based on the conflict, which is close to lofty and linked with the idea of dignity of the man, which is ready and capable of promoting the views of his own by the real acts that are often lead to suffer and death. According to Aristotle, the sympathy for the character leads to catharsis - the basis of education of real civic-mindedness and humanness. (shrink)

Le terme « langue de bois » est d’une extrême polysémie en français. Il n’en a pas toujours été ainsi : apparu dans les années 1980, le mot est un emprunt au russe, par l’intermédiaire, semble-t-il, du polonais, au moment des événements de Gdansk et du mouvement lancé par le syndicat Solidarność. Comment un terme servant à qualifier la langue d’un régime totalitaire, synonyme de novlangue orwellienne, en est-il venu à couvrir une si grande variété d’emplois, le rendant intraduisible ? (...) L’explication se trouve chez Orwell : dans un article célèbre portant sur la langue de la politique, il soutient que la déformation de la vérité n’est pas l’apanage des régimes totalitaires. Aujourd’hui, l’heure est au « parler vrai » : mais force est de constater que ce n’est là, bien souvent, que le dernier avatar en date de la langue de bois.The term « langue de bois » is highly polysemic in French and has no single translation in English. The term appeared in France in the 1980s as a borrowing from the Russian « yezik douba » meaning « tongue of oak », possibly via Poland at the time of the events in Gdansk and the movement started by the Solidarność trade union. How did a term used to describe the language of a totalitarian state, coined by George Orwell as « newspeak », come to be used in so many different ways? Orwell himself provides the explanation: in a celebrated article on the language of politics, he argues that subverting the truth is not an exclusive mark of totalitarian regimes. Today, we have a form of expression known as « straight talk », which, when it comes out of the mouths of spin doctors, could well be seen as the latest incarnation of newspeak. (shrink)

This essay uses the case of Russian, in its relation to other languages, to look at the ways in which the architects of internationalism in the aftermath of World War II established a new hegemony of world languages, responding to the challenge posed by the rise of Russian as a scientific and political language. What was initially a campaign by the Soviet delegation at UNESCO for one cause—recognition of the status of the Russian language within (...) the organization—was turned by other delegations into a campaign for a different cause—multilingualism. Rather than establishing Russian on a par with English and French, the Soviet intervention helped to create a new triumvirate of world languages—Russian, Spanish, and Arabic—as these were recognized by international organizations such as the United Nations and UNESCO. The case of the rise of Russian as a language of science and politics helps to underscore the complexities and the ambiguities involved in the negotiation of the language regime, in which political arguments were translated into technological choices, the diplomats’ problems were cast as a problem of communication, and the language in which political arguments were made oftentimes mattered as much as the arguments themselves. (shrink)

In the article, the models of the language system are described represented in the works of Russian linguists. Russian language models that formed by the end of the 20th century in Russian linguistics are quite different and even contradictive. Level model of the language system is leading among the reviewed; it is the basis of most studies of language units. Other non-hierarchic models of the language system is less well known. The model (...) of language units representing the field brings together different levels of language units on the basis of their common features. Strategic setting can be semantic, functional or combination of both. The basis of the dynamic model is the idea of conceiving the order of the language system formation in the human mind. In the dynamic model of the language system, the criterion of quality is the time of forming special knowledge and skills in the speaker’s mind. In the multilayer model of the language, units are organized ‘in layers‘ and in the course of language dissolution we can trace their arrangement from the new complex forms to the deeper ones. Fourth non-hierarchical model is the associative-verbal network by Y. N. Karaulov. This model issuing from the fact that language is an open dynamic system. These models are an excellent illustration of General scientific principle of complementarity. Being so different, these models contribute to the creation of the general model both of the Russian and any other natural language. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the mission and education of the Korean Orthodox Church in the process of migration and settlement of Koreans in the Primorsky Krai from the 1860s to the 1910s and to discuss the historical background and sociocultural significance of it. This study summarizes the history of Korean maritime migrants in chronological order in the late 19th century. In this study, Russian, Russian-Korean bilingual and Korean translation used by the Russian Orthodox (...) Church were discussed. At the time of the 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church was the ideological background of the ruling Russian emigration. The Russian orthodox education that Koreans received was the first Western-style education acceptance of Koreans. The Orthodox Church conducted missions and education for Koreans through Russian language education, Korean-Russian bilingual education, and Korean-speaking Korean missions. Koreans accepted sophistication for survival and adjustment in Russia, or spiritual influence, and expressed enthusiasm for education. Russian Orthodox was bilingual, reflecting the dialect used by Koreans in Russia, and standard Korean of Seoul area. Although the educational environment was poor and the political situation was always changing rapidly, the role of the Orthodox Church was great in that it provided opportunities for Koreans to play an active role in the Primorsky Krai by finding out the talents of Koreans through education and by knowing their potentials themselves. (shrink)

Polysemy, understood as instances of a single linguistic expression having multiple related senses, is not a homogenous phenomenon. There are regular (apparently, rule‐based) cases and irregular (resemblance‐based) cases, which have different processing profiles. Although a primary source of polysemy is pragmatic inference, at least some cases become conventionalised and linguistically encoded. Three main issues are discussed: (a) the key differences between regular and irregular cases and the role, if any, of a “core meaning”; (b) the distinction between pragmatic (...) polysemy and semantic polysemy; and (c) the role of syntactic meaning in both generating and constraining polysemy. (shrink)

Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. (...) We argue, using these cases, but focusing particularly on the multiply polysemous word ‘school’, that the senses involved in co-predication form especially robust activation packages, which allow hearers and readers to access all the different senses in interpretation. (shrink)

This book will have a lasting impact among readers who will be fascinated to discover the richness of this long-suppressed chapter in the history of Russian ...

Most substantive (content-bearing) words are polysemous, but polysemy is cross-categorial; for instance, the lexical forms ‘stone’ and ‘front’ are associated with families of interrelated senses and these senses are spread across their manifestations as three words, noun, verb and adjective. So, the ultimate unit underpinning polysemy is not a word but the categoryless root of the related words, which must, in some sense, track the interrelated families of senses. The main topic of this paper is the vexed question (...) of the meaning of roots and the backdrop is a view of words as delineated syntactic domains which allow assignment of atomic content (non-compositional meaning), and whose actual meanings are, in the first instance, pragmatically inferred in the throes of communication, some of them subsequently becoming established, so stored in a lexicon and directly retrieved in comprehension. Three different positions on the meanings of roots are outlined, and their merits and shortcomings are discussed: (a) inherent underspecified meanings; (b) meanings conditioned by grammatical context (allosemy); (c) meaninglessness. I argue that, overall, the current state of the evidence favours the third position: roots are categoryless, meaningless (perhaps phonological) indices. (shrink)

Most theories of concepts take concepts to be structured bodies of information used in categorization and inference. This paper argues for a version of atomism, on which concepts are unstructured symbols. However, traditional Fodorian atomism is falsified by polysemy and fails to provide an account of how concepts figure in cognition. This paper argues that concepts are generative pointers, that is, unstructured symbols that point to memory locations where cognitively useful bodies of information are stored and can be deployed (...) to resolve polysemy. The notion of generative pointers allows for unresolved ambiguity in thought and provides a basis for conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Motivation und Ikonizität : Die Frage nach dem richtigen Wort -- Der Zusammenhang von Polysemie, Ikonizität und lexikalischer Motivation -- Empirische Ermittlung lexikalischer Motivation : Die Frage nach der richtigen Methode -- Der Einfluss konzeptueller Relationen auf intrinsische und extrinsische Motivierbarkeit -- Polysemie und Skalen diagrammatischer Transparenz : Ein formales und semantisches Transparenzmodell -- Zusammenfassung und Schlussbemerkungen.

Based on the existence of polysemy (e.g., lunch can refer to both food and events), it is argued that central tenets of externalist semantics and Fodorian concept atomism, an externalist theory on which words lack semantic structure, are unsound. We evaluate the premise that these arguments rely on—that polysemous words have separate, finer‐grained senses. We survey the evidence across psychology and linguistics and argue that it shows that polysemy does not exist, at least not in this “sense”. The (...) upshot is that if polysemy does not exist, it cannot pose a problem for atomism or externalism. (shrink)

Alexej Remizov is usually regarded by literary critics as a Symbolist rather than a Futurist writer. However, I would posit that Remizov similarly to the Futurists viewed language as “logos,” bozhestvennii glagol. According to the mystical interpretation of the famous words “At the beginning there was Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”, when God was creating the world he named the objects, and these abstract names became a force for the appearance of an (...) object in physical reality. In the light of these words, The Medieval mystical and magical philosophers claimed that one could restore the divine language of Creation, possess the ability to create objects anew, and thereby become Creator himself. One can argue that a major goal of Remizov was similar to that of hisMedieval predecessors: to reveal the mystical power of language in order to create, not to describe reality. The paper analyzes three chapters from Alexej Remizov’s Rossiya v pis’menah, a book which can be read as a manifesto of Remizov’s attitude toward language and reality, and discuss possible sourcesthat might have influenced Remizov in his attitude towards language. (shrink)

L’article étudie comment les idées de la France des Lumières et de la France révolutionnaire ont contribué au changement de la langue sociopolitique russe, comment elles ont interféré avec le processus littéraire du romantisme en Russie et ont finalement contribué au changement du paradigme intellectuel en Russie dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle. L’histoire des concepts de citoyen, de société, d’opposition politique est retracée de la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle – à travers des documents officiels (Instructions, par Catherine (...) II), des textes littéraires (A. Radichtchev) – jusqu’au premier tiers du XIXe siècle – à travers les écrits politiques des décembristes. En conclusion, il est soutenu que l’échec du républicanisme des décembristes inspiré par la France des Lumières a orienté, dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle, la pensée russe vers la problématique de la diversité humaine et de la nationalisation de l’Empire. Les principes universels du siècle des Lumières sont remplacés par l’intérêt porté à la diversité humaine de l’Empire russe, ce qui nécessitera, à son tour, l’élaboration d’un langage spécifique et de ses concepts. Cependant, ce tournant serait une conséquence du processus de réception des idées et des concepts de la France des Lumières et aurait été accéléré par la Révolution française. (shrink)

The present study investigates linguistic choices and strategy selection of American speakers of English, Russian native speakers, and American L2 learners of Russian in their complaints by exploring the interaction of social factors and gender. The data was elicited through an open-ended discourse completion questionnaire and an assessment questionnaire. The qualitative analysis shows significant differences between genders in the group of Russian speakers. The major finding was that Russian males were more judgmental and direct in their (...) complaints, but they were also more humorous and ironic than Russian females. Fewer differences were observed in the group of American speakers and American L2 learners of Russian. The findings indicate similar gender differences within each group and across groups in terms of strategy selection and the number of words. Some of the differences were statistically significant.The findings of the interlanguage analysis open areas for pedagogical intervention so that L2 learners better understand how to address males and females, as well as which linguistic strategies to use to minimize offense while negotiating a problem in Russian culture. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree about what the folk concept of pain is. This paper criticises existing theories of the folk concept of pain, i.e. the mental view, the bodily view, and the recently proposed polyeidic view. It puts forward an alternative proposal – the polysemy view – according to which pain terms like “sore,” “ache” and “hurt” are polysemous, where one sense refers to a mental state and another a bodily state, and the type of polysemy at issue reflects two (...) distinct but related concepts of pain. Implications with respect to issues in philosophy of pain are also drawn. (shrink)

Alexej Remizov is usually regarded by literary critics as a Symbolist rather than a Futurist writer. However, I would posit that Remizov similarly to the Futurists viewed language as “logos,” bozhestvennii glagol. According to the mystical interpretation of the famous words “At the beginning there was Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”, when God was creating the world he named the objects, and these abstract names became a force for the appearance of an (...) object in physical reality. In the light of these words, The Medieval mystical and magical philosophers claimed that one could restore the divine language of Creation, possess the ability to create objects anew, and thereby become Creator himself. One can argue that a major goal of Remizov was similar to that of hisMedieval predecessors: to reveal the mystical power of language in order to create, not to describe reality. The paper analyzes three chapters from Alexej Remizov’s Rossiya v pis’menah, a book which can be read as a manifesto of Remizov’s attitude toward language and reality, and discuss possible sourcesthat might have influenced Remizov in his attitude towards language. (shrink)

Polysemy seems to be a relatively neglected phenomenon within philosophy of language as well as in many quarters in linguistic semantics. Not all variations in a word’s contribution to truth-conditional contents are to be thought as expressions of the phenomenon of polysemy, but it can be argued that many are. Polysemous terms are said to contribute senses or aspects to truth-conditional contents. In this paper, I will make use of the notion of aspect to argue that some (...) apparently wild variations in an utterance’s truth conditions are instead quite systematic. In particular, I will focus on Travis’ much debated green leaves case and explain it in terms of the polysemy of the noun; and in particular, in terms of the as-it-is and the as-it-looks aspects associated with kind words. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that that polysemy is a two-sided phenomenon. It can be reduced neither to pragmatic modulation nor to ambiguity, for it is a mixture of both. The senses of a polysemous expression result from pragmatic modulation but they are stored in memory, as the senses of an ambiguous expression are. The difference with straightforward ambiguity is that the modulation relations between the senses are transparent to the language users: the senses are felt as related (...) – they form a family of senses. In other words, whereas two homonymous expressions are different expressions, with the same phonological realization but distinct meanings, a polyseme is a single expression, i.e. a semantic as well as a phonological unit. It has one meaning, which should not be confused with the separate senses which it contributes in context. Different ways of thinking of that unitary meaning will be discussed, and consequences drawn for the debate between more or less radical versions of Contextualism. (shrink)

Until the 1860s, science in Russia was principally conducted in Latin, French, and German. In the years leading up to and following the creation of the Russian Chemical Society in 1868, Russian chemists – treated in this article as both a representative sample of Russian scientists and also practitioners of the flagship science of the period – debated both the merits of developing a nomenclature that would enable Russian to “hold” modern inorganic and organic chemistry, and (...) the practicability of doing so. The article explores debates over whether Russian syntax could be adapted to represent chemical compounds according to emerging western conventions or in a sui generis manner, as well as the struggles of Russian scientists to use French and German to communicate with their foreign counterparts, arguing that the details of these debates highlight both the fruitfulness and the limits of using “standardization” as a framework for linguistic codification. (shrink)

The paper urges that polysemous phenomena are typically semantic not pragmatic. The part of a message sent by a polysemous expression is typically one of its meanings encoded in the speaker's language and not the result of pragmatic modification. The hearer receives that part of the message by a process of disambiguation, by detecting which item in the lexicon the speaker has selected. This is the best explanation of observed regularities. The paper argues that the experimental evidence from psycholinguistics, (...) particularly that produced in discussions of “underspecification” and “overspecification,” does not undermine this view nor support the pragmatic alternative. (shrink)

In my paper I will analyze decisions of the Russian Constitutional Court and courts of general jurisdiction, in which they interpret ordinary and seemingly unambiguous words and phrases. In a number of cases this interpretation is made in a manner, which is suspect from a linguistic point of view. The analysis shows that there is no consistency in the application by Russian courts of the “plain language” rule and that literal interpretation may be used selectively as a (...) means of legitimizing the decisions made on non-linguistic grounds. Though literal interpretation can be often incompatible with the concept of justice and therefore judges should also take into account other criteria, there are examples of court decisions, in which literal interpretation would have been more appropriate from the perspective of justice, separation of powers and human rights. The article shows how use and misuse of language by judges is employed as a tool in judicial decision-making. (shrink)

Comparative study of two languages of different structures has both theoretical and practical significance, enables somebody to identify similar and distinctive features, find universals and unique, helps to penetrate deeper into the inner workings of each of the compared languages and understand their national identity. The subject of our comparative study are languages of different structures - Russian and Bashkir languages - the first refers to a group of inflected, the second - to the group of agglutinative languages. Comparative (...) research of languages of different structures can be carried out in two aspects: theoretical and linguistic. In the first case, the analysis of language material is subjected without restriction at all levels of the language system. Data from these studies can be used in the creation of comparative descriptive grammars in lexicographical work and in the translation business. In the second case only microlanguage is matched, which is represented in the lexical and grammatical minimum of studied second language. Materials of such a compressed comparative analysis used in the practice of language teaching, mainly in teaching a second, non-native language. When a comparative study of languages in linguistic aspect is important direction of comparisons - what language is elected as the original one. Since the formation of national-Russian bilingualism is the subject of study of Russian language, as the source, it is desirable to choose Russian language. In this case, the reference point is the absorption of funds Russian as a second language. Materials of comparative study of two languages gives a clear idea of what linguistic phenomena and their symptoms are identical in them, what is only partially overlap, what is completely different. This knowledge will help to consciously manage the impact of native language on the studied non-native Russian language. In the comparative study of Russian and Bashkir languages done very little, but it is a lot of work has already begun. (shrink)

Alexej Remizov is usually regarded by literary critics as a Symbolist rather than a Futurist writer. However, I would posit that Remizov similarly to the Futurists viewed language as “logos,” bozhestvennii glagol. According to the mystical interpretation of the famous words “At the beginning there was Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”, when God was creating the world he named the objects, and these abstract names became a force for the appearance of an (...) object in physical reality. In the light of these words, The Medieval mystical and magical philosophers claimed that one could restore the divine language of Creation, possess the ability to create objects anew, and thereby become Creator himself. One can argue that a major goal of Remizov was similar to that of hisMedieval predecessors: to reveal the mystical power of language in order to create, not to describe reality. The paper analyzes three chapters from Alexej Remizov’s Rossiya v pis’menah, a book which can be read as a manifesto of Remizov’s attitude toward language and reality, and discuss possible sourcesthat might have influenced Remizov in his attitude towards language. (shrink)

Alexej Remizov is usually regarded by literary critics as a Symbolist rather than a Futurist writer. However, I would posit that Remizov similarly to the Futurists viewed language as “logos,” bozhestvennii glagol. According to the mystical interpretation of the famous words “At the beginning there was Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”, when God was creating the world he named the objects, and these abstract names became a force for the appearance of an (...) object in physical reality. In the light of these words, The Medieval mystical and magical philosophers claimed that one could restore the divine language of Creation, possess the ability to create objects anew, and thereby become Creator himself. One can argue that a major goal of Remizov was similar to that of hisMedieval predecessors: to reveal the mystical power of language in order to create, not to describe reality. The paper analyzes three chapters from Alexej Remizov’s Rossiya v pis’menah, a book which can be read as a manifesto of Remizov’s attitude toward language and reality, and discuss possible sourcesthat might have influenced Remizov in his attitude towards language. (shrink)

The protection of the Russian language and Russian “compatriots” has been a major issue of Russian political discourse for years. According to Russian official announcements, it was even a major reason for Russian war activities in Ukraine. In 2014, the Russian Federation introduced its language policy in Crimea and began to control the language policy of Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics.” Both Russian and Ukrainian, as well as other languages, have (...) been affected by these measures. Since 24 February 2022, Russian language policy has entered new temporarily occupied territories. Although Ukrainian has occasionally been declared a “state language” in Crimea, in DNR and LNR and then either been deprived of this status (LNR, DNR) or not (Crimea) it has never actually played this role. On the contrary, it has gradually been removed from the public sphere. Announcements regarding the language policy in recently occupied territories have been contradictory for months. Generally, Russian political discourse regarding the Ukrainian language is still based on traditional double-bind strategies. Official “appreciation for the Ukrainian language” is notoriously accompanied with narratives about the “artificiality” of the Ukrainian language, its “uselessness,” and even its virtually inherent “Nazi ideology.” At present, new textbooks of “the classical Ukrainian language” are allegedly being prepared in the Russian Federation. Historians of the Ukrainian language are curious how this unheard-of language might be designed. (shrink)

Verbs of mental states or activity constitute a subject of considerable interest to both Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology. They promise to open a window on the invisible workings of the mind, while at the same time displaying a wide variety of historical sources across languages. In this book Michael Fortescue presents an innovative approach to the semantics and diachronic source of cognitive verbs across a representative array of the world's languages. The relationship among the cognitive verbs of individual languages (...) is essentially one of metonymy, and the book investigates in detail the specific metonymic relationships involved, as revealed largely by the polysemous spread of word meanings. The data is projected against a circular 'map' of interrelated cognitive categories. (shrink)

Proper names are usually considered devices of singular reference but, when considered as word-types, they also exhibit other kinds of uses. In this paper I intend to show that systematic kinds of uses of proper names considered as word-types can be accounted for by a generalized rule-based conception of systematic polysemy, one which not only postulates a multiplicity of stable senses for an expression, but also a multiplicity of content generating rules, each of which determines potentially different contents in (...) different contexts. In contrast to the currently extant polysemous conceptions of proper names (Leckie in Philos Stud 165:1139–1160, 2013), which only encompass individual and predicative uses, the presented proposal concerns all systematic uses of proper names considered in the literature, i.e., individual, predicative, deferred, descriptive, anaphoric, and bound uses of proper names. The resulting conception accommodates referential intuition about the default individual uses of proper names while also admitting other kinds of uses without generating homonymy. It transpires that proper names are semantically underdetermined and context-sensitive expressions. (shrink)

The author examines the idea of "mind" in three linguistic pictures of the world - Russian, French and Chinese. The study is contrastive, the results are compared. The description of each idea is made according to a clear algorithm: the etymology of the word, the mythological roots of the concept, its compatibility, from the compatibility is distinguished real connotation according to V. A. Uspensky, a comparison of dictionary definitions is made. The aim of the study is to identify the (...) peculiarities of the idea of "mind" in the Russian, French and Chinese languages. The purpose of the comparison is to see the similarities and differences in the worldview of different peoples. Scientific methods of research are: comparative-historical method, method of generalization, method of semantic analysis. This topic is understudied, no linguocultural studies analyzing this idea in Russian, French and Chinese culture have been observed earlier, which constitutes the scientific novelty of the work. The results will contribute to mutual understanding between peoples, forming a kind of conceptual bridge, and will also be used in courses on regional studies, comparative studies of cultures, and in the teaching of the respective languages. (shrink)

For the communication between people to remain effective and lively and for the expressive power to be permanent, the qualities of the words are as important as the quantity of words in a language. From this perspective, Arabic has many linguistic features like other developed languages. Parsing, deriviations, blending, synonymy, contrast, arabization, antithetical polysemy, commutation, ellipsis, polysemy, etc. Language features are intensely found in Arabic. As it is known, polysemy is one of the important issues (...) of the Arabic language that has been taken into consideration since the compilation period. Although there are scholars among Arabic linguists who deny the existence of polysemous words, the vast majority have accepted the issue of polysemy. Among polysemous words, some words indicate several different meanings, as well as words that express many different meanings. In this respect, words that indicate a lot of meanings in the group of polysemous words have attracted the attention of poets. Poets wrote long odes using such words to demonstrate their mastery of the science of the dictionary and to prove their competence in the art of poetry. There are even poets who write different odes in terms of theme, using the same word. One of these poets is Ibn al-Munāṣıf from Cordoba, who lived between 1168 and 1223. The poet, better known as the jurist, wrote his famous ode using the common word "acuz". By ending each couplet with the word ʾujūz, the poet brought together the different meanings of the word ʾujūz in the ode in question. In this study, the issue of polysemy, which is considered an important feature of the Arabic language, will be briefly discussed. In addition, the Qasida of ʾUjūz will be translated and analyzed. (shrink)

Russian philosophy has always lived on translations. Difficulties in the process of creating a conceptual language used to be overcome gradually, one by one. Now, in the post-Soviet period after all of the locks had been opened, the accelerated development of Russian culture often causes us to assimilate deconstructivism before constructivism and some newer versions of phenomenology before Husserl. It brings about a cultural paradox which cannot be solved by habitual philosophical means. My point here is that (...) Russian philology is able to contribute toward finding a way out. The paper aims to justify this idea. (shrink)