MENTALITY AND LANGUAGE RESEARCH PRACTICE

Based on the material of Russian linguistics, the article proves the thesis about the ethnomenal conditionality of research activity in terms of its various components: by the nature, quality, volume of factual material, selection of methods and ways of research, by observing the principle of consistency and historical and cultural localization of observations and generalizations. Signs of scientific ethno-mentality are identified and considered on the example of research by a number of prominent figures of Russian science.

The Unidirectionality of Grammaticalization in Modern Linguistics

The present article contains the results of study on unidirectionality of grammaticalization which is understood as a shift from lexical to grammatical signs. The research aims to find out and describe present approaches to the unidirectionality idea and identify the current tendency in attitudes towards this property of grammaticalization. The research methodology includes a content analysis of approaches to the unidirectionality issue, their generalization and analysis of some units questioning the unidirectionality of grammaticalization. The relevance of grammaticalization studies is due to a growing interest of Russian and foreign linguists in grammatical changes, current differences in identifying the main properties of such change as grammaticalization and terminological variation. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the research by T. Givn, Ch. Lehmann, T. Lindstrm, E. Traugott, B. Heine and other famous linguists working in the field of grammaticalization. It is noted that the issue of unidirectionality of grammaticalization is almost ignored in Russian linguistics where unidirectionality is often seen as an integral property of this process. The study results have shown the tendency to accepting the unidirectionality idea and a controversial nature of some examples used to overturn this idea. Such examples include English infinitival to , the verb to dare and the suffix -ish . It has been established that the terms degrammaticalization and lexicalization used to refer to processes opposite to grammaticalization can be considered reasonable depending on their understanding and the meaning of the term grammaticalization. This study is a part of a more extensive research aimed to describe and analyze the mechanisms of grammaticalization in Germanic languages.

New achievements in Russian linguistics (neo-psycholinguistics, migration linguistics, contact linguistics, computational linguistics, connectivistics)

The paper is focused on relevant directions in modern Russian Linguistics. It is the continuation of the 2019 publication where the ideas of Pedagogical and Anthropo-Oriented Linguistics, Political Communication Studies and Theological Linguistics were introduced. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the expanding horizons of the science about the language of the 21st century. The particular sections of the text characterize the goals of modern linguistics, its key concepts, objectives and methods currently employed in the sphere of studying language and real discursive practices. The methodology of the research consists in describing new research paradigms. Such paradigms are objectively formed in the course of progressing scientific activity; their changes are triggered by the evolution of society, its socially valuable demand to upgrade not only science but also its educational system on the basis of certain conceptual, value, methodological and technological beliefs. The idea behind this paper is to help teachers to make sense of a big variety of modern linguistic ideas and opt for those which they can use to develop innovative approaches to teaching Russian.

Non-Prototypical Structurally Separate Conditional Constructions in Catalan (In Comparison with Spanish and French)

The article is devoted to non-prototypical structurally separate conditional constructions (NSCC) in Catalan in comparison with Spanish and French. These represent two (or more) separate sentences, one of which expresses condition and the other – consequence without conditional conjunctions. The relevance and novelty of this study follows from the fact that NSCCs have not received sufficient attention yet which is particularly true for Catalan. There is no consensus in specialist literature as regards the terms used to describe this kind of constructions or define their scope. The list of terms for NSCCs in Russian linguistics is too long, and includes the following: “non-prototypical constructions”, “conditional constructions formed as a “syntactic unity”, “supraphrasal unity”, among others. The paper states that it’s necessary to distinguish prototypical conditional constructions from the constructions with conditional con-junction “si”, on one hand, and non-prototypical constructions, on the other. And integral conditional constructions should be distinguished from structurally separate constructions (also referred to as formally separate). There are also non-prototypical structurally separate conditional constructions with interrogative words expressing condition in the protasis and imperatives constructions expressing consequence in the apodosis, constructions with imperatives (verbs like ‘suppose’) expressing condition in the protasis and interrogative sentences expressing consequence in the apodosis. NSCCs can use different moods: imperative, indicative, subjunctive, and conditional. Imperative forms are compatible both with semantics of conditions and consequences. There are also NSCCs without imperatives. And besides that, between the first sentence expressing the condition and the second sentence expressing the consequence filler utterances can occur. As typically in prototypical conditional constructions, in NSCC the condition and the consequence expressed also belong to the same subject of speech (speaker), though in some rare cases may be inserted, as a link be-tween the first and the second sentences of the construction, an interrogative sentence asked by another subject. NSCCs don’t allow the use of subordinating conjunctions, the opposite being a clear sign of prototypical constructions, but the consequence can be introduced with markers meaning ‘then’. The study is based on the texts by Catalan authors, excerpts from Catalan journals and their translations into Spanish and French; texts generated by the author’s informers, native speakers have also been used.

Semiotics of symbol according to the data of the Russian scientific discourse

Based on the publications of Russian scientists, the notions of the symbol in the humanities are studied. The problem of the nature, essence and purpose of a symbol, raised back in Antiquity, remains quite relevant at the present time. In Russian linguistics, the "symbolic" theme occupies one of the leading places, but a clear and unambiguous definition of the symbol is still missing. It is established that a symbol is an umbrella semantic formation, covering the subject areas of several scientific disciplines, outside the context of a specific scientific field or theory; it is a pro-term and can act as a generic name for any semiotic unit. The symbolism of the exact sciences and most of the linguistic signs falls into the category of conventional signs, in which the correspondence of the plans of expression and content is arbitrary, the symbolism of the exact sciences and most of the linguistic signs, while the symbolism of all other areas of knowledge falls into the category of motivated semiotic units, in which the plan of expression is one way or another connected with the content plan, and this connection is conditioned by similarity, contiguity, or in some other way. Endowing a motivated sign with a name leads to a ―doubling‖ of the semantic structure of a new formation, when the signifier of this sign – an image or a generalized representation – turns into a signified, sending to another signified, in relation to which it acts as a signifier. A symbol in its most general form is a sign in which the primary content is used as an exponent of another, more abstract and culturally valuable content. The list of specific characteristics of a symbol, both obligatory and optional, compiled according to scientific discourse, includes: ―vector‖ – the direction of symbolization from the concrete to the abstract; transcendence – going beyond the limits of real existence; vagueness and fragility of semantic boundaries, layering and depth; interpretation – the need for active work of thought and imagination to comprehend the symbolized meaning; coded deep meaning, mystery and mysticism; ―passwordness‖, intended for the initiated; intuitiveness; emotiogenicity, mobilizing force; axiology and ideology. The optional properties of a symbol are aesthetic appeal, emphasizing its socio-cultural significance, and, for ancient symbols, ―archetypeness‖ as belonging to the number of primary ideas and images. The functions of the symbol include: generally semiotic – informative and communicative; specific – epistemological, axiological, emotive-affective, social, cultural-unifying, representative, and in some of the symbols – aesthetic and mobilizing.

SEMANTICS OF OBJECT AND NON-OBJECT VERBS (BASED ON “DEVONI LUGOTIT TURK”)

This article discusses the semantic groups of verbs and gives examples of verbs from Mahmud Kashgari’s “Devoni Lugotit-Turk”. It is known that this work is one of the largest and most important sources on the history of Turkic languages, a rare book that describes the development, status, distribution, differences and similarities of Turkic languages in the X-XI centuries. As for the semantic groups of verbs, this topic has been studied for many years. Each linguist is divided into groups based on their point of view. We first adopted the patterns of semantic analysis from Russian linguistics, and then divided them into smaller groups, depending on the degree to which a person participates or not, and also into subgroups depending on the function of the verbs. It is in this article that non-object verbs are divided into semantic groups and analyzed for a number of reasons.

Modern onomastic terminology: Ukrainian and Russian scientific discourse as to the formation of the Internet onomasticon

Nowadays, more than 1 billiard of “computer names” have been registered, that is why it is vital to outline the Internet-onomastics into a separate branch of onomastics. The article reflects upon discussions in the Ukrainian and Russian linguistics related to the interpretation of the new terms of proper names that function in the Internet. Though the Internet communication has been constantly developing, linguists have not developed a unified system of proper names for the Internet-communication. Some terms that have been proposed are not always consistent with main word-formation requirements: relevance, eloquence and analogy. Moreover, they do not reflect Slavic onomastic naming tradition. There is an urgent need to create a unified system of the Internet-onomastic; in particular, by minimalizing a range of synonymic terms and by actualizing their transparent motivation. Researchers give some propositions as to the aptness of usage and active introduction of some terms, justifying some motives for the nomination.

TO THE QUESTION OF SUBSTANTIVISATION IN THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE IN COMPARISON WITH RUSSIAN

Recently transposition became the issue of many research papers for being a complicated and sophisticated language phenomenon, and its definition has been broadened. The issue of transposition and the degrees of verb transitivity are the most controversial and difficult ones both in Hungarian and Russian linguistics. This issue may be investigated on different language levels: lexical, syntactic, morphological and on the level of word formation. Taking into account the mobility of parts of speech boundaries in the compared languages we attempt to find the cause of words transitioning from one lexico-grammatical class into another, investigate transposition as a natural phenomenon both for the Hungarian and Russian languages, differentiate transition in parts of the speech system from other language phenomena, solve some contentious issues regarding parts of speech, for example ‘noun-adjective’ relations, and others. Despite having extensive literature concerning nominalization in Russian linguistics and some works in Hungarian linguistics, some aspects are not comprehensively covered in them. For example, different types of transitions from other parts of speech into nouns, thorough semantic and thematic categorization of substantivized words, characteristics of their functioning in texts of different functional styles, principles of creating lexicography, etc. In this article we compare the process of substantivation amidst the system of parts of speech in languages of such different structure as Hungarian and Russian. Comprehensive and comparative study of the process of transition of other parts of speech into nouns allows us to conduct a deeper investigation of each of these languages’ structure and also to reveal typological similarities and differences between them. These languages have not been explored this way so it provides scientific novelty to the research. For the first time we define the main conditions of a systematic process of transposition in Hungarian and Russian and reveal both specific and universal opportunities for transition in the compared languages. We use comparative analysis for researching semantic models of substantivized words, distinguish different types of transitions into nouns and describe structural and stylistic features. Thus, the topic of the research is the grammatical, semantic, structural and stylistic features of substantivized words in Hungarian and Russian. The objective of the study is to discover linguistic nature of substantivation of adjectives, verbs and verbal formations, numerals and pronouns, to find out specific and universal features caused by typological differences of the researched languages. To achieve this goal we need to solve the following problems: determining the place of substantivation in the system of word formation in Hungarian and Russian, discovering how much substantivation and conversion being productive ways of word formation are identical in Russian and Hungarian, distinguishing semantic models of substantivized words and compare them, comparing models of usual and occasional substantivation and determine its productivity, studying their structure which means showing peculiarities of substantivized words’ grammatical structure in Hungarian and Russian, discovering similarities and differences between them and finding adequate models. The research is based on data of dictionaries of Russian and Hungarian languages, examples of fictional texts, live speech and not the least on the idioms. Theoretical importance lies in the following: 1) the research develops the theory of transitivity as we study transposition in two languages of different structures using comparative analysis of substantivized words and taking into account grammatical, semantic and functional aspects; 2) using the materials of two languages of different structures we discover the main conditions of systematic transposition and distinguish its universal and specific features; 3) for the first time the problem of transposition is studied on the basis of Russian and Hungarian from a theoretical point of view (on the example of transition of other parts of speech into nouns); 4) we develop the methodology of a comprehensive approach to study substantivation in Hungarian and Russian which can be used when describing this phenomenon in other languages of different structures.