Recent changes in London English. An overview of the main lexical, grammar and discourse features of Multicultural London English (MLE)

This paper is intended to provide an overview of the main lexical, grammar and discourse features of the so-called Multicultural London English (MLE), a recent multiethnolect that can be regarded as a new development of London popular speech with the addition of traits from a pool of other sociolects and varieties of English, namely Caribbean and Jamaican English, and with a high proportion of young speakers. The data here analysed have been extracted from multiple sources, such as the London English Corpus (LOE), the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT), dictionaries, magazines, films, TV series, song lyrics and social media, mainly Twitter. Particular attention is paid to those grammar and discourse features which can be considered as the most innovative, such as the quotative this is + pronoun, man used as a personal pronoun, the overuse of a set of vocatives (brother, mate, boy, guy(s), bastard, dickhead), the invariant tags innit and you get me, the adjectives proper and bare used as intensifiers, a high presence of negative vernacular forms (ain’t, third person singular don’t), never as negative preterite and a high proportion of negative concord structures. As regards lexis, a wide range of borrowings and loan words from other varieties and languages are recorded together with an excessive amount of general vague nouns and general extenders.

Об изменениях в лексике русской лирической поэзии

The paper intends to present the general tendency of lexical change in Russian lyrical po- etry during the last two hundred years on some arbitrarily selected examples. The odes of Lomonosov were accomplished in the lofty style based on Slavonic, rhetorical, and other “poetical” devices. In Derzhavin’s ode Felica, enthusiastic and ironical elements, pathos and everyday talk are combined. In Zhukovski’s romantic poetry the objective sense of words is overshadowed by their emotive overtones. In avoiding the grandiloquent romantic lexis, Nekrasov describes the hopeless hard life of Russian peasantry with deep sympathy, and reliably reproduces the popular speech. In the cited poem of Akhmatova, the psychic drama of the heroine is expressed by a peculiar connection of words belonging to different stylistic layers. The entirely prosaic lexis and syntax of Blok’s short poem suggests the poet’s feeling about the hopeless immobility of life in a condensed metaphoric shape. Vino- kurov’s poem relates an imagined accidental meeting of former lovers after thirty years of their separating in an entirely colloquial style. Since a poem of genuine aesthetic value appears as a complex artistic work, its components mutually strengthen, supplement, or compensate each other. Thus, the increase of colloquial elements in the poetic vocabulary does not necessarily indicate a process of “depoetization”.

The Travels of a Set of Numbers: The Multiple Networks Enabled by the Colombian ‘Estrato’ System

This article documents how a Constitutionally grounded effort to institute ‘cross subsidies’ for public utility payments gave rise to a set of numbers that never achieved the goal of cross-class solidarity. This legal based system lived on, in large part because the numbers were quickly adopted both in popular speech and by multiple institutions, in an uncoordinated manner. Scalar tensions are key to the story: the Colombian ‘estrato’ system for classifying residential properties (initially for differential utility payment purposes) has at its core a set of numbers that was designed as nationally valid: but the work of labelling all residences with one of the six numbers to produce zoning-like ‘estrato’ maps incites qualitative micro-local knowledge. Overall, we show that local knowledges of socioeconomic difference constantly clash with and undermine not only the initial ambitious plan to render cross-class ‘solidarity’ technical but also the subsequent efforts to propose more rational alternatives.

ETYMOLOGYOFFAVORITEFOLKEXPRESSIONS

Thearticleisdevotedtothestudyoftheetymologyofpopularfolkexpressions. The author studies variants of the origin of echo constructions and colloquial-expressive expressions. Attention is drawn to the life cases of using this or that expression. Semantic connections and phonetic affinity with similar words of Russian and foreign languages are revealed. It is shown that in popular speech it is common to encounter the phenomenon of the game, draws attention to the euphemistic nature of many folk expressions. The author draws a conclusion about the fascination and unpredictability of folk word-making.

Parodia, intertextualidad y sátira en la narrativa policial de Lorenzo Lunar Cardedo

Detective fiction as parodic reformulation of genre’s defining patterns has a long history in the Latin American tradition: Borges, Bioy Casares, Soriano, Levrero, Ibargüengoitia, etc. Besides, the evolution of Latin American detective genre has always been characterized by a progressive focalization in the social aspects over the detective story line which has served as a mask to depict in a critical way the flaws of the region’s societies and governments. In nowadays Cuba it could be highlighted the crime narrative of parodic slant by Lorenzo Lunar Cardedo. Among the major features of Lunar Cardedo’s style there are the marginal atmospheres, the stylization of popular speech, the intertextuality, the humor, the parody, and the social criticism. This article focuses on the parodic, intertextual and satiric aspects of his work, particularly discernible in the novel Proyecto en negro (2013), in which the author emphasizes – in opposition to the official discourse – the perpetuation of corrupt, chauvinist, racist, and homophobic behaviors in contemporary Cuba, while relaxing the genre formula limits in order to follow a much more irreverent path within the new Latin American detective fiction.

The neo-Pythagorean view of musical structure in the light of music psychology

The aim of this paper is to show why the neo-Pythagorean claims concerning musical structure are out-of-date and require the incorporation of contemporary psychological knowledge. The neo-Pythagorean view of musical structure has been analyzed and confronted with the contemporary neuropsychological view of music perception. It has been also suggested that musical intervals exist solely in human brains as a kind of interpretation of acoustic sounds. These sounds can be interpreted differently depending on many factors, which the popular speech-to-song illusion clearly illustrates. Another example of neo-Pythagorean ideas about musical structure that need psychological knowledge is tonal hierarchy, which also exists solely in human brains. Therefore, the popular musicological description of musical intervals in terms of mathematical proportions is misleading. It has been proposed that current musicological theories should always be confronted and consistent with contemporary psychological knowledge. This implies closer cooperation between musicology and the psychology of music.

The Peresopnitsa Gospel of 1550s–60s: the first attempt in Ukraine to translate the texts of the Gospel into “Russian mova” — a language close to popular speech

The article deals with a wonderful monument of book and language culture, the Peresopnitsa Gospel. This parchment manuscript of large format (482 s.) was written in 1556–61 in the Ukrainian land of Volhynia. It contains the first translation of the Holy Scripture from Church Slavonic language into the West-Russian language, which included the Old Ukrainian and Old Belarusian dialects. Some structural and linguistic features of the monument tell us that translators of the Gospel used West Slavic and possibly Greek texts. The Peresopnitsa Gospel is one of the most precious ancient manuscripts of the Ukrainian people.

Sophronius of Vratsa, the author of the first ever Bulgarian “Autobiography” and composer оf “Nedelnik”, the first Bulgarian printed book in a language close to popular speech

The author considers the biography and creative output of the Bulgarian educator, Bishop Sophronius of Vratsa (1739–1813), author of the first-ever Bulgarian “Autobiography” and the first Bulgarian printed book Nedelnik (“Sunday Book”) published in a language close to popular speech. He created them during the period of the Bulgarian national revival, which was characterized by an abundance of unfinished genre and stylistic forms: a phenomenon common in the transition from one literary era to another. All this was fully evident in the two main innovations of Sophronius: “Autobiography” and Nedelnik.

Use of fixed combinations in the modern student’s speech

We consider the issue of fixed combinations associated with their use, the relationship with the system of phraseological units and memes in the speech of a modern student. We determine the semantics and function of some popular speech units formed due to the influence of Internet communication, this affects the state of the language culture of the people. We reveal the most frequent memes in students’ oral speech. The reasons why memes in oral speech have replaced phraseological units become expression mean constantly using these fixed combinations on the Internet. It was found that students, among whom the majorities are active users of the network, react to the repetition of memes, their brightness, and relevance for the expression of the emotions. Short-term, constant updating gives these combinations the novelty effect. The desire for adequate communication in school society, lacking sufficient experience of speech creativity form its own system of language expression of students, as well as the productivity of the fixed combinations use. The constant use of fixed units of a new type introduces them into the limits of personal relationships, acquires the character of a system, so it negatively affects not only the culture of communicants.