From 3 to 5: Pragmatic Functions of Child Code-Switching

The paper focuses on the pragmatic peculiarities of Russian-English code-switching in the speech of the children who simultaneously acquire Russian and English according to "one person – one language" strategy within a Russian family in Russia. The research data are pragmatically marked utterances of the two boys made when each of them was at the age of three to five. Their bilingualism developed as a monoethnic one since they acquire one of the languages (Russian) from a native Russian speaker and the other (English) from a non-native speaker who belongs to Russian ethnos and culture. The authors argue that pragmatic functions of code-switching reflect the children's attitude to each language and bilingual communication. Child bilingual pragmemes are studied longitudinally, which helps the researchers to reveal the dynamics of code-switching intentions within three years of children's bilingual communication. The results of the study demonstrate the prevalence of addressee-oriented and inducing pragmatic functions of code-switches during the whole period under study. The explanation for this fact lies in the specific strategy of bilingual development and the understanding of the importance of each language in children's bilingual communication. By the age of five, the children gradually develop their bilingual self-reflection, which results in more frequent metalinguistic pragmemes in their mixed utterances.

The Phonological Analysis of Russian Accent in the Way Back Movie by Peter Weir

Many speakers around the world have their own way in pronouncing English words as International language. The unique way in pronouncing English words is called accent. This research aims at analyzing the deviances on segmental vowel quality and quantity made by the Russian speaker in The Way Back movie by Peter Weir regarding to English short and long vowels in Russian accent. The research method was descriptive qualitative method. The research data was collected from converted audio of The Way Back Movie by Peter Weir. The data was then trimmed, selected and extracted by Praat software analysis. The results show that the Russian speaker makes deviances in pronouncing English vowel quality and vowel quantity. The total amount of deviances is 169 deviances which are divided into three classifications; those are segmental vowel quality, combinatorial quality and segmental vowel quantity deviances. The deviance that is mostly made by the Russian speaker is segmental vowel quality deviance, whereas the deviance that is rarely made by the Russian speaker is combinatorial vowel quality.

CHEKHOV'S RUSSIA AS ARCHETYPE IN MODERN RUSSIAN LITERATURE

The article describes the ways of representing Chekhov's Russia as an archetype that exists at the deepest levels of the cultural consciousness of the Russian person. It was revealed that Chekhov and the images he created are present in the works of modern Russian literature as plots and as precedent phenomena - texts, names, statements and situations. Turning to the plots of A.P. Chekhov, the images he created and the image of the writer himself, modern authors demonstrate a creative treatment with them, often transforming the form and content of artistic phenomena created by the writer. This indicates the strength of these phenomena in the cultural space of a modern Russian speaker and their acquisition of archetype properties. It is concluded that the modern writer acutely feels the need to turn to this archetype to express his creative potential, to establish contact with readers, for a more accurate description of characters, situations, and realities of Russian reality.

Teaching English pronunciation to a Russian speaker (a single-case analysis)

This article provides an analysis of a Russian-speaking student's speech sample compared to British normative pronunciation. A number of inconsistencies with the "generally accepted pronunciation" of vowels and consonants,as well as the rhythm of speech, were identified in the speaker's pronunciation. The article discusses the most common mistakes in the student's speech and offers phonetic exercises to improve articulation.

My many selves are still me: Motivation and multilingualism

Two concepts of multilingualism that relate to the selves aspect of Dörnyei’s (2009) L2 motivational self system (L2MSS) are highlighted in this article: Thompson’s concept of perceived positive language interaction (PPLI) and Henry’s notion of the ideal multilingual self. With the dynamic model of multilingualism informing both concepts (Herdina & Jessner, 2002; Jessner, 2006, 2008), the intangible advantage that multilingual speakers have over monolingual speakers is clearly articulated in the discussion of this topic. The interconnectivity of language systems is an inherent aspect of the DMM; as such, both Thompson with PPLI and Henry with the ideal multilingual self incorporate the DMM as a framework to indicate the fluid nature of these constructs as additional language learning experiences are added to the system over time. This article further explores the dynamicity of multilingual learners’ language systems and the influences that induce change. Specifically, data from Thompson’s (2017b) study on LOTE learners are re-examined to explore this question. Additionally, excerpts from Natasha Lvovich’s (1997) The Multilingual Self, an autobiography of an L1 Russian speaker, are analyzed to present different possible models of incorporating the multilingual self and PPLI. The article ends with a discussion of an inherently multilingual context, as well as thoughts regarding the possibility of different types of future selves.

Emotional and receptive-axiological aspects of the speech act of threat in everyday conflict communication in Russian

The article analyses the emotive aspect of the production and perception of the speech act of threat and the specificity of the perception of this act by a modern native speaker of Rus­sian. The act of threat is an instrument of influence exerted on the listener. Its effectiveness depends on the strength of the negative emotions of anxiety, fear, etc. initiated in the listener. At the same time, the production of threatening statements is often associated with the speak­er's emotional state, which in some cases can serve as a catalyst for imperative influence. The speech act of threat, being an element of conflict discourse, contradicts the traditional princi­ples of productive communication and the legal norms of any developed state. In everyday communication, a verbal threat can be regarded as a way of implementing communicative intentions that are completely justified from the socio-ethical point of view. For a modern Russian speaker, threat is not a communicative taboo and can be deliberately used in conflict situations related to the protection of human dignity, life, social values, etc.

Perception of Word-level Prominence in Free Word Order Language Discourse

This study examines the contribution of constituent order, prosody, and information structure to the perception of word-level prominence in Russian, a free word order language. Prominence perception is investigated through the analysis of prominence ratings of nominal words in two published narrative texts. Word-level perceived prominence ratings were obtained from linguistically naïve native speakers of Russian in two tasks: a silent prominence rating task of the read text passages, and an auditory prominence rating task of the same texts as read aloud by a native Russian speaker. Analyses of the prominence ratings reveal a greater likelihood of perceived prominence for words introducing discourse-new referents, as well as words occurring in a non-canonical sentence position, and featuring acoustic-prosodic enhancement. The results show that prosody and word order vary probabilistically in relation to information structure in read-aloud narrative, suggesting a complex interaction of prosody, word order, and information structure underlying the perception of prominence.

Lexical Substitution and Paraphasia in Advanced Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

The paper presents the case study of lexical selection in Alzheimer-type dementia. Lexical substitutions in poem recitation and conversations of a Russian speaker, who suffered Alzheimer-type dementia, were analyzed on the background of the lexical retrieval and slip-of-the-tongue phenomena. The classification of the substitutions is worked out on the basis of the links between a target word and its substitutions. The current context plays an essential role as natural priming for a substitution in a poem recitation. Some words have predisposition to be lost; the units belong to the figurative language or to the category of infrequent lexemes. In conversation, the patient masked failures by referring to the circumstances and appealing to the sense of humor. Positive emotions facilitate recollecting of words, involved in the description of real-life events, due to the relatively spared nondeclarative memory. The changes in the substitutions and paraphasias categories between AD stages are statistically significant.