Semantic Condensations in French and Russian Proverbs Based on the Thematic Group Family

The article is devoted to the study of semantic condensations in French and Russian proverbs from the point of view of family values perception by native speakers of French and Russian. The analysis was carried out based on a study of a card index of proverbs extracted from paremiographic sources that offer a presentation of the material on a thematic basis and contain headings and subheadings related to family and family relations. In order to achieve greater objectivity of the results, the authors carried out a selection and counting of the number of identical proverbial units of the studied thematic group both in French (114 units) and Russian (270 units) paremiological dictionaries. A quantitative and semantic analysis of the key lexemes associated with family presented in the titles of headings, subheadings and proverbs of the card index allowed identify semantic condensations, which most clearly reflect behavioural priorities and peculiaritites of values comprehension. Proverbial semantic condensations are understood as the main meanings and moral and ethical formulations, containing in a condensed form the meaning of a proverb and excluding its figurative component, which may differ in various languages. A comparative analysis made it possible to identify both universal and specific components in the considered French and Russian proverbial condensations, as well as values and anti-values adjacent to the family, which enables us to characterize their perception and functioning in the system of value coordinates of the studied ethnic groups. The presence of significant similarities is explained by the universality of family values and their understanding. Differences mainly lie in the fact that in the French material there is a more individualistic and pragmatic-everyday orientation, while in the Russian material there is a tendency towards the collective (family) and an emotional-sensory orientation. Russian proverbs are distinguished by a greater degree of concentration of thematic key lexemes. The differences in semantic condensations, the value perception of the family, and their representation using units of different linguistic levels, the functioning of which is explained by a combination of typological features of the compared languages, once again demonstrated the connection between the latter, the uniqueness of the world perception and the way of thinking of individual ethnic groups.

Gorazd: An Old Church Slavonic Digital Hub and the Romanian Slavonic studies

The aim of this paper is to present the utility of the Gorazd: An Old Church Digital Hub for scholars working with Old Romanian and Slavonic texts written on the territory of today’ s Romania. The Gorazd Project was realized during the years 2016–2020 and it includes an Old Church Slavonic Card Index and three Old Church Slavonic lexical databases, among which the largest one is represented by the digitized and updated version of the monumental Lexicon linguæ palæoslovenicæ (vol. I–IV, 1958–1997) composed by the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the Czech Academy of Sciences. As the Gorazd Project uses English as meta-language, its application is not limited to narrowly specialized Slavic philologists, but it is also open for scholars of neighbouring fields. The dictionaries within the Gorazd Digital Hub can serve as a reference tool not just for the oldest attested Slavonic vocabulary and its semantics, but also for the biblical concordance of the Slavonic oldest Bible redaction and the oldest attested Old Church Slavonic morphological forms.

Results of the international project on publishing the works of Gertsel’ Shklyar

At late December 2017, in pursuance of the previously concluded international agreement on cooperation between Kostroma State University and the Centre for Research of Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, a three-year work plan was approved. It included a project aimed at systematisation, scientific interpretation and preparation for publication of the heritage of Gertsel Shklyar, a talented linguist who, in the mid-20th century, contributed a lot to Belarusian linguistics, Russian linguistics, hebraistics. In the course of the project, previously unknown facts of Gertsel’ Shklyar’s biography, summary of the results of his scientific activities during his work at the Belarusian Academy of Sciences (the 1930s) and Kostroma Pedagogic Institute (the 1940s–60s) were disclosed. The linguistic scientist worked actively in the field of Belarusian studies – he participated in the compilation of the Belarusian-Russian and Russian-Belarusian dictionaries, studied Polonisms in the Belarusian language, worked on amending the existing Belarusian-language spelling, on the creation of university textbooks on the modern Belarusian language. Together with Sof’ya Rokhkind, he created the USSR’s first “Yiddish-Russian Dictionary (Jewish-Russian Dictionary)ˮ. Research in the field of the Russian language was mainly dialectological. Gertsel’ Shklyar laid the foundations for the card index of Kostroma regional dictionary. The article examines the results of the international project, highlights the events dedicated to the presentation of the book of selected works by Gertsel’ Shklyar.

CHANGES IN MARI NUMERAL PHRASES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF MARI-RUSSIAN LANGUAGE CONTACTS

This article presents the results of a study of the Mari numeral phrases in terms of the influence of the Russian language. The aim of this work is to trace the role of Russian borrowings in the formation of Mari numeral phrases, primarily in the expression of their components, and to reveal other changes that have arisen under the influence of similar phrases and structures of the Russian language. The study was conducted on the basis of the lexical card index of the MarNIIYALI (Mari Scientific Research Institute of Language, Literature and History), which is based on written sources of the meadow-eastern literary norm, namely, its electronic part in the amount of about one thousand author's sheets. During the collection and analysis of material, elements and techniques of the following research methods were applied: descriptive and analytical (observation with the identification of the studied facts in sources, their generalization, interpretation and classification, description), comparative (regular comparison of Mari models with Russian ones for identity and non-identity), comparative-historical (in other cases, indications of the origin of the words), quantitative (counting models of various groups containing Russianisms). According to the results of the research, Russian borrowings may play a role of a head word (3 units in 4 models) and a dependent component (mainly substantive case forms and postpositional constructions, numerals, as well as some pronouns and adverbs of degree in 14 models). 3 models with cardinal numbers as a head very rarely can be represented by phrases with Russianisms in both components. As a result the syntactic units in some models and the models of numeral phrases themselves were replenished, the last ones by 3 units. Also the shifts in the forms of grammatical number of dependent nouns in some models appeared.

Card Index of Former Latvian SSR KGB Agents: Trauma and the Path to Public Reconciliation

In August 1991, the Republic of Latvia took over the documents of the former Latvian SSR KGB, including the card index of KGB agents. At that time, by postponing the card index publication, the political authorities made the issue of former KGB agents a hostage of their political interests. Discussion on the fate of the card index continued in Latvian public sphere over the next 27 years. The stance of the political elite, which found support in some groups of society, was opposed to the publication of the card index, being concerned about a possible witch-hunt and psychological trauma of the people mentioned in the card index as well as their relatives. However, as a result of public pressure, after lengthy indecision, the card index was made public in December 2018. Unfortunately, the publication of the card index has offered only a formal solution to the issue of the former KGB agents, and the expected results have been achieved from the aspect of neither historical truth nor public reconciliation. Only a small number of people mentioned in the card index have admitted the fact of their cooperation and just a few have expressed public regret. In turn, after 27 years of political elite’s hesitancy, most of the KGB persecution victims accepted the publication of the card index in silence. However, it is clear that denial and silence are not the way to public reconciliation and comprehension of trauma. Those few attempts to make one’s experience public show that in today’s situation people can seek reconciliation only with themselves and within themselves.

Compilation and Dissemination of Lithuanian Paremias: Contemporary Resources

The Collection of Lithuanian Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases built by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore in Vilnius presents a thorough view of the corpus of traditional paremias. A larger part of the Collection consists of archival data, another one – of paremias collected from written sources.Archival data – that is paremias mostly from the Lithuanian Folklore Archive (LTR), Lithuanian Scientific Society’s Archive (LMD). These texts are mainly samples of the spoken language and dialects. The oldest archive collections are from the 19th century. Another large part of Lithuanian paremias compilation consists of texts collected from written sources. It is worth to mention, that we have around 1500 proverbs from the period of the 16th to the 18th centuries.The collection is accessible through three resources: they are the Card Index, the publication “Lithuanian Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases” (LPP), and The Electronic Compilation of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (eLPP).The Card Index was the first organized and systematized resource of Lithuanian paremias and served as the base for LPP and eLPP. The Card Index was created in 1970–1990 following the initiative of professor Kazys Grigas, who was also the author of the system of it. There are around 50 000 proverb types and more than 200 000 variant texts in the Card Index.At the end of the 20th century, LPP was started to be compiled. There have been three volumes published until now (Vol. 1 – 2000, Vol. 2 – 2008, Vol. 3 – 2019). LPP presents carefully sorted data without duplicates, copies, and fakes, and it has some additional data: Lithuanian paremias equivalents (in Latvian, Polish, German, English, Latin, and Russian) and type titles’ translations into English, German, and Russian.In 1998, eLPP was started and in 2018, after receiving funding from the Lithuanian Research Council (LMTLT), the database was updated. Now, the database also has an English version. eLPP includes the Card Index’ data and LPP data as well, with an exception of paremias variants. Due to the recently observed rising need to find an explanation of a saying, the category “Interpretation” has been introduced. The newly programmed search engine now contains functions of a simple search, advanced search, and selection lists. The database address is http://archyvas.llti.lt/elpp/lt, an email for comments and questions is [email protected].

Церковнослов’янська лексика зі семантикою ‘Бог; Божа особа’ у староукраїнських текстах

The present paper is based on materials of different genres and different styles of Ukrai- nian written monuments of the 16th and the 17th centuries (acts, court documents, wills, deeds, documents of church and school fraternities, chronicles, works of religious, polemi- cal and fiction, memos of scientific and educational literature, liturgical literature, episto- lary heritage, etc.) which are included in the source database of the Dictionary of Ukrainian language of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century and its unique lexical card index, which is stored at the Ukrainian Language Department in the I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Lviv). The composition and structural organization of Church Slavonic lexemes meaning ‘God; God’s face’ as well as their origin and history are studied.It was found that the register of this vocabulary included more than fifty phonetic and graphic Church Slavonic elements expressing the concept of ‘God; God’s face’ different in word-forming structure. The main attention is paid to the etymological analysis of the studied tokens, which was primarily to clarify their semantic etymon. It is established that the analyzed Church Slavonicisms are mostly semantic loans from the Greek language, which preserved their semantics from ancient times to the Old Ukrainian period.It is observed that some studied tokens often act as core components of various two-, three-, or four-membered lexicalized phrases. The most active multifunctional core com- ponent was the token Lord. It is established that fixed phrases and phraseologisms are of different types in structure, mostly two-component noun + adjective phrases (sporadically, there are other lexical-grammatical models, too: “noun + noun”, “preposition + adjective”). Much less observable are three-component formations (“noun + verb + pronoun“, “verb + pronoun + noun“) and four-component models (“verb + preposition + pronoun + noun”).It was found that the Church Slavonic words attested in the Ukrainian memos of the 16th and the 17th centuries did not undergo significant semantic changes in the process of formation of religious vocabulary. Some Church Slavonicisms have gone through a partial semantic modification, and some have acquired new semantics due to fixed phrases. Some words that point to God’s face are characterized by polysemy and synonymy.The evolution of the analyzed Church Slavonicisms is different. Some of them have survived to our time and are actively used in the Ukrainian literary language or dialects, while others function only in a special area: in the church practice of the Byzantine rite (Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church).

Textual Manifestation of the Phraseological Scheme “N1-6 + so + N1-6” in Publicistic and Artistic Discourses

The article is devoted to identifying the functional features of the phrase scheme “N1-6 + so + N1-6” in the texts of the journalistic and artistic styles of the Russian language. Structural, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of linguistic units of this structural type are considered. Various approaches to the description of phraseological schemes of the Russian language are commented, but the authors propose to consider the combination of structural-semantic and functional-communicative approaches as the main one for this study. It is noted that in the Russian language the studied phraseological scheme is presented in two homonymous variants, which have the meaning of the highest degree of manifestation of the feature and the meaning of consent / acceptance. Arguments for highlighting these options, which are confirmed by the difference in semantics, component composition and grammatical variability of each phraseological scheme, are given. The authors pay special attention to identifying the contextual meanings of this syntactic structure. Such types of meaning of consent and acceptance are considered, such as forced / uncontrolled, indifferent consent / acceptance, conscious / controlled, etc. The relevance of the study is due to the emergence of new facts of phraseologization of syntactic units in speech and the application of complex analysis to the phraseological units under consideration. The material was the texts of the National Corpus of the Russian language, as well as the authors’ card index.

Notes on the diatom collection of the Natural History Museum, London (BM) II–IV. Some type specimens in the genus Aulacodiscus Ehrenberg and nomenclatural notes on Thumia Cleve ex F.B. Taylor

The diatom collection at the Natural History Museum, London (BM) is in the process of reviewing the card index that is the primary guide. The cards direct the user to the glass slides in the collection that are supposed to include specimens of the particular species indicated. The cards indicate which slides contain type specimens. Not all the types have been discovered. Occasionally, a card will refer to a name that has never been published, effectively a manuscript or herbarium name. This series of notes has been created to clarify some of those names and, where necessary, validly publish the names (part I was published earlier, Williams 2020).