Analysis of the Full-Size Russian Corpus of Internet Drug Reviews with Complex NER Labeling Using Deep Learning Neural Networks and Language Models

The paper presents the full-size Russian corpus of Internet users’ reviews on medicines with complex named entity recognition (NER) labeling of pharmaceutically relevant entities. We evaluate the accuracy levels reached on this corpus by a set of advanced deep learning neural networks for extracting mentions of these entities. The corpus markup includes mentions of the following entities: medication (33,005 mentions), adverse drug reaction (1778), disease (17,403), and note (4490). Two of them—medication and disease—include a set of attributes. A part of the corpus has a coreference annotation with 1560 coreference chains in 300 documents. A multi-label model based on a language model and a set of features has been developed for recognizing entities of the presented corpus. We analyze how the choice of different model components affects the entity recognition accuracy. Those components include methods for vector representation of words, types of language models pre-trained for the Russian language, ways of text normalization, and other pre-processing methods. The sufficient size of our corpus allows us to study the effects of particularities of annotation and entity balancing. We compare our corpus to existing ones by the occurrences of entities of different types and show that balancing the corpus by the number of texts with and without adverse drug event (ADR) mentions improves the ADR recognition accuracy with no notable decline in the accuracy of detecting entities of other types. As a result, the state of the art for the pharmacological entity extraction task for the Russian language is established on a full-size labeled corpus. For the ADR entity type, the accuracy achieved is 61.1% by the F1-exact metric, which is on par with the accuracy level for other language corpora with similar characteristics and ADR representativeness. The accuracy of the coreference relation extraction evaluated on our corpus is 71%, which is higher than the results achieved on the other Russian-language corpora.

Aesthetic perception of the Russian sound speech by Germans (a case study of German internet forums)

The article is devoted to the aesthtic assessment of the sound of Russian speech as reflected in German Internet forums. Segmental and suprasegmental features of Russian pronunciation which evoke in native speakers of German empathy and / or antipathy towards Russian sounding speech, are described. The ordinary Germans' naive assessment of Russian souding speech differs from that by professional linguists. Germans who are not familiar with the theoretical basis of the phonetic structure of the Russian language pay attention, first of all, to those pronunciation features that are not characteristic of the phonetic basis of the German language. Among them on segmental level are the following: trembling sonant [r̥], vowel [ᵻ] and back-lingual slit [ɣ] after vowels [e], [i] and consonants [lʲ], [nʲ], [j], the pronunciation of which in German in this position is pronounced as ich-Laut [ç]. The Germans also seem to dislike clusters of consonants that are absent in the German language, for example, -рск-, -здр- etc. The presence of these sounds in the Russian language allows ordinary Germans to characterize Russian sounding speech as rude, despite the remarks of the Germans that there are many “soft” sounds i.e. palatalized consonants in the Russian language. The main difference at the suprasegmental level, which in the scientific literature is designated as the opposition of the German “staccato” and Russian “legato”, finds its confirmation in the statements of German members of the forum. The rhythmic organization of Russian speech is assessed by common Germans as discordant and indistinct, since, unlike German speech, Russian speech is characterized by relaxed articulation, non-forced vocalization, an extended melodic range and an irregular rhythmic patterns. In addition, the use of different pitch movements in friendly and aggressive communication encourages Germans to qualify the speech of Russian speakers in obvious situations of friendly communication as confrontational.

Secondary Somatic Nominations in Media Texts Covering Economy, Business and Politics Spheres

The article set out to reveal the specific features of secondary somatic nominations in media texts in the spheres of economy, business, and politics. The significance of the problem under study is implied by a need for elucidating the evolution of language consciousness by shedding light on how corporeal lexis in the Russian language is involved in verbalization of reality in the spheres in question. The study demonstrated that secondary somatic nominations evolve due to transformation of the meaning of a linguistic unit, whose primary meaning is associated with various aspects of the human body existence. This transformation of the meaning seems to be a common way of denotating reality in the texts under investigation. We specified the sources of somatic expansion, whose semantic content is most frequently redefined in the thematic fields in question. We also identified the denotation areas (conceptual fields) where corporeal lexis is used in their secondary meanings. Our research demonstrated considerable pragmatic potential of the texts including somatic linguistic units. We established that their evaluative content results from axiological connotations associated with various corporeal concepts in the Russian linguoculture. Their expressiveness is achieved due to imagery created by unusual contextualization of somatic linguistic units. The results of the current study made it possible to establish the ways of transforming the meanings of somatic linguistic units in the investigated spheres in the Russian language. Transformation of the meanings of somatic lexis occurs by using metaphors, metonymy, similes, irony, epithets, oxymoron, gradation, language game, etc.

Between Proper Name and Appellative: Lexicography of Words with Borderline Status (Exemplified by Neologism Brexit)

The problems of lexicography of new words that appeared in the Russian language in the 21 st century are considered based on the materials of the upcoming thematic Explanatory Dictionary of Unity and Enmity in the Russian Language of 2000–2020. The author of the article is one of the dictionary compilers. It is stated that the difficulties of describing new borrowed lexical units, that are at the stage of usage, are associated with the establishment of their lexical, grammatical and stylistic characteristics. Criteria for their determination are proposed. The principles of choosing the variant of heading word spelling in a dictionary entry are argued. Based on the methods of definitional, linguoculturological and content analysis using textual material extracted from mass media resources, a methodology for compiling a dictionary entry has been developed, which makes it possible to give a detailed description of the lexical, grammatical, stylistic, paradigmatic and pragmatic characteristics of current borrowings. As a result of this technique application, a dictionary entry of Brexit neologism is presented, reflecting the unstable position of this lexeme in the Russian language system, the status of which fluctuates between a proper name and an appellative. The material and methodology for its systematization can be considered when compiling explanatory dictionaries of new words in the Russian language.

Intensifiers in the Language of the 21st Century: Word-Building, Semantics, Syntagmatics and Dynamics of Evalution

The article considers the categories of evaluation and intensity in cognitive and pragmatic aspects. The purpose of the research is to establish the relationship between the categories of evaluation and intensity based on the material of word-building and lexical-semantic units from lexicographic sources and media and fiction texts. As a result of the research, word-building and lexical-semantic intensifiers are characterized by the use of word-building, semantic and contextual methods. The article shows such kinds of intensifiers as affixes and affixoides in neoderivatives, neoderivatives created on the base of reduplication. The article shows the estimated ambivalence of dimensional-evaluative affixes, in connection with pragmatic conditions, context and semantics of productive base. The article describes such an extension of the functional range of intensifiers as oxymoron quality and ambivalence of lexical intensifiers. The functions of the intensifiers (pragmatic and stylistic) are defined. The repeatability of syntagmatic bias models indicates the dynamics of evaluation in the class of lexical intensifiers in the Russian language of the modern period. The phenomena described in the article generally show the development of the semantic category of intensity in the Russian language of the 21 st century, which is expressed in the dynamics of its components, such as word-building means, word-building units, lexical units.

Classification of Incomplete Sentences of the Russian Language

Annotation: In the Russian language, there are different principles for the classification of sentences, and one of them is according to the completeness and incompleteness of a given syntactic unit. What exactly this means is explained at the lessons of the Russian language. This topic is very important for understanding the principles of writing sentences and syntax in general. Keywords: sentences, syntactics, grammar, semantics, complete sentence, incomplete sentence, structural features, meaning.

Profesor Iryda Grek-Pabisowa (1932–2021)

Professor Iryda Grek-Pabisowa (1932–2021)This article presents the profile of Iryda Grek-Pabisowa, a renowned linguist, associated with the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences for sixty years. She was a long-serving head of North Borderland Polish, and the deputy director of the Institute for two terms (1996–2003). She was a pioneer of research on the language and culture of Old Believers in Poland, and the language of Poles in Belarus and Lithuania. The most important research areas on which she focused were dialectology and lexicography: the study and description of the subdialects of Old Believers living in Poland (e.g. A Dictionary of the Dialect of Old Believers Living in Poland), the Russian language (e.g. The Great Russian-Polish Dictionary) and North Borderland Polish (7 monographs and A Dictionary of the Spoken Polish of the North-Eastern Borderland). She is the author or co-author of about 160 articles, 11 monographs and 7 dictionaries. In 1974–2003 she was associated with the journal Acta Baltico-Slavica, initially as its secretary and then editor-in-chief. Profesor Iryda Grek-Pabisowa (1932–2021) Opracowanie przedstawia sylwetkę Irydy Grek-Pabisowej, znanej językoznawczyni przez 60 lat związanej z Instytutem Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Przez wiele lat kierowała Pracownią Polszczyzny Północnokresowej. Przez dwie kadencje pełniła funkcję wicedyrektorki ds. naukowych w IS PAN (1996–2003). Była prekursorką badań języka i kultury staroobrzędowców w Polsce oraz języka Polaków na Białorusi i Litwie. Do najważniejszych kierunków badawczych należały dialektologia i leksykografia: badanie i opis gwar staroobrzędowców mieszkających w Polsce (m.in. Słownik gwary starowierców mieszkających w Polsce), język rosyjski (m.in. Wielki słownik rosyjsko-polski) oraz polszczyzna północnokresowa (7 monografii oraz Słownik mówionej polszczyzny północnokresowej). Jest autorką lub współautorką około 160 artykułów, 11 monografii i 7 słowników. W latach 1974–2003 była związana z rocznikiem „Acta Baltico-Slavica”, początkowo jako sekretarz, a następnie jako redaktor naczelna.

Obraz radzieckiego sportu w moskiewskiej „Trybunie Radzieckiej” w ujęciu ideologicznym i językowym (1927-1938)

The paper explores the relationships between sport and politics in the USRR in the interwar period. The aim of the paper is to show how ideology and propaganda were implemented in the Moscow newspaper „Trybuna Radziecka”. The article is divided into two parts. The first part describes how communists, through sports, exerted influence on Soviet people to encourage them to assume a desired attitude. In the second part sport vocabulary found in „Trybuna Radziecka” are presented (eg., the names of athletes, sports disciplines). Almost items are borrowed from the Russian language. Our research shows how citizens in the USRR were indoctrinated by the press in the interwar period, also in the field of sport.