"Semantic modification and lexical neologization – a means of enriching the Bulgarian lexicon"

In this article the neo-semanticisms are presented by real neologisms and occasionalisms, excerpted in recent years from Bulgarian media texts with different thematic orientation and stylistic expression. Commens are also made on the lexicon that has emerged through tracing and borrowing, which builds formal relations of homonymy with words that already exist in our language. Each of the 44 lexical items is presented in a dictionary article, including its morphological and semantic characteristics; word formation parameters; the motivating foreign word (if any); distribution of the palette of semes registered in the lexicographic arrays; the new sememe – the result of semantic transformation, in a minimal context; classification of the free and/or stable word combination it forms; the formal and semantic relations in which it enters and its stylistic affiliation. The study finds that the enrichment of the vocabulary of the Bulgarian language is achieved as a result of democratization, colloquialization and internationalization of the language. Semantic modifications are realized mainly through: metaphorization, metonymization, personification and comparison.

"Getting down with Covid, being crowned, under quarantine, or language transformations during a pandemic "

The focus of the paper is on the neologisms that have occurred in Bulgarian as a result of the pandemic. The corpus of analysis comprises linguistic exchanges collected during some personal conversations of the author with a number of informants as well as occurrences of the encountered neologisms in the social and mainstream media. The neologisms were also compared with the linguistic entries in some reference books and their frequency of use was checked through search engines. One of the main conclusions reached is that despite the fact that some of the analysed neologisms are not part of the official lexicon they are widely used in the social and the mass media, which means they are an active part of everyday life of Bulgarians.

"Predicativization and predicatives – a level of transformation and problems with their lexicographic reflection in paleoslavic lexicographic works"

The author studies the predicates from the lexicologist’s perspective – she comments on the mechanism of their word-formation, their semantics and paradigmatic interrelations in the lexical system of the Old Slavonic language. She also responds to the linguistic discussion regarding the so-called category of state. Last but not least, she deals with the question of lexicographic reflection of predicates in Palaeoslavonic vocabularies.

Transformative dystopia in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth

This paper explores a hitherto unexplored issue in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), and namely the meaningfulness of the fact that two of the main characters in the novel, the Englishman Alfred Archibald Jones (Archie) and the Indian Bengali – Samad Iqbal, go through an extreme dystopian experience leading to their discovery of multiculturalism during World War II in the spaces of a defunct British tank and of a little Bulgarian village near the Greek and Turkish border. The paper examines some of the cultural incongruities in the novel, which renders the “Bulgarian” experience there locked in a dystopian space generated by the Bulgarian village as well as delineates the transformative significance of this experience in Archie’s and Samad’s awakening to multiculturalism.

"“Selam“-code in international projections and transformations"

In the article, the florocode, generated by the cultural etiquette and everyday practice of “the language of flowers”, is considered as a multicultural phenomenon in the dynamics of its culturological semiosis and reception by nation’s cultural mentality. The harem code-game (salem), “transferred” from the East (presumably from Turkey) to Europe with its rich centuries-old fund of plant symbols, was reduced to the emblematic “language of flowers” and underwent a radical transformation – re-coding: the formal rhyming principle of generation and the transfer of information by cryptography has become content-associative. Transformation is further presented in the development of the “linguistic” aspects of the florocode – its “grammar” and “syntax”. And, finally, in the process of adapting the florocode by different national cultures (French, German, American, Russian), it was modified synchronously with the change of cultural epochs and the priorities and tastes dictated by them, broadcasting the specifics of the cultural mentality of a particular nation.

"Unity in thinking: transformations of the concept of cooperation in the German cognitive-linguistic continuum"

The work is an attempt to consider the concept of “cooperation” in cognitive-linguistic terms, taking as a syntagmatic basis “thinking”, which contains the motivating feature of the primary basis: the cognitive verb denken [think]. The term “semantic function” is one of the main terms in the work: this function acts as a stimulus for semantic transformation and the formation of a new semantic quality. The aim of the research is to analyze different semantic transformations in: 1. Formation of a derivative prefixed verb mitdenken. 2. Formation of the reflexive verbs sich einigen and sich sammeln. 3. Formation of the construction “adverb and cognitive verb”: miteinanderdenken/ zusammendenken / gemeinsamdenken. 4. Formation of the construction “preposition, pronoun and cognitive verb”: mit anderen erarbeiten. Through the method of componential analysis, the work presents lexemes, morphemes and functional words referring to the same semantic field.

"Transforming Latin into Old English: Binomials in the Theodulf Capitula and their Old English versions"

Each translation is a transformation. This is also true of the Theodulfi Capitula (ThCap) and its two Old English translations. These illustrate two opposite ways of translating. The Old English version which is here called ThCapA is a relatively free rendering with additions and omissions, whereas the Old English version here called ThCapB is a very literal translation with hardly any additions and omissions. This is also true of their treatment of binomials. Whereas the A-translator sometimes adds binomials in his OE version and changes those in his Latin source (the ThCap), the B-translator tries to render each binomial of his Latin source, but he does not add any new ones. The treatment of binomials in the ThCapA and the ThCapB will be discussed in more detail in the present article.

The dream of Pencho Slaveykov and the metamorphosis of poet’s idea

After the middle of the 19th century, secular culture and literature were constituted, which separated them from Christianity. The poet’s figure is developed in the cultural field. In Petko Slaveykov's lyrics, the poet serves his fellows, dedicating himself and his “singing” to the collective and the national idea. In the age of modernism, subjectivism and anthropocentrism dominate. In Pencho Slaveykov’s view, the poet must follow his personal, individual, unique, unrepeated soul path in wandering, in trouble, in solitude. He does not think of earthly glory but of life after death. Through the categories of modernism, Pencho Slaveykov reconsiders and resemantizes the poet’s figure and behavior. The poet is a leader. He serves the others while following his path of the chosen one, of the prophet of a moral ideal.