Interrogative modifications of mononuclear and two-member sentences in modern Russian

The purpose of the article is to define and characterize the paradigm of interrogative modifications of mononuclear and two-member sentences that have the function of an expressive message, which do not imply a verbally expressed answer. The article substantiates the convenience of their definition as rhetorical statements. Members of each paradigm are analyzed from the point of view of their structure and semantic features, considering not only the standard meanings of denial, affirmation and subjective reflection, but also modal and emotional-evaluative shades. The article points out the peculiarities of their intonation which is different from the intonation of an interrogative sentence; the specifics of the structure (the presence of reinterpreted interrogative-pronominal words (pronominal components) and interrogative particles, that represent rhetorical formants); a complex of subjective-modal meanings. These properties create the expressiveness of the analyzed models. We also draw attention to their phraseological character, though the degree of their impenetrability is not as high as that of the actual phraseological units. Taking into consideration the above aspects, we analyze the paradigm of interrogative modifications of some mononuclear and two-member sentences with a supporting component что, also included in the analytical predicative combinations что толку, что пользы, что нужды, etc. We note the specifics of modal-temporal meanings of interrogative modifications in comparison with typical structural models of mononuclear and two-member sentences, as well as a tendency towards generalization of these meanings. Standard predicate-modal meanings of inexpediency and unimportance are enriched with various emotional shades of subjective modality. Among the analyzed models, the article highlights evaluative ones with a predicate что (что такое) in two-member models and with analytical predicate forms: что хорошего (плохого, удивительного, странного, etc.).

Specifics of using foreign language loanwords in chinese and russian advertising

The article presents the main research on the problem of using borrowings of world famous brands in chinese and russian. The author of the article analyzes the features of penetration and functioning of borrowings in the structure of advertising text, since it is advertising that has become a significant phenomenon of modern culture, reflecting not only typical visual images and mental stereotypes, but also representing the linguistic habits of different language speakers. Advertising demonstrates not only linguistic, but also social, cultural and linguistic processes taking place in different languages. The study provides a comparative analysis of borrowings, describes their main linguistic features. Particular attention is paid to examining the ways of penetration of borrowings into the chinese language. Both a brief description of the lexical base of borrowings in the chinese language and a diachronic analysis of borrowings are given. The article provides certain data on the dynamics of the appearance of foreign words in the modern chinese language. The given synchronous analysis of foreign lexical units in chinese and russian advertising has made it possible to demonstrate how various factors influence the frequency of the use of borrowings in different languages: from linguistic to social and cultural. The thematic classification of borrowings describes various methods of penetration of foreign vocabulary into chinese and russian advertising. The analysis is based on the names of world famous brands. The classification of the main types of borrowings in russian and chinese advertising is given. The study notes that the number of borrowings in chinese advertising is equal to their number in russian one. In many cases, brand advertising in chinese uses duplication, a method that best preserves the words of the recipient language in the new lexical format. The authors come to the conclusion that the specificity of using borrowings in these languages has both specific intralingual factors characteristic of these languages and external, economic and social factors.

Russia and China: from fear of pan-Mongolism to perception of Eurasianism

This article is a fragment of a series of publications by the author on the relationship between the three civilizations that largely determine the fate of the world today, namely, America, Russia, and China. The subject of the study is civilizational identity, which is formed by both internal and external factors. Internal factors should include the key events that took place in the history of each civilization, determining both the mentality of the people and their collective identity. External factors include the pressure exerted by the values of other civilizations, especially those claiming leadership in modern history. There is a concept of the «Other» in contemporary philosophy. The article also examines the interaction between civilizations according to the principle of the «Other». It is clear that going beyond Westernization in the early twentieth century and not being the leader of world history, although the historical archetype of «Third Rome» seemed to oblige the country to play this role, with the revolution of 1917 giving grounds for this, Russia has experienced a long period of transition in the twentieth century. Nowadays, in the situation when China is claiming to play the role of a new world leader, Russia has started thinking of its Eurasian roots more often. As for China, enchanted by Marxism, it also underwent a long period of transition in the twentieth century, during which relations between Russia and China became more complicated, although it seems that Marx's ideas and the idea of socialism should have contributed to their becoming closer. By now, the conflicts between Russia and China seem to have been resolved. For some time now, the idea of Russian émigré thinkers, who called themselves Eurasianists, has become the new political course. In all likelihood, the rise of China cannot but affect the transformation of the civilizational identity of today's Russia. Thus, the question once asked by the Russian thinker P. Chaadayev has become relevant again – which supercivilization is Russia closer to: the West or the East. The author attempts to examine this psychological transformation unfolding in Russia through the prism of cinema, analyzing Russian, American, and Chinese films in this, as well as in the previous and subsequent publications in this journal.

Linguo-cultural concepts of colour in english, french and russian (on the material of phraseological units with colour attribute)

The relevance of the given research can be explained by the fact that concepts of colour represent significant information about the hierarchy of values within the linguistic community and contribute to the notion «colour picture of the world». It is reasonable to conduct a research of colour from the perspective of cultural linguistics, in particular, of its branch, linguistic conceptology. The article provides a linguo-cultural analysis of the colour conceptual sphere, represented by phraseological units with colour attribute and colour words in the english, french and russian languages. The objectives of the research are to carry out a comparative analysis of phraseological units with colour attribute and colour words in the english, french and russian languages and reveal their universality, difference and their unique character in the linguistic cultures under consideration. The main methods of the research are comparative and interpretation analyses as well as etymological and quantitative methods. The main sources for the research are phraseological units with colour attribute and words denoting colour collected from english, french and russian phraseology dictionaries using the continuous sampling method. The research has led to the following conclusions: man perceives the world around through colours, because colour accompanies almost all manifestations of human life; every language culture is characterized by its own ethnic-priority and ethnic-relevant colours; colour acts as an expression of universality, difference and uniqueness in the perception of the outside world. The theoretical significance of the study lies in the development of linguistic and cultural conceptology with regard to the conceps of colour.

Peculiarities of using lexical means in the work of V. V. Rozanov's «The Fallen Leaves»

The subject of the study is the lexical means used in the «Fallen Leaves» (1913, 1915) – the work by V. Rozanov, a publicist and a writer of the XIX – first third of the XX centuries – which represents a new author's genre – a leaf. Particular attention is paid to identifying the methods of using the vocabulary in this work in terms of expressing the author's thought in an aphoristic form, when the word plays a crucial role not only in generating the author's individual meaning, but also in expressing emotions and opinions.The author of the article identifies and demonstrates the most significant methods of using lexical means: subjective emotional and rational definition of concepts; interpretation of the meaning of words through contextual «increment» that creates the author's inferences; filling a word with contextual meaning by using associative images; the use of various lexical means, as well as tropes, stylistic figures to create connotative meaning and expression of the text; the method of creating a semantic opposition based on the antithesis; the use of metaphors, antitheses, gradations as textforming factors. The most significant methods of using lexical means are identified and demonstrated: subjective emotional and rational definition of concepts; interpretation of the meaning of words through contextual «increment» that creates the author's inferences; filling a word with contextual meaning using associative images; the use of various lexical means, as well as tropes, stylistic devices to create connotative meaning and expression of the text; the method of creating a semantic opposition based on the antithesis; the use of metaphors, antitheses, gradations as text-forming factors. It is stated and confirmed that the text-forming role is played by special means of creating imagery: metaphor (expanded metaphor), personification, antithesis and pun. Repetition and comparison are relevant in the «leaf» genre as the means of creating connotative meanings and enhancing expression. The author of the article considers special writer’s techniques which include semantic opposition and inferences formed both deductively and inductively and often serve as the main factors of text formation. These features, reflecting the characteristics of vocabulary, are both the methods of generating meaning, expression, evaluation and the signs of the «leaf» genre. The author concludes that the technique of using different lexical means is one of the main features of the writer's idiostyle.

The concepts of «reality» and «statement» in the analysis of modal alternation in Spanish relative subordinate clauses

The article analyzes theoretical works that raise the problem of analyzing the use of the subjunctive mood in subordinate relatives in Spanish based on the concept of «reality». This topic is relevant and widely discussed among Spanish researchers. Earlier, the author has already attempted to study a different concept – the concept of «statement». This concept, based on the hidden semantics of the whole sentence, is applicable to the analysis of subordinate object sentences. The aim of the study is to determine the features of the subjunctive mood use in subordinate relative sentences in the Spanish language, based on the semantic features of the concepts of «statement» and «reality». This article attempts to implement the concept of «statement» in the analysis of subordinate relative clauses. The author concludes that this concept is not always applicable to the analysis of this type of subordinate clauses. However, we cannot completely exclude it from the analysis. The concept of «reality», which is in its own way a consequence of the concept of «statement», helps to explain the modal alternation in subordinate relative clauses. The subjunctive mood indicates the abstractness of the antecedent or the speaker's doubts about the existence of the antecedent in reality. The indicative mood, on the contrary, indicates the reality of the object or the speaker's belief in its existence. The materials of this study raise questions related to the application of concepts within other types of subordinate clauses and in other closely related languages (French).

Comparative and contrastive analysis of French conjunctive expressions «autant que», «d'autant que and d'autant plus que» and their Spanish equivalents

The article is an attempt of a semantic and syntactic analysis of French complex conjunctions autant que, d'autant que and d'autant plus que. The author undertakes to find out which means of conjunction can be regarded as their equivalents in Spanish. The research is based on the data provided by dictionaries and translations of French fiction and press into Spanish. The article defines the grammatical status and lexical meaning of the conjunctions autant que, d'autant que and d'autant plus que and their Spanish equivalents, analyzes the conditions of their functioning in speech, reveals common features and differences in the fields of syntagmatics and paradigmatics. The conjunction autant que can denote a variety of meanings and their shades: comparison, limitation, equivalence, condition, concession. In Spanish it corresponds to tanto como, como, cuanto, hasta donde, según lo que, en lo que, todo lo que and the combination a más po + infinitive, cuando, por mucho que. French verbless constructions containing autant que can be translated by Spanish constructions containing lo que, lo mismo que, el mismo + noun + que, al mismo tiempo. French conjunctions d'autant plus que and d'autant que correspond in Spanish to tanto más cuanto que, tanto más cuanto, tanto más que. These conjunctions serve to indicate additional motivation for the action described in the mainsentence. They introduce subordinate clauses expressing additional reason and operate within constructions consisting of three components: the motivated message, the main reason, and the additional reason.

Parentheses in A. Belyi's poetry and prose

The article examines peculiarities of the use of parentheses in A. Belyi's lyrics and prose. The author describes the main aspects of analysing parentheses in modern linguistics: description of their functional features, their link with the main body of the statement, parentheses as text forming means, time and space organization of the text, realization of the author's irony, means of conveying evaluative information, ways of comparing, metatextual comment, informative actualization, means of creating a dialogue in a fiction text, usage parentheses in particular genres. This study identifies the most characteristic functions of parentheses in A. Belyi's texts, the connection of parentheses with different textual levels and their role in the overall structure of the literary text. Both the most typical and unique functions of parentheses in A. Belyi's works are described in detail. The main functional features of parentheses are defined in terms of space and time organization of the text and the interaction of various informative and subjective speech plans of the text. The article outlines the main aspects of language game within the framework of parentheses, as well as the means of interaction between the parentheses and the main context, presented in the poetry and prose of A. Belyi. The analysis suggests that the most typical functions of the parentheses in A. Belyi's works are detailed portrayal of the character, switching space and time registers, making comparisons, clarification, and conveying emotional and evaluative information.

Classification of interpersonal interaction verbs with semantics of mental influence

The purpose of this article is to describe the verbs of interpersonal interaction with the semantics of mental influence in the English language and to consider the criteria for semantic classification, on the basis of which the selected verbs can be grouped. There is a large number of works devoted to the study of lexico-semantic, pragmatic, morphological and other features of individual subgroups of interpersonal interaction verbs (in particular, compulsion verbs, verbs of speech influence, etc.), however, no attempt has yet been made to identify, study and classify a group of interpersonal interaction verbs with the semantics of mental influence. The material of the study is dictionary definitions from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, as well as examples from the National British Corpus. The study describes in detail the procedure for selecting verbs of interpersonal interaction with the semantics of mental influence, identifies the features that are integral for this group of verbs, as well as the criteria for semantic classification, on the basis of which the selected verbs were divided into subgroups. Verbs of mental influence have a complex semantic structure. The signs «interpersonal interaction» and «impact on the object» are integral for the studied group of verbs. The sign of intentionality is not integral, but it is included in the semantic structure of most verbs of this group. In addition, the semantic structure of verbs of mental effects shows thatthe classification of verbs in this group may be an indication of the impact on a particular area of the psyche which indicates the correlation of the meanings of mental influence verbs with the findings of modern psychological theory

Traditions of franciscanism and pilgrimage in the life and work of A. Dobrolyubov

The fate and personality of Alexander Dobrolyubov gave rise to a kind of Dobrolyubov myth about the eternal wanderer in the culture of the Russian Silver Age and in many ways unfairly obscured his literary work. The article traces the influence of Francis of Assisi on Dobrolyubov's own life-creating strategy and his contemporaries' perception of him as a «Russian Francis. The author considers the peculiarities of artistic interpretation of the whole complex of motifs associated with the fate and personality of the Italian saint in the last collection of Dobrolyubov's works, From the Book Invisible (1905). The author analyzes the image of the pilgrim, glorification (preaching) of the poor, hermit’s life and the unity of man and wildlife, plants and the elements of nature in the context of teachings of St. Francis and the Russian franciscanism of the modernist era; the features of their modernist reception are traced in Dobrolyubov’s works written after his «departure». On the other hand, the author reveals evidence that the poet implements the individual author's interpretation of the characteristic Russian cultural and historical phenomenon of pilgrimage (real, metaphysical and spiritual), which was reflected, for example, in N. S. Leskov’s works, and philosophically interpreted in science and criticism of the early 20th century (V. Rozanov, N. Berdyaev, etc.). The author suggests that the poet was influenced by an anonymous work of Russian religious literature «A Pilgrim's Confessional Stories to his Spiritual Father». As a result, the author concludes that the poet creates a modern variation of the Franciscan image of the «simple man» and the divine man, possessing the gift of communication with nature, who combines the features of an Italian ascetic preacher with the type of a Russian pilgrim-god-seeker.