No 2 (2025)

The article studies the history of the confixal model of the verb formation with the first part v(o)- and the last part -s’a in the context of the interaction of the Russian literary language with other European languages. The word-formation processes leading to the formation of verbs with the first part v(o)- and the last part -s’a are studied. Since the 1750s the confix v(o)-...-s’a characterizes the verbs that show deepening into the action itself, such as slushat’ > vslushat’s’a. The preceding simpler complete word-formation chains were chains like t’anut’ > vt’anut’ > vt’anuts’a and krast’ > krast’s’a > vkrast’s’a. Moreover, when forming confixal verbs of intensely focused perception, the middle link is dropped: smotr’et’ > *smotr’et’s’a > vsmotr’et’s’a. The specificity of these derivatives is that their producing verbs also turn out to be verbs of goal-oriented perception: slushat’ (but not slyshat’), smotr’et’ (but not vid’et’), n’uhat’ (but not obon’at’). Confixal verbs of deepening into action suggest goal setting and have a positive connotation. Their meaning may move away from motivating non-reflexive prefixless verbs if they are calqued: dumat’ > vdumat’s’a, chitat’ > vchitat’s’a, the meaning of goal-setting is transferred to the confix. Verbs of movement such as vbit’s’a, vtolknut’s’a often have a negative connotation. The verbs like voplotit’s’a calqued from Greek in the 10^th–11^th centuries are listed (a total of 12 well-preserved verbs).

A rationale is given for the word-formation calquing of the italian innamorarsi at the beginning of the 18^th century by the Russian verb vl’ubit’s’a. The German-Polish version of the influence on the formation of this verb is rejected. Both chronologically and semantically, this verb is isolated from other verbs in the v(o)-...-s’a. Arguments are given in favor of the calqued character (from German) of the verbs vdumat’s’a, vchitat’s’a, vzhit’s’a, vrabotat’s’a, vchuvstvovat’s’a. The history of the imperfective verb vl’ublivat’s’a is considered, which was already known since the 1730s and reinterpreted by M. Tsvetaeva in a series of her many individual authorial neologisms on v ... ivats’a. Contrary to the main tendency to replace the forms like ulovl’at’ by the forms like ulavlivat’, the literary form of vl’ubl’at’s’a turned out to be more stable.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the phenomenon of absolute and relative clitics within the approach according to which a clitic is a word form unable to constitute a phonetic word on its own, i. e. without a combination with other words. It is argued that when defining absolute/relative sound adjacency, one should consider not only pronunciation of a clitic itself, but also its interaction with the host. For example, in zamër[s‿v^j]ed’ ‘froze after all’, the particle is a relative enclitic because of a voiceless [s] in place of the voiced phoneme /z/ at the end of the host, although the particle ved’ is pronounced without any phonetic peculiarities in itself (as [v^jɪt^j]). Further analysis of stressed and unstressed clitics is required in connection with the degree of their contact; it is necessary to understand whether relative stressed clitics exist in principle and whether, consequently, such a subclass of language units ought to be distinguished. Besides, the absolute/relative nature of clitics should be reflected consistently in the main part of an orthoepic dictionary; for instance, in the dictionary entry on the functional word ved’, voiceless realizations of the voiced consonant phoneme at the end of the previous word form ought to be reflected in order to inform a reader that the variant zamër[s‿v^j]ed’ is standard one, unlike zamër[z‿v^j]ed’, as it commonly believed.

The article is devoted to the history of the use of the preposition чрез in combination with the names of time intervals (night, day, morning, evening, with the names of seasons and the words year and time) in the accusative case, which indicate that some event took place during the whole of the named time interval. This construction is found in Old Slavonic; in Old Russian writing it is actively used in historical narrative. In the last quarter of the 17^th century, as a result of the increase in translations from Polish, the preposition чрез received semantic development under the influence of the preposition przez; at the same time, the construction чрез A1 in the meaning “throughout A1” also became somewhat widespread. At the turn of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the use of this construction is characteristic of authors from the close entourage of Peter the Great. In one of the first codifications of the Russian language, V. A. Adodurov’s essay “The First Foundations of the Russian Language” (1729–1731), this construction was described as “dissonant”. By the beginning of the 19^th century, the frequency of use of the construction falls, as the first place is taken by the construction чрез/через with the name of the time interval in the role of A1, denoting “after A1”. At the same time, the construction was used until the beginning of the 19^th century, and sporadically even later. This use of the preposition through has not been the subject of linguists’ research so far.

The article deals with the early lyrics of V. V. Nabokov, mainly the texts included in the 1923 collections “Gorny Put’” (engl. “The Mountain Way”) and “Grozd”. It particularly emphasizes the importance of the word pearl/pearls (both as noun and as adjective) in Nabokov-Sirin’s poetics. The article argues, for the synesthetic artist like Nabokov, pearl is not just clearly different from white, but also contrasts with it (“Christ walked with his disciples...”). The use of pearly color helps the author create the images of what is gone (“Romance”) and what might have been (“The Drunken Knight”), of the fragile poetic soul (“Poets”) and reverential admiration for the nature (“Cypresses”). Furthermore, the article points out how rarely “pearl” is used in Nabokov’s poems in its literal meaning — a precious stone, a luxury item (“In the Wild North”, “The Land of Poets”). More often, it is portrayed as the equivalent of the intangible values. The article goes on to conclude that having appeared already his pivotal poem “The Rain Has Flown”, a pearl (a raindrop — the center of the universe) becomes one of the most eloquent metaphors by Nabokov. The metaphor is played up in the way common for the world literature, when an outlandish stone raised by incredible efforts from the bottom of the sea, symbolizes a spiritual search (“The Pearls”), but also, notably, in the context of biblical symbolism (“The Last Supper”, “Christ walked with his disciples...”); includes numerous allusions and reminiscences (Nizami, Gethe, Blok, Gumilev, Mayakovsky).

The relevance of the study is related to the increased attention in modern linguistics to issues reflecting the metalinguistic reflection of the speaking person, and is due to the active use of metalinguistic comments in the text of V. P. Krapivin’s autobiographical work “Slavka from Herzen Street”, their important role as a means of expressing the author’s intention and establishing contact with the reader. The purpose of the article is to consider the objects of metalinguistic reflection, the types of metalinguistic comments in the named work, to identify and characterize meta-operators. During the work, the following methods were used: contextual analysis, descriptive method, classification method. It is noted that in an autobiographical work, reflexives are contained mainly in the speech of the author-narrator and include his comments about language and speech not only from the position of an adult, but also from the position of a child through the prism of an “adult” perception of objective reality. Most often, concrete and proper nouns become the object of metalinguistic reflection in the work under consideration. The work identifies and analyzes the following types of metalinguistic comments reflecting metalinguistic reflection: 1) ideas about language, linguistic units and the relationships between them, based both on scientific knowledge and objective facts, and on the speaker’s naive understanding of linguistic phenomena; 2) a characteristic of a linguistic unit and a linguistic fact, based on their perception by the individual and containing an assessment from the point of view of compliance with the so-called reality, the speaker’s value and emotional attitude to it; 3) features of actualization and use of a language unit in a specific speech situation. It is concluded that the inclusion of metalinguistic comments in the text is one of the features of V. P. Krapivin’s idiostyle; the multi-aspect characteristics of linguistic units, facts of language and speech, the use of verbal and graphic meta-operators indicate the author’s desire to make the text as understandable as possible for the reader, to establish a virtual dialogue with him, and also shows the writer’s caring attitude to the word and to the Russian language in general.