No 3 (2024)

The paper discusses the functional and semantic features of the precedent phenomenon v derevnyu, k tetke, v glush’, v Saratov in the Russian language culture when referring to the province. The pragmatics of the phenomenon is related to its component structure reduction. Two and three-component transforms prevail over the initial four-component collocation. The changes in the precedent phenomenon structure may be accompanied by the compositional switch, and changes in their grammar features. Under any transformation, the semantic centre glush’ stays the same. This is due to the zone of the Golden Ratio, which falls on the third component of the initial collocation. The precedent phenomenon and its transforms actively function in the strong textual positions of the title, the first and the last sentence of the text or the paragraph. In such a case, the three-component transforms undergo modal transforms within the framework of the variable interpretation of reality. Two-component transforms serve as a basis for a problem segmentation, which enables the problem to be defined and the situation to be described. The semantic features of the precedent pheno­menon are represented by the range of the contextually relevant meanings as well as by the inclusion in the opposition “capital — province”. The precedent phenomenon v derevnyu, k tetke, v glush’, v Saratov is used for different language games, such as analytical formations and contamination.

The article examines two views on the terms as parts of speech. One of them suggests that a term can be expressed only by a noun or a substantial word combination, i. e. by a phrase which has a noun as syntactically most principal word. This point of view is based, first, on the fact that it is the noun that has broad semantic capabilities and isable to convey the essence of terminological names, and, second, on the analysis of real terminological dictionaries, in which noun is the most often input unit. Another point of view is that the term can be expressed not only by a noun or substantial word combination, and modern lexicographic practice seems to confirms this. The authors consistently provide examples confirming that linguistic specificity of the term cannot be limited by its expression only by nouns. For example, the adjectives technogenic, cerebral, juvenile, etc. are not derived from any substantive, which theoretically could have been the case, but so far there are no such nouns either in dictionaries or in any relevant texts (technogenic — technogenicity* or technogeny*, cerebral — cerebrality*, cerebral*, juvenile — juvenality* or juvenile*). Such adjectives act as independent terms and express certain concepts in the relevant science. Thus, the authors argue that the term can be expressed not only by a noun, but also by an adjective and a verb.

The article examines the language of the personal letters of tsarina Evdokia, the first wife of Peter the Great, which were included in the printed text of a legal document, the manifesto of 1718. It describes a step-by-step investigation into the case of an alleged conspiracy against the tsar, at the center of which was Evdokia, by that time (since 1698) nun Elena. The choice of material for the article was dictated by the author’s interest in the evolution of the business genres of the Russian office, a truly new stage of which occurred in the 18^th century, a time of large-scale government reforms and, as a consequence, the restructuring of the entire system of business communication serving the work of the Russian Empire. Personal letters of the former tsarina, primarily addressed to her lover, childhood friend, officer of the Preobrazhensky regiment, Stepan Glebov, became a separate object for research for two reasons. Firstly, before the Manifesto of 1718 there were no public documents in which the internal unsightly aspects of the royal family life were publicly announced. Evdokia’s love letters became available to the general public: the Manifesto was printed in two thousand copies and sold freely. Secondly, for the first time, a legal document that had all the signs of the clerical style of the early 18th century included love letters, creating a bright stylistic contrast with the general style of the business text. It is also known that Peter actively intervened in the draft text of the Manifesto, corrected the wording, and inserted entire fragments written in his own hand. Consequently, the printed text of the document, which was subject to mandatory publication, was important to the emperor in this form. The manifesto performs a number of important pragmatic functions in the conditions of the new Peter the Great era: in addition to the obvious informational, it has edifying, influencing and imperative functions.

The article is a commentary on the phrase “Thoughtfully and meekly” from B. Okudzhava’s song “A visiting musician” (1971). It is suggested that the possible sources of the line are Alexander Kushner’s poem “To the Zoological Museum...” (1962), unpublished to this day and distributed in typewritten copies in the 1960s, and Vasily Kazantsev’s poem “We drank with him at the machine...” (first publication — 1964) The first of them could have attracted Okudzhava with its potential songfulness (a fragment of it was actually performed in song in the film “Two Sundays”, 1963) and the absence of Soviet optimism, alien to both poets; the second is the image of a poet appearing in urban everyday life, a combination of high and low. Okudzhava was close friends with Kushner; Okudzhava and Kazantsev participated in the celebration of Poetry Day in Novosibirsk in 1964. Along the way, the literary fate of this line is briefly traced: it is also found in other authors, some of which turned to it already under the influence of Okudzhava (Vladimir Kovenatsky, Veronika Dolina, etc.). Author of the article published (for the first time) as an appendix, A. Kushner’s poem “Memory” (1984), dedicated to Okudzhava.

This article presents an attempt to assess the quality of the translation, to establish relations of adequacy and equivalence between the literary texts of the novel “Devils” by F. M. Dostoevsky in Russian and Azerbaijani. The novel was written and published in 1870–1872, but was translated into Azerbaijani only in 2011. When conducting a comparative analysis of texts, we encounter some inaccuracies and distortions of the original text. The literary text of Dostoevsky is differentiated by its polyphonism, ideology, unique characters, as well as space-time unity, idiostyle and poetics. It is important to observe the above-mentioned features of the original in translated texts. Comparing adequate parts in the original and translated texts, the author of the article points out some inaccuracies in the transmission of numerals. These inaccuracies in translation affect the intensity of novel’s events, which is undesirable. The article also points out the cases of incorrect transliteration of proper names (especially in stage directions), historical facts (in particular the name of the newspaper), which can mislead the reader. Inadequate rendering of personal pronouns, indicating the gender of the characters, contributes to an illogical perception of the events of the novel. The author of the article attributes some of the discovered inconsistencies to technical errors and omissions of the translator, and some to editorial inattention.

The study is based on the material of the world soul monologue, embedded in Chekhov’s play “The Seagull”, and its intersemiotic translation, provided by the authors of the performance “The Seagull”, directed by Mark Zakharov in 2005. The study aims to examine the question under discussion in respect of the adequacy of intersemiotic translation relying on the analysis of the material. The research was carried out using methods of description and comparison, discourse analysis, as well as the method of functional analysis. It has been proven, that the interpretation of the Moscow State Theater “Mark Zakharov’s Lenkom” is primarily based on the divergence of graphic and intonation parcelling. The deliberately violate the principles of the actual division of syntactic structures in the text of A. P. Chekhov and create parcellemes that are not conditioned by the syntax of the invariant text. It is emphasized that there is a number of translation deformation in the theatrical text. The conducted research allowed to reveal cases of the exclusion or substitution of the original text (omission or replacement of conjunctions, substitution of some punctuation) and the inclusion of elements that were originally absent in the monologue and introduced into it by the authors of the theatrical text (discursive words, clarifying word, assertives).

The article offers an explanation of the rules for punctuation of prepositive attributive phrases and provides a commentary on the corresponding section of the Code of Spelling and Punctuation Rules of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The problem of detachment is proposed to be solved in connection with the category of taxis and the category of definiteness/indefiniteness. Detachment is a means of expressing dependent predicativity, which results from additional associations between the attributive phrase and the predicate. The condition for the appearance of these associations and additional adverbial meanings between the main and dependent predicates is taxis, understood as a technique of interpredicative interaction. The other aspect of the problem of detachment is the semantics of a defined noun or pronoun to which the phrase refers. The rules for detachment of attributive phrases defining a noun, correlate with the ones for pronouns, which makes it possible to show the significance of the referential status of a defined noun for distinguishing between attributive and predicative-attributive relations. As the Russian grammar doesn`t have articles, the category of definiteness/indefiniteness reveals itself in the rules for detachment of prepositive phrases at the absolute beginning of a sentence. The condition for detachment in this position is the concrete referential status of a noun being defined (its familiarity from the previous text, its definiteness and individuality). The prohibition on detachment is due to the values of uncertainty and generality in the meaning of the nominal component. The paper also considers synonymous relations between participial and gerund phrases at the absolute beginning.