Russkaâ rečʹ

This paper presents an experimental study of predicative agreement in person and number with two types of quantified subjects containing a personal pronoun. Using two syntactic experiments with a rating task (the Likert scale), we compared the properties of the elective (dvoje iz nas ‘two of us’) and nominative (my dvoje ‘us two’) constructions regarding the preferred form of the verb in two configurations: with the preverbal and the postverbal position of the subject. Ordinal numbers (from dvoje ‘two of’ to semero ‘seven of’) and the quantifier word vse ‘all’ were compared as well. The results show that word order has a significant impact on the acceptability of different agreement strategies. For the elective construction, with the SV order, agreement by person and number of the quantifier is available, and the default agreement is rated as significantly less acceptable, while with the VS order, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the two agreement options. For a nominative construction with SV, only agreement by person and number of the pronoun is possible, while with VS, all strategies are rated as acceptable. 

On behalf of the President of the Russian Federation, we have started working on the creation of the National Dictionary Fund (NDF). NDF is a digital resource that contains electronically recorded data on the functioning of the norms of the Russian language from various dictionaries. The development of NDF is due to the need to create a single, complete body of scientific knowledge, reliable and objective information about the norms of the Russian language in their current state and historical dynamics in a certain era of its development, as well as the history of the vocabulary of the modern Russian literary language from the time of its appearance to the present day. The system of Russian dictionaries will be integrated into a single network operating in a continuous development mode and representing an interactive dynamic model of the lexical system of the modern Russian language. It is supposed to have open access to information through a convenient digital tool with simple navigation. The NDF will be equipped with linguistic markup and an online search system for necessary information. NDF will offer the user not only the opportunity to see the information from a particular dictionary, but will also provide an expertly developed tool for extracting various types of language information from dictionaries.

The article is devoted to the complete reduction of unstressed vowels in the standard Russian language. The article shows that the cases of dieresis of unstressed vowels in the dictionaries of various types are not always represented consistently. For example, in the academic “Dictionary of the Modern Standard Russian language” variants with a graphic reflection of the vowel dieresis are noted in prítolka, páportnik, zhávronok, púgvitsa, but “Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language” fixes only the variants púgvitsa, púgvichnikъ. In orthoepic sources, the corresponding pronunciation recommendations are also contradictory: in the “Dictionary of Stress and Pronunciation of Words in the Russian Language” the variants príto[lk]a and próvo[lk]a are marked as incorrect, while in the “Big Orthoepic Dictionary” these variants are recognized as the main ones. The article proposes to distinguish, on the one hand, the lexical or morphological attachment of the vowel dieresis to a specific word or morpheme, and, on the other hand, the actual lexicalization of a pronunciation without a vowel. In the first case, fixing variants with vowel dieresis in orthoepic-type dictionaries seems redundant, since the choice of pronunciation, as a rule, depends on phrasal position and occurs automatically. In the second case, the pronunciation of the words does not necessarily derive from their spelling, and therefore they require orthoepic commentary.

The article is devoted to the history of children’s nominations in Russian and Chinese languages. The difference of time range of factual materials used in the article is due to the particularity of the historical development and the fixation of Russian and Chinese languages. The process reveals a serious typological similarity. This is manifested in the possibility of the formation of a large number of nominations from a small number of ancient roots, stability and preservation of the root material, and also in the fact that the semantics of lexemes in both languages can pass through the same stages of their evolution. The meanings of both languages may contain such semantic components as “slave”, “servant, worker”. There are also differences in semantic development between languages. In Russian, the semantics evolve in the direction of age: “child” > “young man”. In Chinese, the process can go in the opposite direction-from naming adults to naming children. 

The author of the article analyzes the etymology of the lexeme konoval, which originally served to name people who were engaged in grooming and treating horses, as well as other domestic animals. They were homegrown doctors. The attitude towards them was ambiguous. Frequent unsuccessful results of treatment led to the fact that the word konoval began to acquire a negative connotation and, as a result, in the 18th century there appeared another meaning of the word in Russian language: ‘a bad, unqualified doctor’.

There is no unity regarding the etymology of the lexeme konoval. There are two mutually exclusive points of view. M. Vasmer believes that this noun is borrowed from the Polish language. The compilers of the “Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language” edited by N. M. Shansky share this view. The authors of the Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages edited by O. N. Trubachev attribute this lexeme to the Proto-Slavic lexical fund.

The author examines in detail both versions of the origin of the lexeme. As a result of the analysis and referring to numerous Polish and East Slavic sources, we put forward a hypothesis that the word konoval is actually Russian. This lexeme originally belonged to the Old Russian language, and subsequently got into the Polish language through Ukrainian.

The authors of the paper remember their teacher, professor Galina Aleksandrovna Zolotova (1924–2020) with love and gratitude and value her linguistic heritage. The article analyzes her contribution to modern Russian studies. Semantics as a part of syntax was the main principle of G. A. Zolotova’s linguistic method who was the author of the concept of functional-communicative grammar. Because of the syntheticism in her thinking, she was able to explore syntactic units and objects of different levels of complexity and volume (syntactic words, word combinations, sentence models, texts), as well as combine syntax and morphology, grammar and text in her linguistic studies. The authors of the paper pay special attention to the ideas of Zolotova, which anticipated their time, and are close to the those, developed much later by linguists of various linguistic directions and movements: the trinity of form-meaning-function of linguistic units, the indirect case of the subject of a sentence, the non-verbalized subject of perception (the figure of the observer), non-verbal predicative constructions, the irreducibility of the meaning of a syntactic whole (construction) to the sum of its parts. The authors of the paper specially trace continuity between the linguistic interests of Academician V. V. Vinogradov and G. A. Zolotova, who remained his devoted student throughout her linguistic activity. As a follower of Vinogradov, she studied the functions of aspect-temporal forms of verb in texts, and introduced the concept of subject perspective of an utterance and a text.