Russkaâ rečʹ

Lexical competition between lexical units and extralinguistic factors influencing lexical choice have remained one of the fundamental problems within the scope of the onomasiological approach to lexical semantics as of yet. In previous studies of one of the authors, such competition was explored with an example of the constructions otkryvat’ butylku ‘open a bottle’ and otkuporivat’ butylku ‘uncork a bottle’. The experimental study reported in this article provides some evidence in favor of the results obtained in the previous research based on a corpus analysis. In this study, the participants filled the most appropriate, in their opinion, words in the gaps in the sentences taken from the Russian National Corpus, which previously contained the verb otkuporivat’ ‘uncork’. The results of the study confirmed earlier observations that the verb otkuporivat’ correlates with the “literary” context of use and the verb otkryvat’ with the “everyday” context. In addition, the results of the experiments pave the way for the correlation between the construction otkryvat’ butylku and the action of a “fast” cognitive system that activates surface connections between lexical units, and the correlation between the construction otkuporivat’ butylku and the action of a “slow” system that creates a mental representation of the situation designated in the sentence.

The paper analyzes generalizing statements written by children (7–11 years old) and explores features that distinguish typifying statements from generically personal ones. The former are characterized by generalization of time and subject of the sentence, the latter are specified not only by time and subject generalization, but also by the inclusive speaker. The paper proves the idea that generically personal statements (e. g. proverbs) acquire an ethical value because the speaker is potentially included in both participants of a personal conflict. Generically personal statements can be formulated not only in relation to a human being per se, but also to a class of living nature. This becomes possible if there is some correlation with human beings (“our smaller brethren”, “living creatures”, etc.). Based on the material of children`s essays, the paper examines deviations in the “process of generalization”, and traces generalization skills development as they are held in age dynamics. The ways of generalization of a living being/person are: unsubstituted nominal positions, generalizing and demonstrative pronouns, full-nominal vocabulary (generic nouns, adjectives used without nouns), relative clauses, idiomatic designations. Generalization vocabulary skills of older children correlate with their mastery of syntactic techniques. The paper also discusses the role of pronouns and adjectives used without a noun, as manifestations of the covert category of person and a category of animacy.

The article attempts to establish the origin of a Russian particle bish’. The debatable nature of this issue is due to the divergence of researchers’ opinions about the generating basis: the data of etymological dictionaries refer to the development of this particle from the form of the 2^nd person singular of the verb баять (баешь), while some studies indicate its origin from one of the preterites of the verb быти — the 3^rd person plural aorist бѧше or the 3rd person singular imperfect.

To achieve its goal, the article investigates the issues of the conditions for the occurrence of allegroforms and allegroforms in the aspect of phonetic patterns of the degree of stress of words. The paper compares etymological data and specifies the difference of verb forms of the past tense, in particular, within the framework of the destruction of past tenses system. The research material was the data of the National Corpus of the Russian language (pan-chronical corpus) and information from etymological and dialectological dictionaries.

As a result, a hypothesis was proposed about the formation of the particle under study from a special form that appeared due to mixing the uses of aorist and imperfect, which was already characteristic of the 14^th century. The appearance of the particle dates back to the 17^th century, as evidenced by the data of dictionaries.

The purpose of the study is to identify the typology of semantic designations of the Caucasus in Lermontov’s work. It is established that Lermontov’s “Caucasian text” reproduces the local flavor in detail, presents a cross-section of Caucasian life during the military campaign of the 1820s — early 1840s. It is argued that the Caucasus in Lermontov’s artistic world is distinguished by topographic accuracy, its verbal representation is specified by an essay character, expressed in the use of special toponymy, the variety of names of the peoples inhabiting it, in the transmission of their characters and relationships. The article systematizes lexical and semantic means of transmitting a socio-cultural, historical and geographical image of the Caucasus, examines the semantics of toponyms, ethnonyms and ethnographisms in Lermontov’s lyrics, prose and epistolary. It is revealed that one of the leading principles of Lermontov’s poetics when creating the image of the Caucasus is the disclosure of etymology and meaning of the names of settlements, rivers and mountains in the text of the works. The article presents a comparison of a “Caucasian text” with the memoir and essay literature of the first third of the 19th century, which allows us to reconstruct the idea of the Caucasus in Russian society in the 1820s–1840s. As a result of the conducted research, it is proved that, revealing the language and culture of the highlanders in detail, Lermontov depicts the Caucasus both in its ontology, connected with the understanding of the essence of the Eastern world, and in its concrete historical ethnographically vivid manifestation.

The article presents a grouping of periods included in the text of the epic novel by Leo Tolstoy “War and Peace”. It must be noted that the classification is based on the nature of the logical-semantic relations between the two main elements of a particular period. This is 1) a generalization based on the above facts (with details of an interior or a portrait of the character); 2) cause-and-effect relations between the two components of the period (memories that affect moral and psychological state of the hero; the influence of the surrounding world on the psychological state of the character; the sequence of actions and psychological reactions of the character, the consequence of which is a certain state of mind; fixation of factors affecting the actions of the character, which are mentioned in the second component of the period); 3) concessionary relations (a decision made by a character contrary to his own reflections; reality opposed to the interpretation events; discrepancy between reality and what should have happened); 4) the second part of the period synthesizing the information presented in the first part. At the same time, the article emphasizes that in the epic novel “War and Peace”, the period is one of the ways to focus the reader’s attention on artistic information that acquires special significance in the novel (images of Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov, Nikolai Rostov, Napoleon, Captain Tushin, regimental commander, author’s remarks).