No 2 (2024)

The paper provides an overview of the results of the fundamental reconstruction and modernization project of the National Corpus of the Russian Language platform, carried out from 2020 to 2023. The focus of the paper is on the new opportunities that are opening up for linguists and a wider audience. This includes improving the representativeness of existing corpora, creating new corpora, new annotation obtained through the application of neural network models, and new interface solutions. Three notable new components are examined in more detail: a resource-related one, which is the new Social Networks corpus, a search-related one, which is the Panchronic corpus that combines searches across corpora from different periods, and an analytical one, which is the functional complex of statistics and data visualization.

Based on data from the Russian National Corpus, first and foremost, from its multimedia corpus, we address two members of the family of discourse markers developed from the finite form of the verb of speech skažem (the first person plural present tense form of the verb ‘say’): isolated skažem and its combinations with an adverb or a pronominal adverb such as skažem prjamo ‘let’s put it bluntly’, skažem tak ‘let’s put it this way’, etc. We show that these markers demonstrate a typical pragmaticalization trajectory: unlike the original speech verb, they do not refer to a speech event, their main function is to express a fuzzy nomination, or hedging, i.e., these markers are used when the speaker disclaims responsibility for the possible inaccuracy of the propositional content or of the nomination used in relation to the fixed propositional content. We demonstrate the main shifts in the distribution of these markers, which occur due to the fact that they fall out of the rigid clausal structure and acquire the status of an operator which scopes over discourse segments of various (potentially any) length. We study the main prosodic properties of these markers instrumentally and perceptually and, in addition, discuss the use of markers of this family together with other means of signaling that the speaker needs additional efforts in choosing an adequate expression. These can be other lexical markers of fuzzy nomination, lexical and prosodic indicators of an open list, self-corrections, signals of hesitation (filled pauses, non-phonological lengthening of sounds), etc. The results obtained convincingly show: (1) that even within the same family of markers, the shift from a unit with propositional meaning to a discourse marker can follow different trajectories and lead to larger or smaller shifts in meaning and form; and (2) that the study of discourse markers that uses data on prosody and such specific phenomena of oral discourse as speech disfluencies makes it possible to get more comprehensive lexicographic portraits of single units and their families.

We discuss the concept of “pronominal series” and some principles that can be used for distinguishing pronominal series from similar phenomena. These principles are further applied to demonstratives in West Circassian (a polysynthetic language of the West Caucasian family) as represented in a large corpus including texts of various genres. We show that West Circassian displays at least eleven series of demonstratives but also make additional observations on how the principles defining pronominal series can be used in complex cases.

The interaction between the body and the environment through non-verbal signs and the assignment of linguistic designations to these signs determines the transition from mere existence to the semiotic level. One of the basic principles of this approach is the following: the body as a tool in interaction with the environment and other subjects serves as a basis for evaluating all contexts and events primarily as favorable (for the existence and development of the body), unfavorable and neutral, as well as for determining the importance of individual events. In this way, the body becomes the source of the meanings inherent in signs. The body as a source of symbolic meanings has been considered in a wide range of fields, from psychoanalysis, philosophy, and art theory to studies in anthropology and cognitive science. The knowledge accumulated at the present stage allows us to study in more detail how body movements and, in general, the presence of the body and its parts in the communicative space are embedded in symbolic communication. The two-volume “Language and semiotics of the body”, written by a team of authors led by G. E. Kreidlin (2020), considers movements, body parts and their linguistic designations as a coherent and consistent sign system, which corresponds to the approach adopted within embodied semiotics, in which communicative events acquire their meaning based on the experience of their existence in the surrounding world and bodily interaction with it. This article considers the text of the collective monograph “Language and semiotics of the body” and modern approaches to the study of the symbolic representation of the body language as a culturally specific phenomenon. Although G. E. Kreidlin himself speaks of his field as non-verbal semiotics or multimodal linguistics, the publication of the book “Language and Semiotics of the Body” can be said to mark a significant contribution to the representation of embodied semiotics in the Russian-speaking linguistic space.