No 4 (2022)

The article considers the development of language legislation in the Russian Federation at the federal and regional levels after the 1990s, starting from the trends in language policy, its goals, actors, and debates. The current state of the subject shows that the legal, juridical, and sociolinguistic aspects of this issue are still poorly researched in relation to the materials on ethnic languages of the Russian Federation. The changing attitude of the world community towards linguistic diversity and the principles of language policy, which also affected the approach to the solution of the language issue in Russia, led to the admission of the need to develop a new language policy reflecting the interests of the state and its citizens, or to the introduction of new provisions in the legal acts concerning the ethnic languages of Russia. The main legal acts of the Russian Federation were adopted under different political conditions and therefore reflect the multidirectional language policy of the country as a whole. Language legislation falls under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and its subjects, with the federal legislature having the right to create the basis for the legal regulation of the languages of the Russian Federation. The legislation of the Russian Federation has maintained not only the Soviet hierarchy of language status, but also the principle of territorial division of language function, in which a given language changes its function in the official spheres of communication depending on its localization in a given subject and the compact way of life of its speakers. The researchers note that the language policy of the Russian Federation since 2010 has existed on two levels – de jure and de facto. On the one hand, a policy of linguistic unity in diversity is built – multilingualism is a priority, on the other hand, there is a language policy of centralization – the creation of a monolingual single communicative space, which leads to a linguistic monopoly, dominance in all areas of the functioning of the Russian language. The role of other languages in the life of the state is no longer recognizable. The last decade has reflected this trend in a number of adopted language laws. The most important innovation in the language legislation of the Russian Federation is the amendment to Article 68 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation of 14.03.2020, which was adopted in the all-Russian vote on 01.07.2020. According to it, the Russian language received a specific definition of the language of the state-forming ethnos, i.e., a part of the multi-ethnic union of equal peoples. Another innovation in the language legislation of RF is the adoption of amendments to the Federal Law “On Education in the Russian Federation” and the introduction of the norm for the voluntary study of native languages, which active debates in recent years have accompanied. As a result, researchers point to an obvious deterioration of conditions for bilingualism, which are uneven in all subjects of the Russian communication space and create conditions for the expansion of monolingualism. In the article, special attention is paid to the analysis of the development of language policy and legislation in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The linguistic context of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is considered from the point of view of “key actors”, “key models”, and active discussions in public and scientific discourses. The changes in language behavior and attitudes of young people and children in Sakha, gradually leading to Russian monolingualism, a decline in bilingual practices, and an imbalance in legislative initiatives on language use, are of great importance to the Yakut community. This fact urges an analysis of the activities of the current language policy in the republic.The considered experience in language policy and peculiarities of language legislation of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) allow to highlight the positive and negative aspects of the current federal and regional language policy and to consider the possibility of transferring the positive experience to other regions of the Russian Federation.

In the village of Podgornoye, founded in 1815 in the Andropovsky district of the Stavropol region, 70 descendants of Estonian settlers live to this day, speaking their language in everyday life. Several expeditions were made to this village to describe the dialect comprehensively. We recorded the narrations, songs, stories, and a dictionary of 1869 lexemes from the native speakers of Podgornoe. This dictionary is available on Lingvodok [Dictionary of Estonian dialect p. Podgornoe 2022]. In this article, the first part of this work, an analysis of semantic differences of words from the dialect of Podgornoe village compared with Estonian literary language and Estonian dialects is carried out. In order to classify the semantic differences, Estonian words were selected from 1869 words and sorted into groups. The words that also occur in the literary language are of interest but have different meanings. There were 12 such words. Then the words from the Podgorny dialect were compared with more than 250 Estonian dialects listed in the Dialect Dictionary of Estonian Language [Eesti Murrete Sõnaraamat 1994]. The analysis showed that the vast majority of words (more than 1800) in the Estonian dialect of Podgornoe village have the same meaning as in the written language. Considering that the Estonian inhabitants of Podgornoe were resettled more than 200 years ago, it is obvious that the Estonian written language is quite archaic, and the dialect of the settlers had a small number of innovations, namely eight lexemes whose meaning has no equivalent in other Estonian dialects. In one case, kɨɾ̠ ku 'height,' which occurs in the language of speakers from the village of Podgornoe, is not found in the literary dialect but occurs in both southern and northern dialects and is thus archaic. In three other cases, the innovation occurring in the village of Podgornoe is mentioned only in the northern dialects, and the word l̪ ʲol̪ l̪ us̪ 'madness' only in a dialect in the village of Laius.

The article deals with participial temporal constructions with the meaning of simultaneity in the Kazym dialect of Northern Khanty. The richness and variety of the inventory of these constructions have been documented in a number of works. However, the existing descriptions do not clearly show their functioning and distribution. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the semantics of simultaneity constructions in more detail and to identify their characteristic features. Data for the study were collected during a field study in the village of Kazym in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Russia, by asking native speakers to complete stimulus contexts, the first part of which consisted of a dependent clause of each construction with a varying predicate. The questionnaire was based on a sample of 50 verbs of different aspect classes. Five constructions were selected for the study: one casemarked participle (locative case) and four postpositional participial constructions with the postpositions pŏrajən, măr(ən), kŭtən, and saxət/sati/sa. The constructions were analyzed based on three aspectual parameters: Telicity, duration, and homogeneity of events. It was found that none of the constructions, with the exception of the locative construction, is compatible with telic background events. In this regard, the pŏrajən construction favors longterm background events, the kŭtən construction heterogeneous background events, the saxət/sati/sa construction short or medium-length background events and telic main events. A closer examination of the received contexts revealed that the pŏrajən construction is not semantically unspecified as described in the literature but expresses a specific meaning of simultaneity with an event that characterizes a period of time. The kŭtən construction, in turn, postulates a heterogeneous background through an initially heterogeneous event, while in combination with homogeneous events, it implies a deliberate interruption of the background event by the subject. The măr(ən) and kŭtən constructions have virtually no restrictions in combination with short-term events, but they are appropriate only in the case of “stretching” these events in time or simultaneity on a smaller scale.

In order to reveal the image of the Bashkir mythological figure Azhdaha, we compare him with similar figuresin neighboring and other peoples and try to identify the roots of his appearance in the region. We show and describetwo images of the Bashkir Azhdaha – a fairy-tale, dragon-like appearance and a mythological, serpent-likeappearance. The study is based on the authors’ field material, information from Bashkir folklore, and comparativematerial on Turkic-speaking and Iranian peoples. Azhdaha is known among the Bashkirs in two images: in the epicsand fairy tales, he is represented as a multi-headed dragon, and in various religious beliefs, he is a mythologizedserpent that has reached enormous proportions after a hundred-year life. The presence of many similar featuresamong other peoples of Eurasia suggests that his image evolved in the general Eurasian channel. The dragonitself is a later mythological figure, which is a further development of the image of the serpent, which had an ambivalentcharacter in the representations. Among the Bashkirs, both images – the serpent and the dragon – werecalled by the same name – azhdaha, which has an Iranian etymology and goes back to the Avestic mythology.At the same time, both are negative figures associated with the element of water. Azhdaha, from different beliefs,represents a long-lived serpent, in our opinion, reflecting the transformation of a serpent, which originally hadno clear negative character, into a negative character that harms people. The development of the fabulous and epicazhdaha took place separately, and its image is generally closely associated with the literary tradition of the East.His image is less uniform – he may be many-headed and have the ability to fly, breathe fire, and guard a watersource, or a treasure, mountains appear in the place of his slain body. Close to the first serpent/dragon from thelegends, which are preserved only in records from the XIX – early XX centuries. He was a huge serpent whoserestlessness forced the local population to change their residence.

In this article, using the example of the shamanic ritual Shachyg (sprinkling, treatment of the spirits of the mountains and rivers), the ritual activity of the so-called modern shamans who have not undergone the ordeals of the “shamanic disease” is considered. They are “discovered” by a more experienced local who has sometimes attended training courses with Khakass or Tuvan shamans and has the relevant credentials. Some Kams also spoke of the shamanic gift being inherited within the family from grandfathers or grandmothers. The Shachyg ritual was performed in 2019 in Tashtagol by S. Teneshev (born in 1973) and other shamans on the Day of Indigenous Peoples of the World. At the beginning of the ritual, the reason for the ceremony is stated, and the most "painful" current problems of the whole people or a certain group of participants are listed, which can be solved with the help of higher powers. The example of a ritual text has shown that the language of ritual texts is reduced to the everyday level and is very poor. In the text of S. Teneshev that we studied, there are Russicisms, interjective exclamations, names of geographical places (e.g., the mountain Mustag), Belkovo (a suburb of Tashtagol ), but no archaisms and vocabulary connected with shamanism, and there are no allegories, similes and other means of expression characteristic of earlier records of rituals. He mentions only the god Kudai, the spirits of mountains and rivers, and the spirit of fire. However, the ritual itself is characterized by detailed treatment of the spirits of rivers and mountains, the use of ritual objects during the ritual (tambourine tӱur, kai-komus), and the presence of national costumes. During the ritual, S. Teneshev, together with other shamans, asks various eezi spirits for a majestic holiday and blessings for all the Shors present: people preserving their native language, wealth, growth of livestock, childbearing, health, happiness, and good luck. This ritual is particularly interesting because in the context of globalization, with the departure of the authentic carriers of the traditional worldview in modern society, there is a demand for the revival and maintenance of national traditions through the reconstruction and popularization of shamanistic rituals, the so-called “neo-shamanism”. It is very important that researchers record these processes, analyze the material, ethnographic, and textual components of the "new" rituals, and compare them in the future with the authentic shamanic rituals recorded in the 20th century and with the global trends of neo-shamanism.

The Aryshevskoe 2 site is currently located in one of the peripheral places of the West Siberian oecumene of the Stone Age people. It differs from other monuments in the area by the nature of the industry and the lack of absolute dating. These circumstances have led to resuming its exploration in 2019. The purpose of this article is to publish the materials obtained and the results of their analysis. A series of pits were excavated around the trenches already dug in 2000 on the side of the terrace. A collection of 427 artifacts was found during the excavations. The materials from 2000 and 2019 were studied using a number of methods: the method of analogies, descriptive statistics, and multivariate statistics. The cores show the predominance of the flat-flaking principle. In the case of the tools, the bifacial forms predominate, to which analogies can be found in the adjacent areas in the south and east. The chips are divided into 3 clusters according to technological criteria. This is the result of a cluster analysis of the size and morphology of their force bulbs and butts. Blades with a constantly reproducible shape predominate over flakes with a wide variety of shapes. The collection of tools appears to be typical of the Late Paleolithic. In addition, the collection also contains tools that are atypical for this period. The reasons for their distinction are described in detail in a separate part of the article. The result of the study is the determination of the characteristic features of the industry and the relative time of its existence. The industry is distinguished from similar Paleolithic sites by its characteristic lamellar and bifacial artifacts. Chips with features of percussion dominate the overall statistics, despite the division into three groups of chips according to the results of cluster analysis. The prospect of further study of this site is evident in the spatial analysis of the distribution of artifacts and in the absolute dating of the deposits they contain.

The article analyzes the autobiographical short novels of Veps prose by V. Pulkin and A. Petukhov as valuable sources of historical-ethnographic material. The theoretical basis for the study is formed by the works of I. Vinokurova, N. Krinichnaya and I. Spiridonova. The study is guided by the need to bring new sources about the life of the Veps people into the scientific discourse. The methodology is based on a systematic approach using the methods of comparative historical, structural semiotic, and holistic textual analysis. The tasks for the study were: Identification and characterization of the main mythological figures in the Veps prose, description of the ethnographic elements (architecture, life routines, rites), and evaluation of the representativeness of the literary material. One of the contemporary problems is the integration of narrative forms and the transformation of the data obtained from them for use in various scientific fields. The literature of the Veps was studied by N. Zaitseva, A. Mishina, Z. Strogalshchikova, but the ethnographic elements, and mythological figures, which are part of the culture of this ethnic minority, remained in the periphery of theoretical conceptualization. The scientific novelty consists in the inclusion of ethnographic tropes in the analytical context of studies of ethnic minority literature. In analyzing the prose of Veps writers, the author identified and characterized mythological figures: Mecizand (the forest master spirit), Kodinizand (the house master spirit), Ičheine (one's own soul), Vedehiine (the water master spirit). The article briefly describes the ethnographic elements of the Veps culture found in the short novels: Home interiors, Rites, and Beliefs. It is stated that Veps' prose is based on the principles of topicality, historicism, autobiographism, and commemoration. The ethnographic elements and mythological characters in the short novels of V. Pulkin and A. Petukhov are authentic, confirmed by scientific findings from historical, geographical, and other sources. Fiction can provide science material but with deductions for the fantasy element.

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