Intre reverii si spaime
This essay analyzes Mariana Codruț’s poetry starting from a general characteristic of all the female poets of the 80 ist Literary Movement, namely their incapacity to enjoy life or to find any kind of happiness.
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This essay analyzes Mariana Codruț’s poetry starting from a general characteristic of all the female poets of the 80 ist Literary Movement, namely their incapacity to enjoy life or to find any kind of happiness.
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The associative meaning of the word is a kind of "window" in the linguistic consciousness of the individual. With its help one can reconstruct the image about the world. Real world phenomena, acknowledged by man, are reflected in his consciousness, fixing the temporal, causal, spatial and even emotional relations, caused by the perception of these phenomena. All the associations can be interpreted as a model of linguistic consciousness, and in the opinion of psycholinguists one of the best ways to study it is the associative analysis. The article explores the associative field of the concept Family in Romanian. Despite being a universal value of any national culture, in the individual consciousness of the representatives of different ethnic cultures various associations and representations correspond to this concept.
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This article studies the meeting between English and all the languages spoken in the Pyrenees in the 19th century as they are perceived by British travellers. Those texts, showing a deep interest in languages, far from emphasising a separation between English and all the languages spoken from one end to the other end of the Pyrenean range, insist on the connections that those languages reveal between land and people, between past history and present time, between the evolution of landscapes and linguistic changes. Those texts show first and foremost a sense of connection seen in the meetings of languages, either when they are observed in place names, inscriptions or in the conversations, songs or poems of the populations.
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Using trains has become an oft-recurring symbol in literary history and a somewhat invisible energising force in the works of authors. In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, trains are seen as instruments of fate, the catastrophic accidents of which portend the heroine’s plot. The symbols of trains can be manifold: in literature, trains can be associated with optimism (for example, Arnold Munk’s The Little Engine That Could), but on the negative side, they are seen as instruments that ruin the landscape, exert damaging consequences on the city, and even cause social upheaval (for example, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford).The aim of this paper is to explore the omnipresence of trains in some of Vladimir Nabokov’s works, who was known to have been infatuated with railroads and locomotives since his early childhood. Trains possess a variety of thematic functions in Nabokov’s works. In several instances, Nabokov uses trains to cast a nostalgic glance at his idyllic past and present a recollection of seemingly disjointed images in one still point in time. The concept of “cosmic synchronization” in Nabokov is always connected with moments of epiphany, during which bliss and freedom are experienced by his characters. In Glory, an early novel originally written in Russian, Nabokov reveals that trains are not simply objects of one’s youthful obsession and romantic glamour, but constitute a fundamental aspect of the hero’s life as an émigré, who must find a proper existence far from his roots. Similarly to the figure of the Wandering Jew, Nabokov also considers the train journey as an adequate locus for his emblematical migrant characters that are unable to settle down and find peace. In my analysis of “Cloud, Castle, Lake,” it will be claimed that the distance from and fleetingness with which the traveller perceives outside reality through his windows do not offer lasting contact with his surroundings. The landscape, the objects, and the people, which are left behind, remain unidentifiable and mysterious.Nabokov’s use of the trains and the metaphor of the journey are to portray how passengers are incarcerated in time despite their infinite progress through space, while trains also shed light on the alienation and dislocation of his protagonists, who are always on the move, either escaping from a force of circumstances (wars, revolutions, etc.) or embarking upon a quest for the unattainable. Whenever mention is made of trains, Nabokov subtly suffuses the whole story with the subliminal suggestion of the evanescence of life and the inevitable fate of loss and death. It will also be argued that the discovery of the landscape serves as a textual discovery, which, due to the train’s speed, can never be grasped in its entirety, and the fragmentation of the text brings no satisfaction both to the reader and the writer: memory thus becomes blurred and one’s holistic knowledge of existence eventually remains patchy. In this way, Nabokov uses trains differently from other authors less prone to highlight their importance in metaphysical ruminations and spiritual musings as Nabokov does. Throughout Nabokov’s works, the train and the railroad have become a functional and structural part of the plot and narration.
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The Book of Evidence is the self-confession of the protagonist Freddie Montgomery of the crime he has committed. Freddie, an Irish scientist, has been imprisoned for stealing a painting and murdering a young maid named Josie Bell. When Freddie sees “A Portrait of a Woman with Gloves” for the first time he is inexplicably attracted by the woman on the canvas, hypnotised by her mere presence. The picture has a strange power over him. As he himself says only he can understand “the pathos of her presence” (BE 79), only he “has come upon her in a golden room on a summer eve” (BE 79), and only he is capable of killing for her. While reading Freddie’s account of the murder we become witness of his gradual depersonalisation and loss of identity. He hesitates on the verge of reality and the fictional world, of the ordinary and the extraordinary, of art and life. He breaks the link with the ordinary world by murdering Josie Bell who is an intruder for him, the one who stands between him and his woman with gloves. The images of the two women are presented in contrast to one another. The maid is part of reality and yet the ordinary world in which Freddie feels an outsider. The woman with gloves exists in the fictional extraordinary world of art and yet she seems a living creature to Freddie. The picture stands in the centre of the narrative as an example of ekphrasis. In my article, I will analyse how Banville’s excessive use of ekphrastic descriptions in the narrative contributes to building a more complete picture of his protagonist and relating it to the loss of self and depersonalisation of character.
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The Bulaestian idiom “мокрей як щур” in a word-by word translation means ‘wet as a rat’; it refers to a person who gets wet in a heavy rain. As a variant (but rarer), the speakers of Bulaestian dialect use “мокрей як меш”, i. e. ‘wet as a mouse’. The adequate translation of both variants in English has to give a meaning of “completely wet”. The Ukrainian special dictionaries include neither “мокрий як щур”, nor “мокрий як миш”. The meaning of “completely wet; soaked to the skin” is conveyed by some other idioms in the Ukrainian language. However, “мокрий як щур” is known in a Ukrainian dialect (the Krasilov district of the Khmelnitsky region). Thus, we cannot exclude that it exists in some other Ukrainian dialects as well. The Russian language speakers know the idiom “мокрый как мышь” with the same meaning of “completely wet”. The idiom “mokry kaž myš”, identical to Russian “мокрый как мышь”, is known also by Upper Lusatian language speakers. It makes us suppose that the idiom has a for-Slavic origin. Slavic *ščиrъ ‘rat’ is absent in the Russian language. However, there is a well-known Russian щурёнок ‘young pike (Esox lucius)’ (word translation ‘small щур’). Thus, we can suppose the existence of Russian щурёнок ‘young pike (Esox lucius)’ as a reason for the appearance of Slavic idioms like “мокрей як щур”/“мокрей як меш”. Some ancient inter crossing of semantics between different Slavic lexemes *ščиrъ (and *aščerъ‘lizard’, also) could provoke the appearance of some new meanings.
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Katarzyna Bonda has recently become one of the most popular authors of crime stories. She was born in Hajnówka, a town in North-eastern Poland, situated near the Belarusian border. A rather complicated and peculiar language situation can be observed here: the inhabitants speak Polish (including its regional variants), East-Slavic languages (Belarusian and Ukrainian) and East-Slavic sub-dialects. The story told by Bonda takes place in this small town. In Okularnik various elements of the town inhabitants’ language can be found: e.g. typical anthroponyms, loanwords from Belarusian or Russian and forms from East-Slavic subdialects. There are words used in the Eastern Orthodox Church, words typical of Eastern rituals and traditional cuisine. Although only a few dialect forms and loanwords are used infrequently by the author, the use of the stylized language is itself very surprising in this literary genre.
More...Przysłówek w systemie substantiwów i predykatów języka białoruskiego
The article is devoted to categorical status of adverbs in modern Belarusian. The adverb is consideredas a derived unit which combines the features of substantive and predicative words. It is shown thatthe adverb does not belong to either class. Adverbial lexemes formed from substantives lose concretesemes and abstract their meaning. This part of speech is closer to predicative words because theycan be the main predicate in the utterance. In addition, sometimes the adverb expresses additionalpredicativity and as a result complicates the semantic structure of the sentence. But the centraladverbial function is as a circumstantial modifier that is a non-predicative sign.
More...Żywioły w nazwiskach niemieckich
The subject of the paper is German surnames derived from names denoting elements. The research material originates from the following dictionaries: Hans Bahlow, 1976,Deutsches Namenlexikon. Familien- und Vornamen nach Ursprung und Sinn erklärt, Suhrkamp, Baden-Baden; Josef Karlmann Brechenmacher, 1957–1960, EtymologischesWörterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen. A–J, C.A. Starke Verlag, Limburg a.d. Lahn;Josef Karlmann Brechenmacher, 1960–1963, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen. K–Z, C.A. Starke Verlag, Limburg a.d. Lahn; Duden. Familiennamen.Herkunft und Bedeutung. Bearbeitet von Rosa und Volker Kohlheim, 2005, Dudenverlag, Mannheim–Leipzig–Wien–Zürich; Max Gottschald, 1954, Deutsche Namenkunde.Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung, de Gruyter, Berlin; HorstNaumann, 1989, Familiennamenbuch, VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig. The studyis an attempt to search for an answer concerning the derivational morphology of surnames. The corpus subjected to analysis includes non-morphologically-derived surnames,derivatives and sentence-derived surnames. In terms of semantics, the majority of thesurnames under analysis are anthroponyms with a single motivation. A few surnames areof Low German origin. Some surnames of the analysed material have graphical varieties.
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In the paper we analyse and interpret names of persons in relation to parents in Slovak dialect area.For research we use unpublished, recorded local language from the archive of Ľ. Štúr Institute ofLinguistics. We have chosen four representative names of family members – ujo, teta, strýko, stryná.The principle of interpretation is a study of distribution of the lexemes by area and their relationswith word-formation under the influence of the intercultural contacts and language stabilizationof the status quo. The main part of the study are maps of dialects with area distribution of featureswhich are a reliable source for research in the wider Slavic context.
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In French comic proverbs and riddles mechanisms of comism connected with taboo can be definedby means of semantic and stylistic analysis, however, the most comprehensive description can beobtained by employing linguistic pragmatics as research instruments. Comic violation of taboostems from breaching the maxims of politeness and quantity. Another source of humour derivesfrom the contrast between cultural presupposition and the sense of the sentence or its implication.Implied topics are the basis for humour, quite like the implied structure of an utterance. Such sentencesrepresent indirect speech acts: illocutionary tropes, as well as allusive derivatives packedwith vulgarisms. From the semantic point of view, contrasts between specific inherent semes andafferent ones prevail. Oppositions within specific inherent semes or afferent contextual ones canalso be observed. Comic proverbs and riddles represent puns, simple or complex tropes as well asrhymed paraphrases. Taboo content can be found in lexemes with broad connotations.
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Polish linguistic studies have shown marginal interest in the old phraseological stratum for the lastfew decades. Various factors contribute to the limited research into historical phraseology.Lexicographic sources seem to be one of these factors. Owing to the absence of various typesof sources exclusively dedicated to old word combinations, vital for the diachronic descriptionof phraseology, we are limited to the use of universal historical dictionaries of Polish language.The considerations of this article are dedicated to the characteristics of how phraseology has beenregistered in the selected Polish language dictionaries such as: The Dictionary of Polish Languageby Samuel Boguslaw Linde, the so-called Vilnius Dictionary and The Warsaw Dictionary.
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The aim of the article is to present the regional and general dimension of poetic folklore texts.The analysis is based on outlaw songs of Podhale recorded in several ethnographic compilations,above all in Oskar Kolberg’s Dzieła wszystkie. The regional hallmarks of Podhale include outlawthemes, phonetic, grammatical and lexical features of the local dialect of the Podhale region andSlovak borrowings used as poetic devices. The universal dimension of these songs is seen in theuse of typical devices of folk poetry such as diminutives, lexical and grammatica archaisms,displaced accent, non-lexical vocables, end-stopping, feminine rhymes, morphological doubletsand repetitions. The great variation of texts of each song is also universally typical for folklore.
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The category of animacy in the contemporary Slovenian language, like in other Slavic languages,is a morphological category of masculinum nouns, which have the accusative grammaticalsuffix -a (ex. vidim človeka). There are some nonanimacy nouns, which have this suffix -a like:names of cars (ex. ima forda), cards (ex. potegnil je asa) or diseases (ex. ima raka). In the articleauthor has characterized the category of animacy in different social variants of the Slovenian language– from standard language to some unstandardized variants (two dialects and one regiolect).In unofficial language, there are more examples of animacy than in standard language. These arenumerous nonanimated masculinum and neutral nouns (ex. imajo dekleta) and nouns in children’sspeech (ex. daj ključa).
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The article presents the perception of folk dialect in the 19th century in four perspectives. Researchinto dialects initiated by ethnographers and, continued by dialectologists are discussed in the article.The article also shows how the dialects have been used in literature. It extracts the features of folkspeech in literature. On the basis of the most important nineteenth-century dictionaries the authorindicates the relationship between dialect and general lexis. Through the analysis of registeredterritorial lexes and how it is qualified, the article aims to reconstruct the linguistic consciousnessof the 19th century dictionariy writers. On the basis of language guides the article shows the ratioof contemporary standards of correctness to folk dialect word forms.
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The aim of the study is to identify diversity in presentations of gender in Slovak folk songs. Thestarting point is the study of the relation between language and society. The corpus under researchconsists of 1000 songs included in a songbook. Attention is paid to motifs related to women andmen, for example personal feelings, the relationship between women and men, promiscuity,adultery, drinking, physical violence, travelling, education etc. The research has shown that folksongs create certain stereotypes of femininity and masculinity. However, genders are not presentedas opposites, but as complementary.
More...Sytuacja językowa na Białorusi i jej odzwierciedlenie we współczesnym tekście prasowym
The article addresses peculiarities of Belarusian language insertion usage in texts of present daynewspapers of Belarus published in Russian as well as bilingual ones. Facts of conscious insertionof alien (Belarusian language) elements into texts written in Russian are investigated on the basisof the data registered by the author in the middle of the 90-ies of the ХХth century – the time whenin the language of the newspapers in Belarus a specific sociocultural aggregation of Russian andBelarusian language elements started to be formed. In the course of the research it has been foundthat in the present-day newspaper text this process a) has kept its major semantico-stylistic properties(the Belarusian word in the Russian text is still being used as means of evaluation, irony, as an appealto non-textual information, as a signal of the communicative situation “agreement – disagreement”,as an indication of Belarusian socio- or ethnocultural space); b) has acquired new features: thenumber of insertions of the phrasal and superphrasal levels has significantly grown (journalistsuse Belarusian texts as an element of intertextual interaction which participates in the formationof intertextuality of modern Belarusian publicistic writing); trasyanka which is a spontaneouslyrussified variant of the Belarusian language started to be introduced into newspaper texts writtenin Russian; text positions used for the actualization of the Belarusian word have changed (it beganto be actively used in headlines and subheadings, in creolized texts); the transformation of socialconditions has brought about the transformation of the newspaper senses topical for the newspapertext, as a result the number of lexemes and word combinations thematically related to the designationof concepts and phenomena of socio-political character has sharply decreased among Belarusianlanguage insertions.
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The aim of this article is to discuss dialect features in the names of inhabited and uninhabitedobjects in the county of Turek located in the south-eastern part of Wielkopolska Province. Inthe collected data there can be found particular dialect features: phonetic, inflexive – syntax andlexical characteristics of the South-eastern Wielkopolska Province. The toponymy data collectedby field exploration enables the observation of dialect features – in the names characteristic forthe dialect of Wielkopolska Province, such as: Old Polish long vowels’ continuants, avoidance ofprosthetic pronunciation of vowels in initial sound, hesitancy in the grammatical gender. Oikonymsand anoikonyms also preserve former dialect features, e.g. alternation of the morphemes ‘-ow’and ‘-ew’ that are preserved in the suffixes of the names, which primarily authenticate, more thanpresently, the area of occurrence. A feature of the collected toponymy data is also the wider rangeof toponymisation; in other words the supersession of apelatives from the lexical resource of thelanguage and their fossilization in proper names. The names of the places and areas in the county ofTurek retain many lexical archaisms and dialect lexicon. These are also expressive names known bythe residents of the examined area and beyond, often associated with a particular event or a featurecharacteristic of people living there.
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The article analyzes from a linguistic point of view the baptismal names excerpted from the registerof baptisms in the Uniate Parish of Hodyszewo from 1759–1801. For this purpose, the collectedonomastic data were divided into four groups, containing names that were used to nominate:Uniate peasants, Catholic peasants, nobility and the remaining population (townsmen, clergy andpeople without a specific social affiliation). The aim of the analysis was to determine the popularityof particular names and to identify variations of names overall and in each of these ethnic andreligious groups. The purpose of research was also to determine the occurrence of polyonymy inthe studied source material.
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Poniżej przedstawiamy referat Kareta Bartoška wygłoszony na międzynarodowym kolokwium, które odbyło się na Uniwersytecie Wiedeńskim w dniach 14–16 stycznia 1981 roku. Tematem jego była Europa i Europa Środkowa (podtytuł: Problemy tożsamości i kulturowych), a zostało ono zorganizowane przez Instytut Francuski w Wiedniu, Colloquium Mitteleuropa i Gesellschaft fűr politische Aufklärung. Badacze i osoby zainteresowane tą problematyką (pisarze, politycy, dyplomaci) z Austrii, Francji, Węgier, Polski, RFN i Szwajcarii próbowali odpowiedzieć na pytania postawione przez organizatorów kolokwium, dotyczące związków między Francją a Europą Środkową, problemów narodów, narodowości i wielonarodowości obszaru Środkowej Europy, specyfiki literatury tego obszaru, jego tożsamości kulturowej oraz konsekwencji politycznych toczących się obecnie dyskusji. Dokumenty kolokwium będą wkrótce opublikowane w języku niemieckim. Referat ten przytaczamy za 10. numerem pisma „La Nouvelle Alternative”, które szerzej przedstawiliśmy w 4-5 numerze „Czasu Kultury”.
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