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Adversus Nationes by Arnobius is a controversial apologia. What may surprise the reader of Adversus Nationes the most is the concept of creating the man which alludes to Plato's Timaeus but also the contempt for all that is human – his body, his condition and his soul. It must be stressed, however, that such attitude was common in the culture of this time, reaching its peak in gnosticism. According to Arnobius, human mind is not capable of comprehending the nature of God and at the same time it does not allow to practice pointless, often bloody cults. This article attempts to show Arnobius's apologetic strategies, which aim at discrediting senseless piety. According the Rhetor of Sicca Veneria, religiousness without reason is nothing more but superstition. In Adversus Nationes Arnobius laid foundation for many centuries long debate on the question of fides et ratio.
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In this essay, the author deals primarily with the following topics: poetry as locus theologicus – a place of encounter with God, hymns of Prudentius’ Cathemerinon and their Christocentric dimension. The twelve lyrical poems by Prudentius, collected in Cathemerinon, are hymns for Christians’ every day. They could be used for private meditation and prayer; as a whole, they have a literary character. The hymns were written for an aristocratic audience of the fourth and the first half of the fifth century for those really keen on poetry and the Christian Doctrine. All the hymns discussed in this essay focus the most important aspects of human life on Christ as the source, the light and the ultimate destiny of every human being. The symbolic exposition occurs in most of the hymns. Prudentius very often uses metaphor of light which symbolize Christ and the Christian Doctrine. He also shows a mastery of language and classical metric threads.
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The German Jesuit, Jacob Masen, in his poetics treatise entitled Ars nova argutiarum, in addition to the theoretical content, he presents work he prepared himself illustrating the concepts under discussion. Unlike in the earlier part of the work, in Chapter 8 of his dissertation, he presents elaborate poems. He divides them into two cycles. This article is concerned with epigrams on Christmas, which appear in the collection entitled De Christo nato. Out of this group of nine, seven were translated and analysed, and although they were considered by the author as long, their length did not exceed the commonly accepted length for such type of work. As it turned out, the poems prove in many places the author’s erudition. He uses vivid vocabulary, extraordinary words and words originating from mythology and poetic neologisms. At the same time he introduces a wide range of stylistic devices and figures of speech. By the use of descriptio rerum a partium numeratione his topics are presented in an extremely vivid way. The starting point for his descriptions is often the Child Jesus himself depicted from the perspective of an ordinary observer or a conscious of things theologian. Some other time, the scholar starts from the circumstances of the event (circumstantiae) and on their basis the whole performance is built. All the poems are built based on the theory of sources (fontes) and veins (venae) expounded in the dissertation. These pieces of his work are not so much within the rhetorized poetry as within poetry guided by logic. They do not have particularly distinct argutias but this is also in line with the preliminary assumption made by the poet. On the other hand they all form a sort of itinerarium necessary to understand baroque poetry which often, due to its intricacy, appears to be not much interesting and even worthless. It is enough to analyse just a few epigrams by Masen to see that to find the whole range of ideas and solutions concealed by the poet in his poems unconventional literary methods should be used within his poetry.
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The results of the present paper are connected to the author’s former study on the earliest Hungarian text records published in 2013: “Chronology and text-reconstruction: on the fundamental matters of the Königsberg Ribands discovered 120 years ago”. (Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. 267–336.) By analysing the archaic word-forms occurring in the earliest Hungarian texts the author establishes the following absolute chronological order of these records:Funeral Sermon and Prayer HBK probably 1160–1185; i.e. around 1173. Miracle of the Virgin Mary SzMCs probably 1180–1205; i.e. around 1193. Old Hungarian Lament of the Virgin Mary ÓMS probably 1200–1225; i.e. around 1213. Old Hungarian Annunciation ÓAÜ probably 1275–1300; i.e. around 1288. In the 3rd chapter of the present communication the author discusses a completely new explanation of the expression kyniuhhad occurring in the Old Hungarian Lament of the Virgin Mary. Contrary to former explanations, he concludes that it is a composite form: kyn + iuhhad, meaning ’pain subsides’. This explanation is in full agreement with the written form and fi ts perfectly to the text semantically as well.
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The general idea of the active type dictionary was introduced by A. Rey and S. Delesalle: “a dictionary begins to live from the moment when it presents not only meaning of the words but their functioning” (1983). The concept of Active dictionary was further developed in Russian studies. If A. Rey and S. Delesalle focused on pragmatic information in a dictionary entry, Russian lexicographers dis-cuss the problem of the relation between linguistic and encyclopedic information in the diction-ary, offering to "walk away" from the minimization of the classical dictionaries (Gak). In the modern theoretical lexicography it is of importance to create a universal/active dic-tionary: the purpose of the dictionary, the recipient, the amount of lexicographic information, methods of presentation, sources and metalanguage (Apresyan). Recognizing all the problems associated with the new type of dictionary let`s focus on the issues of volume and the ratio of semantic and pragmatic information about the word in a bilingual active dictionary. The main concept of the active bilingual lexicography is reflected in the French-Russian active type dictionary, which has a different purpose than active monolingual dictionaries and "aims to explicitly show the relations between language and speech: show the transition from a system of word meaning and its translation to typed contextual meanings and their translation, noting the diverse resources available to the target language to convey various meanings of the source language" (Gak, Triomphe). The authors follow the cognitive-encyclopedic trend, and tend to include certain infor-mation not typical of a bilingual dictionary (such thematic groups as "soccer" and "chess" vo-cabulary, kinship terms, card games, etc.), or information on composition and functioning of causal verbs, the speech genres of Fear or Prohibition, as well as the ways of expressing Inter-rogation or Negation, etc. Such information that facilitates mastering the system and functional parameters of the language. In this case, we can speak about a different recipient of the dic-tionary – about the user who is mastering a foreign language. The user simultaneously receives knowledge of language and knowledge about language. Pragmatic information (the emotional-evaluative, ethnic, cultural, ideological, gender, social, etc.) is not yet conceptually comprehended as an object of lexicographic description. The dictionary information is often incomplete, inconsistent and controversial.
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The study begins with a short analysis of the way the Russian dictionaries describe the Russian word vdrug. They distinguish between vdrug as an adverb (with temporal and psycho-logical meaning) and vdrug as a modal particle used to describe possible events. Then, on the basis of the Russian National Corpus (НКРЯ, NCRL) and Russian lexicography, it provides a diachronic investigation of the way the use of vdrug has changed since the 16th century. The author also shows how Russian speakers express their metalinguistic awareness of the meaning of this word in literary and poetical texts of the 20th century. Finally, by exploring the parallel Italian-Russian corpus in NKRJa, it analyzes how the different contemporary meanings of vdrug have been translated into Italian and how some Italian markers have been translated by vdrug. Concluding her investigation the author identifies the semantic elements of the Russian word vdrug that correspond to various markers in Italian in order to avoid semantic reduction or distortions in translation practice.
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The article is devoted to the presentation of words of high-flown style in explanatory dic-tionaries of the Russian language in the XX–XXI centuries. The problem is not sufficiently re-vealed in literature. Considering the history of the issue, the author emphasizes the importance of S. I. Ozhegov’s, lexicographic innovation, who proposed in the early 1950s, when preparing the second edition of his single-volume "Dictionary of Russian language", the new stylistic label – high. The author emphasizes the relevance of high style words of for the texts of the totalitari-an era and points out that in modern communicative situation, the elevated rhetoric with its strong expressive charge, is primarily in demand for the language of mass media. The author’s comparison of the data of a number of Soviet and post-Soviet dictionaries is presented in the form of tables. The researcher shows the lack of development and unification of stylistic labels. Using the National Corpus of the Russian Language the author analyzes the use of lexemes generally characterized as high, in the texts of various philosophical attitudes and stylistic tones and brings out the differences between the classic "poetisms" and the so-called "pathetisms". "Poetisms" are used to create "decorated" speech and are characteristic primarily of the lan-guage of fiction, and "pathetisms" act as means of the author’s purposeful ideological influence on the minds of the audience. "Poetisms" are rooted in cultural traditions. The expressive poten-tial of "pathetisms" depends on current socio-political situation. The article calls for the need to expand and clarify the information about stylistically colored vocabulary presented in the dic-tionaries with a variety of pragmatic features, adding the newest illustrative speech material.
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The article analyzes various ways of describing reality in online discourse in the light of olfactory perception. Olfactory perception is one of the most important steps in the development of human mind, in comprehending of the world around us. The attention to the studies of the ol-factory nominative space is increasing nowadays. At the same time some questions of its nation-al and cultural peculiarity, remain open. Anchoring of stable olfactory associations to this or that object forming a certain cultural stereotype is among them. Our study is an attempt to de-scribe the manifestation of the cultural component in ‘odour-focused’ segments containing ref-erences to ‘one’s own’ area (a country, city, village, etc.) on the material extracted from Inter-net discourse. The analysis can reveal the stereotyped olfactory representations, depending on the olfactory cultural standards and their personal perception by an individual speaker. Thus, on the one hand, the image of the country for the speaker is a positively coloured field of asso-ciations formed by such stereotyped odours, as the smells of nature, frost, bread, mother etc., on the other hand, the negative assessments can also appear, often as a result of metaphorical re-thinking (the smell of poverty). Odourative images are often replaced by mental ones, thus two different semantic processes can be observed: a description of an odour and symbolization of olfactory impressions. The words with the seme of smell are involved not only in the process of language coding of olfactory perception, but also play the role of culturally significant land-marks that contribute to the knowledge of reality.
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The article's objective is to identify the types and mechanisms of semantic shifts in verbal names, show the factors influencing the change of lexical meanings. It is hypothesized that the types of semantic shifts are substantially related to the thematic class of the initial meaning. In turn the derived meaning of an abstract lexeme belongs to a different semantic class and has a new valency. The paper deals with two types of semantic shifts: (1) as a result of a shift to the area of modality the abstract noun acquires the ability to be followed by the infinitive (‘sense of events’ case) – net smysla bezhat’ (‘it makes no sense to run’); (2) abstract noun acquires a valency “po + Dat.” as a result of shift to the area of “in-formation” or “parameters”. Abstract vocabulary may belong to various semantic classes: nepriyatnost’ (‘nuisance’, ‘trouble’, ‘annoyance‘), promakh (‘mistake’), razlad (‘discord’); referendum, soveshchanie (‘meeting’), turnir (‘tournament’); mery (‘measures’) / rabota (‘work’) / usiliya (‘efforts’) [po uregulirovaniyu (‘on settlement of’)] et al. These lexemes have much in common with words de-noting mental states or propositional attitudes e. g. X thinks that Y, where Y is the content (theme) of the proposition expressed by a subordinate clause or by a prepositional group (X thinks about Y). Abstract lexemes can have similar valency in prepositional phrases of po X [Dat.] type (po here means about, on, of), if: (a) there is a semantic shift to the "Information" area: trebo-vaniye soblyudat’ dogovor (‘the requirement to comply with the contract’) shifts to trebovaniya po soblyudeniyu dogovora (‘requirements on/of compliance with the contract’); (b) there is a shift of the lexeme into the "Information" area: raskol po probleme Iraka (‘split on Iraq issue’); (c) there is a shift of the lexeme into "Parameters" area: potrebnosti po gazu (‘gas demand’).
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The author defends the traditional classification of words such as domik, solnyshko, listvenka; belenkyi, tikhonechko as forms of subjective emotional evaluation arguing that in lin-guistics (and linguopoetics) the term "form" does not only correspond to the concept "grammat-ical form" of words (idioms, statements, language in general) that is to the content through which another content is perceived. Connotative semantics of subjective emotional evaluation is an internal form of diminutive units. The article proposes to consider the amount of subjective emotional evaluation forms of nouns as a field, its center including traditional diminutives and the periphery being metaphorical forms not derived from nouns. The author draws attention to the fact that the question of the status of the forms of subjective emotional evaluation is correlat-ed with the scope of this phenomenon in the Russian language. Diminutive nouns are viewed together with diminutive adjectives and adverbs (like belenkyi, tihonechko) as well as words with magnifying semantics (like tolstennyi, crocodiliche). It is due to the syncretism of categories of quality and quantity that words with that feature se-mantics are included into this area: quantitative feature of measure is manifested as an indica-tion of the size (domik, domiche), and as an indication of the degree (holodina, legon`ko). The meaning of the subjective emotional evaluation is obligatory for this area (cf. golubenkyi and golubovatyi. The second word is beyond the forms of subjective evaluation). The author believes that the often used now name of the described units "The words of subjective and emotional evaluation of the degree of quality" is very broad in relation to the traditional term "Forms of subjective emotional evaluation", because the concept of "degrees of quality" includes the concept of "degrees of comparison" and subjective emotional evaluation is evident not only in the content of diminutives and words with a magnifying semantics, but in the content of other expression.
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The current article is devoted to the description of one the English stylistic means, which is transferred epithet. This stylistic device is supposed to be a way of destruction of regular grammar. It’s a case of grammatical and semantic mismatch by which we can describe the non-linguistic realty in one of the unique ways. The work touches the problem of universal interpretation of hidden semantic shift occurred in transferred epithet and the problem of finding an adequate translation equivalent. The aim of the article is to reveal the semantic mechanisms of transferred epithet formation and to determine the source domains, used in the transferred epithets. The article includes a brief review of definitions of this phenomenon, accepted in the manuals on English rhetoric, composition and grammar, as well as in the dictionaries of stylistic terms and modern works in cognitive semantics (in particular in the works on the theory of conceptual integration). Then several classifications of transferred epithets are given. After that the author carries out the data analysis, including the transferred epithets with reference to different objects description as well as the description of parts of body, processes, actions, spaces and time of action. It’s noted that the most productive spheres for transferred epithets are literary and advertisement texts. Here epithets relate to the nouns, denoting objects involved in the action or parts of body. The special attention is drawn to the examples, mapping the complex of transferred epithet and regular metaphor. Such examples in authors’ opinion require the detailed translational analysis of the entire situation hidden in the construction with the transferred epithet. Only this analysis enables to find the most adequate translation.
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Τhe article is devoted to research of the mental structure «Laugh» in the Russian and English language pictures of the world. The paper emphasizes the complexity of its organization in both languages. It is noted that the analyzed mental structure can be considered as a con-cept-image and as a concept-scenario. The purpose of the article is modeling the figurative component of the mental structure «Laugh» in the Russian and English language pictures of the world and detection of the national peculiarities. The author uses metaphorical approach to the description of mental structure. The researcher identifies and describes the metaphors presented in both languages, such as anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, naturomorphic, morbial metaphors. Laughter is personified in the Russian and English languages (an anthropomorphic metaphor). Subjects of laughter appear in images of various animals: horse, pig, donkey, goose, etc. (a zo-omorfic metaphor).The naturomorphic metaphor combines the following: laughter as a sub-stance, material, liquid, medicine, weapon or shield. The Image of laughter as an illness is dif-ficult and multidimensional. It is developed in the scenario of an illness and an unhealthy condi-tion of the subject of laughter. This situation in both language pictures of the world includes certain physiological symptoms and features of behavior of the person who is in condition of strong laughter: the problems with digestion, breath and mentality, change in completion, etc. It is emphasized that metaphors characterize emotional states of the subject and emotional as-sessments of the listener or object of laughter. The author concludes by emphasizing the fact: common for the description of laughter and emotions are the anthropomorphic, substance and liquid metaphors, which include synesthetic flavor, color, tactile metaphors.
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The present article deals with some of the problems of translating poetry from Russian in-to Italian. On the basis of the first six verses of the Hymn in Honour of the Plague, from Push-kin's A Feast in Time of Plague, the author shows how Italian translators render rhythm and me-tre when translating Russian classical authors. In 60 years (1936–1996) The Hymn in Honour of the Plague was translated six times, respectively by R. Küfferle, R. Poggioli, T. Landolfi, E. Lo Gatto, S. Vitale, and S. De Vidovich. Lo Gatto is the only translator who uses a rhymed hendec-asyllable. All other translators (with the exception of De Vidovich, whose translation is prosaic) use 9-syllable verse with or without rhyme. Küfferle, Poggioli and Lo Gatto somehow sacrifice not only the syntax, but also the lexicon and the images (and, as a consequence, the rhythm) of the original in order to keep the rhyme. This is the reason why today their translations have be-come irremediably obsolete.
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The article describes recent trends of lexical transformations in the texts of modern teach-ers, namely, the emergence of various kinds of neologisms: new names for teacher or mentor; new names for kinds and methods of teaching; transliteration names; composites; metaphorical transformations and extensions of lexical compatibility. The reasons for the introduction of for-eign language vocabulary into the pedagogical discourse are under analysis. For example, the author confirms the widely discussed fact of intervention of market discourse into Russian-speaking educational discourse. Foreign discourses yield similar examples. There is a phenom-enon of "spontaneous lexicography" in the types of texts that previously had not been used for that aim (in curricula and programs of scientific conferences). Newspeak and defining of neolo-gisms without indication of the author are presented as tools of the "power of discourse" in the understanding of M. Foucault, T. van Dijk. The author develops the ideas of the integrated theory of lexical meaning and a number of studies on the structure of the pragmatic macrocomponent (Yu. D. Apresyan, G. N. Sklyarevskaya, V. N. Teliya, E. Yu. Bulygina, T. A. Tripolskaya, etc.).The author applies the techniques of contextual analysis on the material of neologisms in contemporary pedagogical discourse.It allows establishing the structure of the pragmatic component.It is proved that the ideological and evaluative components of the macrocomponent are integrated in the semantic structure of neologisms. In its turn, the ideological microcomponent includes components of la-belling new ideas, the transmission of an ideal image of the new pedagogy and the idea of the "the other" in it. The evaluative component includes a positive assessment, the growing prestige of new teaching professions and technologies.
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Musical discourse, as most of other genres of discourse, exists in tree forms i. e. profes-sional, laymen’s and mixed types. The analysis shows the difference between professional and laymen’s types of musical discourse. The laymen’s discourse is predominating in the Internet. Another observation is deterioration of professional musical language among the younger gen-eration. The authors consider the main types of musical terms – professional international ones as sforzando and terms derived from common words as root, key or third. Russian and English dictionary definitions of the terms are compared. The use of musical terms is illustrated by vivid examples. The general tendency is strong adaptation of musical texts to common readers and mass audiences with minimal use of terminology. There are two tendencies in use of musical terms in society. One of them is higher fre-quency of a limited group of most popular used in mass media. The other trend is gradual wash-ing away of terminology from mass media discourse, pragmatical adaptation of the text to the reader. Prevailing types of discourse are semi-professional and laymen’s types of language. Putting it in simple words, we observe a paradox – nearly everyone likes music, but nearly no one understands it properly. The Internet has not raised the level of regular musical knowledge, as has not raised level of knowledge of the English language. Internet English, as well as the musical Internet discourse is degenerating into a pigeon.
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The article focuses on the multiparadigmatic approach in modern linguistic studies as a complex system of methodological principles. This principle is intended to use the latest achievements of various language disciplines for the purpose of quantitative and qualitative “augmentation” of the problem field and obtaining more well-grounded results. The aim of this paper is to analyze the multiparadigmatic potential of the complex epistolary genre. This form of texts is in demand in the space of contemporary interpersonal and social communication. The materials of the study are online petitions – messages addressed to representatives of the re-gional and national authorities, which are expressed in a variety of electronic epistolary texts of social orientation. Online petition is a unique empirical textual basis that permits to research in-to various fields of the humanities: from the standpoint of modern media-linguistics, semiotics, psycholinguistic theories of mass communication, speech influence and linguistic identity, cer-tain aspect of discourse analysis and stylistic research within the framework of psychological, sociological and pragmalinguistics, rhetoric and speech culture theories. The Multiparadigmat-ic character of the epistolary genre can be conceptualized in ontological and epistemological aspects. On the one hand the epistolary genre is a multi-discourse, multi-functional multi-code form. On the other hand it is a reproducible text model crammed with clichés. Hence, epistemo-logically the genre requires an adequate complex approach. The conclusion is that the effec-tiveness of modern linguistic studies depends on appropriate use of multiparadigmatic ap-proach based on a comprehensive analysis of linguistic facts from the perspective of various humanitarian fields and schools, applying various methods and techniques of research.
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The article deals with the description of the collective monograph “Graphology” in the light of self-consciousness and life-creation of critic and writer of 2nd part of the 19th century N. D. Aksharumov. The collective monograph was published in Riga in 1894. That project unit-ed graphologist F.F. Tishkov, dr D.D. Aksharumov (MD) and a popular writer N.D. Aksharumov. In spite of the fact that their theories lack originality and are derivative from the ideas of C. Lombroso and G. Michon, that book contains important material for literary and historical studies and hermeneutical reconstructions. Its 33-page supplement deserves special attention as it presents graphological symbols illustrating the monograph’s theses. That section also contains imitations of famous people’s handwriting -- artist Ivan Aivazovsky, writers and poets Alexander Pushkin, Nicolay Gogol, and others. The article presents a hypothesis about special significance of the book for the author's self-consciousness. So, Akhsharumov was among the first Russian writers, who openly declared his competence in handwriting analysis. The search for the "Prototype" is one of the key ideas of the book. Akhsharumov’s figure is important for a new retrospective view of Russian literature and the writer's own creativity. However, the work on that book and its applications, as to differ from his efforts in fiction, helped him penetrate the secrets of the creative laboratory of the Oth-er and without a doubt made significant changes in the author's identity.
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The article presents the author’s analysis of authorized parentheses that occur in film re-view text. The purpose of the article is to show multy-functionality of parentheses with reference to the source of information. It is noted that the ability of parentheses to combine several func-tions is based on their semantic and pragmatic possibilities: their potential to alter the modality of propositions and adjust it to viewer-reader. As a rule, the authors of film reviews do not refer to themselves, so the authorized parentheses are marked as “non-author’s parts” of the text. Using authorized parentheses the author introduces the line of director, actors, producers, mov-ie characters, influential individuals (other critics, writers), but also refers to the vague, unreli-able sources. It is emphasized that maintaining the standardized form, the authorized parentheses, in addition to their primary function, express persuasiveness and evaluation. These references also have a pragmatic effect: they are designed for film experts (and wider – culturological ones) competence of the reader, inviting him to a culturological dialogue. The conclusion is that the author of film review marks the interpretative part of his review with authorized parenthesis, so the argumentative component enhances his text.
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