We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
It is claimed that a joint use of the Russian language data and the hypotheses of theories concerning syntactic and semantic structures of the language yields mutual benefits. If language specific linguistics carries out investigations from the point of view of theoretical linguistics, its achievements have to be considered useful for theoretical linguistics as well. To demonstrate these claims, I present some syntactic and semantic analyses of Russian. Relying mainly on ideas of generative syntax, I show that all types of so-called mononuclear (“odnosostavnye”) sentences have a two-member structure but their subjects /predicates are lexically unexpressed or left out. As to semantics, I attempt to treat some meanings of nouns and verbs as contextually evoked senses in a modified version of Two-level Conceptual Semantics, which can gain further explanatory power if it is integrated into a new linguistic discipline, namely lexical pragmatics.
More...
In this paper the author analyzes a corpus of Germanisms that have been collected in field research of the dialect of Međimurje. The corpus is analyzed in terms of parts of speech, in terms of extralinguistic reality to which the words belong and in terms of their phonological, morphological and semantic adaptations. A special effort is made to include the variations of replicas at different local points of the dialect of Međimurje in terms of expression and contents. In the chapter on semantic adaptations, a special emphasis is made on the analysis of the seven different kinds of recent secondary semantic adaptations by means of which all the Germanism that have their equivalents in the standard Croatian prolong their presence in the active vocabulary of the speakers of the dialect of Međimurje.
More...
This study provides a critical overview of the recently developed theory of Hittite—Luwian bilingualism mostly by H. Cr. Melchert, E. Rieken and Th. van den Hout. After a short presentation of the linguistic map of Late Bronze Age Anatolia and the problem whether Hittite was a spoken language until the end of the Empire a detailed discussion of linguistic arguments of Luwian influence on Hittite grammar will follow. The third part of the study focuses on the possible historical and demographic reasons hidden behind this bilingualism.
More...
The first part of the paper studies the main types of aspectual pairs, while the second part examines the variants of aspectual oppositions which are distinguished within the same type of opposition, that is, regarding even one concrete aspectual pair. In the latter case, the author suggests that a distinction should be made between strong opposition as a lexico-grammatical one and weak opposition without any lexico-semantic modification. The weak opposition is further divided into the trivial type (corresponding completely to the lexical equivalence constraint of aspectual correlates) and the privative type.
More...
The study fills the gaps in the lingustical database bearing on agriculture in the age of the Ŗgveda. Several corrections of existing standpoints have been made concerning purely philological issues as well as the semantical field of certain agricultural terms. The unbiassed reassessment of etymology of some terms reveals that beside the terms of Indo-European origin there are terms from extinct languages while the number of items of Dravidian origin is meagre and the Austro-Asiatic influence can be excluded. Language contacts with the Bactria-Margiana Complex (BMAC) must be taken into consideration. The all-around analysis of lingustic data and archaeological evidence together with the observations of historical ethnography allows us to form a more balanced view of economic conditions: although pastoralism played a dominant part in the life of Indo-Aryan speakers in the Panjab in the second half of the second millennium B.C., agriculture including wheat production gained also an established position in the region. Both the negligence and the overestimation of agriculture in this system are erroneous viewpoints.
More...
This paper claims that idiomatic expressions play a very important role in the protagonist’s speech characteristics in Ilf and Petrov’s novels. Phraseologisms used in a criminal sense are either the author’s neologisms treated in the style of criminal slang or idiomatic expressions corresponding to criminal topics. Two of these phraseologisms clearly belong to criminal slang. Comic effect is reached by the manner of their use in context. As a result of this, they cause even more problems for translation. Apart from these objective moments, the translator’s artistic sense and linguistic sense of humour are also significant factors.
More...
The paper gives a survey of the situation of Burgenland Croatian today. The Croats of the former Western Hungarian lands originate mostly from the 16th century. Their present number is approximately 20000 in Austria, and even smaller in Hungary and Slovakia. The Croats in Austria are bi-lingual, Croatian and German. Their literary language is a Čakavian, ikavian-ekavian variety of Croatian, which has been written since the 17th century. Efforts to standardize the language have resulted in dictionaries and a grammar recently. Language contacts between Burgenland Croatian on the one hand, and Standard Croatian, German, and Hungarian on the other are described. Language policy is not very much in favor of the Croats. Nevertheless have they achieved better presence in the mass media during the last years. The linguistic usage of bi-lingual individuals differs according to age, sex, and profession. Bi-lingual instruction is conducted in a small number of schools only.
More...
A variety of names are traditionally used to refer to the literary language as cultivated by the Belarusians and Ukrainians in the late Middle Ages. It is maintained that the emergence of the term prostaja mova/prostyj jazykъ was brought about by the (German) Reformation in the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Based on a comparative analysis of the names of the prostaja mova attested in Ruthenian, Polish, and Lithuanian writings, the author surmises that the coinage and the use of the corresponding terms was primarily determined by the revival of the indigenous “linguistic democratism” dating back to the time of Constantine and Methodius.
More...
According to Andrej Anatol´evič Zaliznjak, the evidence for the particle to as a “relativizator”, as it is encountered in Old East Slavic texts and in particular in the Novgorod birch bark documents merely up to the first half of the 13th century, can be used as a more or less irrefutable argument for the authenticity of the Igor’s tale, where it appears once in connection with kotoryj. As linguistic knowledge about the usage of to as a “relativizator” in East Slavic has been acquired only recently, no falsificator would have allegedly been able to use kotoryj to perfectly in accordance with pre-1250 Old East Slavic syntax. A comparative view, however, as it was once initiated, but then abandoned by Zaliznjak (1981) himself, demonstrates that to as an enforcing particle and also to as a “relativizator” in particular has been widely used in other Slavonic languages. Który to as such is known to Old, Middle and Modern Polish, as well as to Middle Ruthenian. Therefore, those who believe that there are polonisms in the Igor’s tale, which prove it to be a falsification, could also use the evidence of kotoryj to in the Igor’s tale as an argument for their own purposes. The significance of the “relativizator” to, thus, seems to be limited. Analogically, the same holds true for some other syntactic arguments put forward by the Moscow linguist in his latest book, namely as regards the enclitic elements in the Igor’s tale.
More...
The object of the study of contact grammar is those changes of linguistic elements that are influenced by the contact language. The clear example which belongs to the field of the Slavic-German-Hungarian contact grammar is the separable, adverbial by origin, prefixes of verbs. In some Slavic languages and dialects, this unusual phenomenon appeared during the lasting contacts with German. As seems, in Hungarian the development of the same phenomenon was also caused by German, and in turn it influenced neighboring Slavic dialects. In the present article, the author have studied the separable verbal prefixes of the Gradiščan dialect of Croatian, have indicated their German and Hungarian equivalents and have compiled the list of the verbs with the prefixes of this sort. The analysis resulted in the conclusion that the given adverbs not only specify the meaning of the verbs but also dominate in the coining of new words and affect syntax. The research into this most interesting problem, initiated by the prominent Hungarian scholar Laszlo Hadrovics on the basis of South Slavic material, requires the more detailed examination of the Slavic linguistic area and its history.
More...
The рарег attempts а comparative analysis of five poems about insomnia written bу eminent Russian poets through the interval of 125 years. Performed on the rhythmic, phonic, syntactic, lexical and stylistic 1evels, the analysis displays the “narrowness of poetic space”: over and above their individual character, аll the five poems аrе based upon the Puškinian poetic principles, i.е. on the functional synthesis of different stylistic layers, the “architectonic” arrangement of phonic devices, and others. At the same time, the peculiar mental state of insomnia bringing to the surface some essential (mostly harassing or anxious) thoughts and feelings of the sleepless subject, the poems reveal deep-rooted elements of the authors’ vision of the world.
More...
On studying Russian national folk language, I noticed elements which have territorial characteristics due to the cultural and linguistic contacts of Russian people with their neighbours. N. S. Trubetzkoy (1927) determined and studied the Russian cultural zone, which has huge contacts with the Orient. Most of the Russian set expressions show this contact, e. g. белая кость ‘white bone’ with the meaning «aristocratic, blue-blooded». Plenty of Turkish languages have lots of similar expressions. In the Tatar language there is also an expression which consists of components: ak ‘white’ and soyak ‘bone’. It has the phonetic and structural equivalents that appear in the Bashkir, Kazakh and Kirghiz languages. According to studies the Kirghiz set expression: ak sook has given the most important information about the relation between the Turkish and Russian languages. The research has been helped by the work of Hungarian scientist Ármin Vámbéry, which comments on and clarifies the social, ethnographic background of this very complex problem. In the 19th century he wrote about the Kirghiz people, their customs and about the expression: ak szöng, as well. This phraseological collocation has many important historical and social relations with the lives of peoples in Central Asia and theVolga basin.
More...
These two letters and two inventories preserved in the rich heritage of Anton Hodinka in the manuscript depository of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Library present an exciting picture of the everyday life of the 18th century. Nevertheless, I find these documents valuable not because of this fact but due to their vocabulary which reflects the Rusyn language adequately. These original sources are the splendid illustrations of the Rusyn language wordstock used in everyday life of that period. Therefore I have not spared myself to copy, study and publish the manuscripts in question because I should like to contribute to enriching the Rusyn language history. As a matter of fact the Rusyn language of the 18th century reflects the synthesis of three elements: the Church Slavonic liturgy language, the Old Ukrainian language and the living folk language. The formation and unification of the literary language norm, which was not regulated by grammars and dictionaries, was greatly influenced by the bishop’s office documents due to the great authority and prestige of the church in the region. The three above-mentioned elements of the Rusyn literary language of the 18th century can be revealed in all language layers (phonetical, morphological, syntactical, lexical, semantical). I shall give several examples on the elements of the Rusyn folk language.
More...
Noun definiteness is a functional semantic category with a wide range of means for expression. It is a specific noun category, unlike other noun categories. The definiteness is a communicative pragmatic category based on tree types of oppositions. The semantic opposition singularity/non-singularity. The communicative opposition reference/non-reference. The graded pragmatic opposition non-identifiedness/identifiability/identifiedness. Neutralization of the oppositions and competition among the determiners is realized in the generic use of the noun in the utterance.
More...
The article presents the cognitive analysis of figurative vocabulary and expressions, which are metaphorically motivated by the verb boil. This verb names various activities, processes and phenomena by their analogy with cooking food in hot water. Propositional frame-based analysis facilitated the revelation of the cognitive structure of the frame presented by the verb boil and its subject / object oriented propositions which are based on the metaphorical projection of such phenomena as physical, physiological, mental, psychological and social conceptual spheres. The given system of images expresses metaphorically the concept of various processes and notions related to the transformation of material objects; bad physical state because of overheating, changes in character and morals, active team work, realization of social and political projects, intensive intellectual work, mixing different elements into one etc.
More...
The author argues that there is a new language situation in Bulgaria for which he uses the term „new linguistic order“. Its essence is that a number of language variants, which in the past had reduced or limited use, although not codified, are now part of the public linguistic norm. On the other hand, other language versions, which have so far been part of the norm and have been codified, have come out of active use. In order to prove the existence of the „new linguistic order“, the author brings facts from the contemporary language reality in Bulgaria. These facts represent different levels of the language system and its functioning in real communication. In conclusion, the author reflects on the problem of teaching Bulgarian as a foreign language, given that there is a large discrepancy between codified and non-codified language norms, between common and rare language practices. The reflections are based on the experience of teaching the Bulgarian language in Poland.
More...
There is probably only one idiomatic phrase in the proverb collection by János Baranyai Decsi that doubtless originates in contemporary everyday Hungarian language and the 16th century literary background of which can be clearly identified. The phrase “Nem jobb ô is a deákné vásznánál” (“Not a whit better than anybody else”) has always been popular since the 16th century. The funny, sarcastic poem (The cloth of the famous deákné, written before 1580) recounts the fatal marriage of a certain Máté deák – partly in the form of dialogue. This poem is one of the oldest Hungarian women mocking songs within the genre of wedding songs. It demonstrates all the characteristics of the old Hungarian trufa genre: it can be performed as a farce, the joke has its cream and it is based on mummery and pretence: it provides a parody of a well-known human type. It is possible that this trufa was a stock play of contemporary popular tricksters and jugglers. It mocked the wife of Máté deák who was “lazy to weave”.
More...
The data bank of Estonian proverbs (Eesti vanasõnad, Tartu, 1980–1986) is the most up-to-date and typologically the most consistent publication of the proverb collection of one nation. In addition to similar publications of other nations, it suggests new approaches to the research of proverbs in respect to their content, poetics and comparative possibilities. In the latter half of the twentieth century the semiotic studies, focused on the analysis of the semantic, and other structural levels of the proverbs were far more intensive and at the same time they were ignored as a subject of folklore. The disregard of proverbs as a source for the investigation of the spiritual culture both of a separate nation and of the entire humanity should be treated as one of the most serious shortcomings of modern paremiology.
More...