No 4 (2016)

All theories of meaning, whether they are based on ideas, concepts, prejudices, social conventions or mental representations, agree on the key point: knowledge is necessary pre-condition for understanding. In this context, epistemologically-oriented semantics should define which knowledge is chosen primarily for the interpretation and assess whether one can build a unified interpretative model based on the principles of “epistemic conservatism” (S. Auroux).

The article is related to the research of systematic semantics features of onyms by outcrop and description of their associative-cultural background within regional and nationwide background knowledge (e.g., onym Y.A. Gagarin ). The relevance of the work is conditioned by the research of a name as a “cultural sign”/ which is important due to globalization processes whose reverse side is enhancement of the ethnic identity and the national self-identification beginning of the XXI century. The novelty of the article is determined by systematic research of the features of the outcrop and description of the associative-cultural background of onyms: the broad experiment, conducted at first at the regional level (the Smolensk citizens) and then at the nationwide level (citizens of Moscow and St. Petersburg), became the main method of the research. As a result of the research was clarified that the name Y.A. Gagarin is organic to the background knowledge of the heritage of language personality of the beginning of the XXI century. And the informational reactions achieved by the experiment allows us explicate a huge amount of the historical and cultural information in the content of the researched name. The information can be reflected in the various anthropological dictionaries. The scientific value of the present work is determined by the approach to the outcrop and analysis of the associative-cultural background of the regional onyms transferred to the nationwide level can be employed in studies of other regions.

The subject of the article is linguistic and cultural features of place names of one of the Canadian provinces - British Columbia. The aim of the work is to do lexico-semantic comparison of toponymic lexis and to identify its origin and motivation using the methods of classification and structural analysis. The distinguishing feature of the province is anglization of indigenous names and euphemization of some English toponyms. As a result of the research it was found out that English place names prevail in the province with a big share of indigenous names in their original form. According to motivation characteristics toponyms with the names of prominent people dominate. This conclusion contributes to the formation of the idea of English Canadian toponymy in general and its linguistic and cultural peculiarities. The results of the work can be used in making up practical and theoretical courses on English lexicology, language and culture under study, cross-culture communication and translation science.

French winged units which are in the international block of the slogans of modern Europe and Russia are in the center of the attention of the authors article. 90 % of the krylatology - discipline formed in 1990-2000 based on lexicography description of the words and phrases noticed by “authority mark” and development of phraseology as a science of overword language units are winged units. The language status of the winged units accomplishing predicative function in the speech stream is one of the most important problems of the krylatology. The analysis of the functional potential of the winged units and their transformative modifications in the communicative space of modern Europe and Russia promotes the solution of this problem. Gallicisms of the slogan character which are very widely used in the Old World’s publicism and in the Russian political discourse are beneficial material for such research. After stepping over the French border in transliterated and trace form these winged units keep traits of the French culture, “remind” of the events caused them to life. However varying with their structure, playing with different borders of their semantics they witness not only about their national language status as winged units but also about belonging to the international winged units-slogans.

The article is devoted to the study of medicinal herbal plant names in the Kazakh language. The aim of the article is to research medicinal herbal plant names in Kazakh from the origin viewpoint. At the beginning of the article there is a brief description of the works of the Kazakhstan scientists who investigated various aspects of phytonymic vocabulary and there are the researchers’ opinions regarding the Mongolian, Arab and Persian borrowings. The research material was only taken by selection way from the etymological, explanatory, bilingual and trilingual dictionaries. The etymological and comparative methods were used in the work. During the etymological analysis the author has revealed the origin of the Kazakh phytonyms and drawn parallels with the ancient Turkic, Arabian, Persian and Mongolian names of medicinal herbs considering the alternative points of view on their origin. The etymological characteristics of the Kazakh names of medicinal herbal plants show the cultural and historical ties of peoples since ancient times.

The article is devoted to the analysis of structural comparative units of the literary text of the novel «The geographer drank his globe away » by the modern Russian Alexey Ivanov The research is carried out using the concept of comparison worked out by I.V. Nazarova. As a result of the research presented a set of thematic groups involved in creating linguistic portrait of novel characters arefound out and described.

Text sentiment-analysis represents one of the most actual and modern problems of the applied linguistics. The sentimant-analysis, being one of formal methods of the text analysis the, allows to estimate, on the one hand, emotional tone of the text, and on the other to draw substantial conclusions by results of revealed sentiment. In the era of the information wars this task is the task of vital importance. The article considers the variant of the sentiment-analysis by the example of some categories generated on materials of texts of a site the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for one month. To carry out of the analysis 2 dictionaries - positively and negatively marked words have been received. Results of processing by the program of the sentiment-analysis have allowed to allocate the text and graphically present an estimation of texts tonality of the categories that has confirmed an opportunity of using this formalized method for public opinion estimation and formation.

Studying the metaphors is traditionally connected with studying of literature, but as D. Lakoff and M. Johnson stated in their work “Metaphors We Live By”, the use of metaphors isn’t confined only by literary and poetic language. They are used in different spheres of our life, for example in everyday speech and in journalism. It is known that comprehending of a sport competition as a war or a battle leads to such verbal transformation where rivals appear as enemies and enemies at war are called soldiers. Such transformation is regular and is treated as temporal. Different words from the group “enemy” are used to denominate a sporting rival some of which have already lost metaphorical character, for example the word “opponent” has become a regular denomination of an object. Having done the analysis of denominations of the word competitor we state that all metaphorical denominations can be divided into three groups: generalized denominations, collective denominations, isolated denominations.

The article focuses on the different aspects of translating into Spanish a short story “The Bet” (1889) by A. Chekhov within the paradigmatic frame of equivalence. For the purposes of the comparative analysis of two literary translations (by Heino Zernask’s translation into a non-native language, and Víctor Gallego Ballestero’s into a native language), the stylistic analysis of the original is given as well as its peculiarities in Chekhov’s idiolect. Through the methodic use of reverse translation and its subsequent philological analysis, the conveyance of the original’s polyphony, the individual traits of the characters’ speech, and the translation and use of lexical and semantic tools are discussed, at the same time that inaccuracies in the translation are examined. The analysis shows that both versions are close to conveying through the mechanisms of the Spanish language, Chekhov’s idiolect (the polyphony, the lexical and semantic tools, the rhetoric). The conclusions reveal a shift of the narrative tone in both translations, showing a prevalence in the use of colloquial language in Heirno Zernask’s version. Víctor Gallego Ballestero’s text, on the other hand, lifts the tone of the narrative at the expense of the lexical and semantic tools from the original. Heino Zernask’s translation follows the original very close, but suffers from Russian interference, which gave way to translation mistakes. The article is useful for teaching the theory and practice of Russian translation into Spanish and vice versa, and also for theory courses on translation.

Mutual enrichment of arts and cultures should be considered as a fundamental rule of existence of history. Opponents or supporters of “décadisme”, with some minor exceptions, do not connect this movement with a concept of the civilization decline. Decadents considered modern language to be poor and insufficient for expressing the feelings they were experiencing. Therefore, poetic resources were consciously updated to express the new attitude. They created such original words as stagnance (from stagnant ), sombreur (from sombre ), etc. J. Plowert even composed “Small glossary to understand decadent and symbolist authors” (1888) to make decadent poetry comprehensible to readers. Decadents’ style has caused a resonance in public consciousness at all levels of art. In this article we will try to prove that the era of the late 19th century can be characterized as the time of spiritual renewal and cultural rise not only in poetry, but also in music and theater.

This paper analyses the search for identity in J. Rouaud’s trilogy “Les champs d’honneur”, “Des hommes illustres”, “Le monde à peu près”. The issue of the subject’s structure is scrutinized on the basis of E. Levinas’s ethics, interpreting subjectification as a result of encounting between the subject and the Other. Indeed, such key concepts of E. Levinas as the Other, the epiphany of the face, the non-indifference towards each other, the responsibility of the responsibility of the Other, are to be found in J. Rouaud’s trilogy. Two other concepts of E. Levinas - Death and the absolutely Other - determine each novel’s shaping and the whole trilogy. The quest for identity can be read through a series of metaphors and concepts: darkness and fog, clarity and light, myopia, lameness, smile, climbing . The intertextual dialogue with the Bible, as well as with the pictorial and literary works, plays an important role. The analysis also deals with J. Rouaud’s thanatological approach to a lifestory, starting from a character’s death which launches a dynamic of mourning at the beginning of each novel, and growing as an upward spiral expressed at all levels: structural, conceptual, lexical, rhythmic.

The article demonstrates the analysis of morphemic structure of syllable in different word classes in conversational, scientific and literary texts. Considering morphemic structure of syllable scientific text differs from conversational and literary ones, nouns and adjectives oppose verbs. The morphemic structure of syllable shows the main grammar tendencies which determine the type of the language.

In the article an attempt is made to identify the influence of phonetic and prosodic features of structurally different languages on the specifics of creating puns in Russian, English and French traditions. The results of the research contribute to establish the regularities in relationships of three languages; also they might be useful for comparative and typological stylistics. The research is made on the basis of Russian, English, and French jokes, selected from printed and electronic joke collections. In course of research of pun creating specifics, it was identified that polysemy, paronymy and homonymy were the most popular mechanisms of creating puns. The specifics of creating puns in Russian, English and French joke traditions is influenced by the features of the language system as well as the language group, which identify such characteristics of languages as the average length of words, the specifics of word stress and phrase stress, presence or absence of unstressed vowels reduction, unpronounceable consonants, similarly pronounced inflections.