Russian Language Studies

The relevance of this study is related to the linguistic-cultural potential of vocabulary with an ethnic meaning, having complex systemic characteristics and implicit culturally marked content, that should be included in teaching Russian to foreign students. The study is aimed at identifying and describing the linguistic-cultural potential of vocabulary with an ethnic component for teaching Russian to foreign students based on lexicographic sources. The main methods used in the study are lexicographic, semantic, quantitative, associative, and interpretative analysis of vocabulary. The study material was a corpus of lexical means with an ethnic meaning (more than 400 units in general totality) collected with a continuous sampling from academic explanatory, semantic, and ideographic dictionaries of the Russian language and coordinated with the “Lexical Minimum in Russian as a Foreign Language. II Certification Level” (select collection). The authors established that vocabulary with an ethnic component is a complex structure, including anthroponyms, ethnonyms, and words with the same root; it contains systemic, connotative, associative and evaluative, background, and idiomatically conditioned culturally marked information. The study demonstrates that the linguistic-cultural potential of this vocabulary must be considered when teaching Russian to foreign students. The research prospects include the creation of a comprehensive educational dictionary “Russian Vocabulary with an Ethnic Component”.

The relevance of the study is defined by the anthropocentric paradigm of modern linguistics considering phraseological units as means for accumulating and transmitting ethnic culture, which reflect collective experience and mental attitudes of a certain linguistic and cultural community. Phraseological units originating from the archaic spiritual culture, including divination, are of particular interest. The study aims at identifying and classifying Russian phraseological units associated with divination and defining their semantic features in view of their historical and cultural background. The research material includes data from specialized phraseological and ethnolinguistic dictionaries, folklore and ethnographic collections, monographs and scientific articles on the history of fortune-telling rituals. Research methods include continuous sampling, descriptive analysis, etymological analysis, semantic analysis, and method of cultural commenting. The authors examine the etymological features of these phraseological units, describe their meanings, identify their internal form and figurative components, and highlight their national and cultural features based on their idiomatic imagery. The cultural specificity of the phraseological units is determined through linguistic-cultural analysis, considering the semantic periphery of the unit, which is not included in the conventional dictionary definition and is linked to extralinguistic reality. The study shows that Russian phraseological units originating from divination function as specific culturally significant onomasiological signs, which retain key elements of national cultural code. The analysis demonstrates that the semantics of these phraseological units is determined by specific historical period, while their internal form reflect magical and ritual practices. The authors conclude that the origin and functioning of these phraseological units highlights their role as a linguisticcultural phenomenon, which accumulates archaic conscience, ethnocultural stereotypes, and historical memory of native speakers. The systematization of the phraseological units according to various types of fortune-telling practice shows their typological diversity.

The study explores Tolstoy’s linguistic innovations in his novella “Youth” and their role in the development of Russian literary language vocabulary and then identifies their narrative and artistic function. The relevance of this study stems from the need for a detailed examination of the relationship between Tolstoy’s linguistic innovations and his artistic system. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that the authors conduct corpus and linguisticpoetic analysis of linguistic innovations in the novella “Youth”. The aim of the article is to identify and classify various types of author’s innovations and their role in the text. The research methods include a comprehensive sampling of occasional forms, their comparison with the usual norm using systemic lexicography data, a corpus-based method using contexts from Russian National Corpus to determine the future functioning of the lexemes in Russian texts, and contextual-semantic analysis to establish the narrative and artistic functions of these innovations. Using historical and modern explanatory dictionaries, the authors identify deviations of Tolstoy’s new expressions from the linguistic norm of the late 1850s. The National Corpus of the Russian Language traces the subsequent functioning of these lexemes in the language of fiction and shows the influence of Tolstoy’s word creation on Russians vocabulary. Furthermore, the ideological and artistic functions of each type of innovation in revealing the inner world of the characters and shaping the narrative are established. The authors proved that Tolstoy’s linguistic innovation is proved to be not a collection of spontaneous and isolated original word usages, but a purposeful poetic device for detailing artistic space. The research contributes to the theory of linguistic innovation and understanding the ways author’s style influences literary language. The prospects of the research include subsequent studies of the linguistic context of the biographical trilogy and applying the developed methodology to the analysis of the idiostyles of other 19th-century writers.

The relevance of the study is determined by the need to study diminutives in learning Russian as a foreign language due to their widespread use in the everyday speech of native speakers. Mastering key models of diminutive word formation based on a functional-semantic approach allows foreign learners to significantly expand their vocabulary and improve their communication efficiency as a result. The aim of the study is to develop exercises for enriching the speech of Iranian students with diminutive vocabulary (level A1-B1) based on a functional-semantic approach. To achieve this aim, the authors used a set of complementary methods: a theoretical and methodological analysis of linguistic and methodological literature on the topic; a comparative analysis used to identify differences in the system of subjective evaluation in Russian and Persian; a word-formation analysis of diminutives; and an included pedagogical observation of teaching Russian to Iranian students. The study presents exercises based on the functional-semantic approach for developing the skills of using diminutive vocabulary in the speech of Iranian students. The exercises contain scientific and methodological recommendations and educational materials, structured and adapted according to the levels of Russian language proficiency. The exercises use relevant lexical and grammatical topics, diminutive forms of personal names, animal names, and descriptions of human appearance, and so they can be flexibly integrated into existing educational programs for various forms of education - universities, short-term courses, and independent study. The prospects for research include application of a functional-semantic approach to study other diminutive meanings in the course of Russian as a foreign language - emphatic forms, subjective evaluation forms, and emotional prefixes. This will allow Iranian students to experience the emotional features of Russian speech.

The study examines the microstructural Russian narrative competence of native Chinese speakers studying Russian outside the Russian-speaking environment. The relevance of the study stems from the need for an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms underlying the development of written speech production in a foreign language and the identification of specific difficulties of Chinese learners producing written narratives. The research is aimed at identifying the key microstructural characteristics of Chinese students’ written narratives, classify their typical deviations from the Russian linguistic norm, and establish systematic links between microstructural features and different types of errors. The material includes 60 narratives produced by Chinese learners during an experiment with MAIN. The methodology combined quantitative and qualitative approaches: microstructural features markup, error classification, statistical procedures, and correlation analysis. The results show that text length does not correlate with the number of errors, whereas low lexical diversity is associated with higher error frequency. The research demonstrates that the most problematic area is morphology; the most frequent errors include “frozen” initial and oblique forms, and errors in aspect, case, and gender. Graphic errors are also frequent and are caused by indistinction of consonant pairs and an underdeveloped orthographic word image. Lexical difficulties primarily concern verbs of motion. Correlation analysis reveals stable error clusters that reflect different sublevels of acquisition of the target language system. The written speech of Chinese learners outside the language environment is characterized by certain difficulties which are not typical for other learners of Russian as a foreign language. The findings may enhance teaching, particularly in the aspect of paradigms, verb aspects, and verbs of motion.