2026 Vol. 18 №2

The study outlines the semantics of verification and examines its interaction with de re ascriptions. Verification sentences are analysed as having a layered structure comprising two unary operators, VER and ACT, represented as VER(ACT(p)). The operator VER establishes a link to a verification event in which agent X has established the truth of p in the actual world, while ACT renders the proposition pre-verified, that is, open to verification or falsifica­tion. Standard accounts of the de re versus de dicto distinction maintain that, in contexts of belief and desire, de re attitudes involve ontological commitments to the existence of objects in the actual world. Within a Davidsonian framework, events are treated as spatiotemporal par­ticulars. Accordingly, sentences of the type VER(ACT(p)), which posit the existence of verifi­cation events in the actual world, pattern with de re constructions. On this basis, lexical markers of VER, such as English ‘indeed’, ‘really’, ‘in fact’, and Russian ‘dejstvitel’no’, ‘na samom dele’, may be analysed as de re modal elements conveying a meaning of epistemic ne­cessity. A distinct class of discourse markers includes English ‘certainly’ and ‘naturally’, and Russian ‘razumeetsja’ and ‘estestvenno’, which introduce the operator AFF and signal that the speaker’s expectations are fulfilled. These two classes of operators display different seman­tic properties: markers of certainty do not entail that p is verified de re, whereas VER markers do not encode speaker certainty. The operator AFF may take scope over VER, yielding the configuration AFF(VER(ACT(p))), which is well-formed, whereas the inverse order VER(AFF(ACT(p))) is ill-formed. The proposed analysis accounts for two empirical generali­sations. First, VER is invariably realised overtly at the phonetic level. Second, counterfactual constructions require components that are pre-verified or verified and exclude anti-veridical markers in the protasis. This constraint supports the view that, within the metaphysics im­plicit in natural language, counterfactual worlds are treated as real and are capable of hosting verification events.

The Church Fathers, along with numerous ecclesiastical authors and theologians, con­sistently addressed the problem of interpreting the allegories of divine revelation and the di­vinely inspired narratives of the mysteries of divine wisdom contained in Holy Scripture. In their efforts to understand and explain scriptural narration, they identified fundamental in­terpretative patterns, formulated general principles and methods of exegesis, and, in many cases, developed comprehensive theories and coherent hermeneutical frameworks. Within the broader practice and cultural heritage of human oral and written linguistic activity, the prob­lem of expressing the truth of being through either literal or allegorical meaning is universal and extends beyond divine realities and the sacred sphere alone. Holy Scripture, by revealing the history and meaning of divine creation, providence, and eternal salvation, conveys the truth of existence as a whole and of human spiritual life in particular. St. Augustine of Hippo, guided by his commitment to developing both the theory and practice of understanding and interpreting the allegories of Holy Scripture, turns to the seven rules of interpretation formu­lated by Tyconius the African. Through a critical and scholarly re-examination of the mystical significance of Tyconius’s seven rules, Augustine offers a refined reinterpretation of their meaning and application to the allegories of Scripture, incorporating them into his own her­meneutical conception.

This article examines the functioning of rare and unique vocabulary in the oldest Rus­sian manuscript of The Ladder by St. John Climacus, created in the mid-twelfth century. The aim of the study is to introduce new material into scholarly circulation in the fields of histori­cal lexicology and historical lexicography. The principal research method employed is lin­guotextual analysis.

By comparing the lexical composition of the manuscript with the evidence provided by Old Church Slavonic dictionaries and historical dictionaries of the Russian language, the author identified 391 lexemes that had not previously been recorded in historical lexicogra­phy. The manuscript’s vocabulary was also compared with that of other manuscripts of the Preslav translation dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This comparison made it possible to distinguish lexemes common to all manuscripts (226), lexemes replaced in South Slavic versions (84), lexemes replaced in East Slavic versions (55), and lexemes attes­ted only in the oldest manuscript (26). Examples from each of these groups are presented in the form of dictionary entries, including definitions of meaning, extended contextual evidence, indications of possible scribal errors, and instances of lexical variation. The study also identi­fies Byzantine parallels to Old Russian lexemes and discusses cases of lexical homonymy. Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of considering extralinguistic factors in the analysis of Old Russian texts, especially the manuscript tradition and the historical circum­stances of a text’s creation.

The article demonstrates the significance of lexical analysis of early Slavic texts from dif­ferent chronological periods and geographical areas for the development of a new field of re­search concerned with the phenomenon of medieval ‘collective church memory’.

The potentially inexhaustible semantic potential of the word, reflected in the full range of its conventional meanings and individual authorial reinterpretations as manifested in literary discourse, has repeatedly attracted philological attention. One such polycode sign, distin­guished by a broad semantic spectrum and complex syntagmatic behaviour, is the word ‘or­gan’. This article analyses the literal and figurative uses, as well as the metaphorical trans­formations, of the lexeme ‘organ’ in Russian literature over approximately one and a half cen­turies of its development. The main material for linguapoetic analysis consists of literary con­texts containing the lexeme ‘organ’, recorded in the National Corpus of the Russian Language and dating from the 18th century to the 20th century. The study aims to identify the main tendencies in the figurative and symbolic use of the word ‘organ’, as well as its individual authorial reinterpretation by poets representing successive literary movements, including the Baroque, Classicism, Sentimentalism, and Romanticism. Particular attention is paid to the process by which this long-assimilated Greek borrowing was integrated into lyric poetry and Russian culture as a whole. The analysis leads to the following conclusions. First, in the poet­ry of the Baroque, Classicist, and Romantic periods, the lexeme ‘organ’ is rarely used in its direct meaning of ‘musical instrument’, appearing mainly in translations and adaptations. In twentieth-century poetry, by contrast, the meaning ‘wind keyboard instrument’ becomes clearly dominant, including in similes, while personifying metaphorical transfers also emerge, such as ‘organ-man’. Second, figurative and symbolic meanings, for example, in metaphorical expressions such as ‘organ of the soul’ or ‘organ of the heart’, become especially productive during the Golden Age, when figurative contexts predominate and reveal the broadest syn­tagmatic and functional-semantic possibilities of the lexeme organ. These uses enrich its dic­tionary meaning through multiple semantic extensions and transform its usual valency pat­terns. Third, the frequency of the lexeme ‘organ’ in Russian poetry correlates closely with the process of assimilation of Western European organ music in Russia, which was particularly intensive during the Baroque, Romantic, and Silver Age periods. Meanings derived from the Psalms and familiar within the Orthodox tradition are adapted and become closely inter­twined with ‘foreign’ themes within the semiosphere of Russian culture.