2021 Issue №1

The article examines specific lexical units called grifonyms which are functioning in the texts of fantasy video games. A new term ‘grifonyms’ refers to nominations of characters created by the imagination of game developers and having no analogues in reality. Obligatory and optional features of griphonyms are revealed, their systematization and classification are carried out. The authors highlight the semantic features and analyze the structural components of grifonyms. The dependence of the formation of nominations of game characters on the temporal factor is established.

The article deals with the modal organization of the Old Russian literary work “The Testament of Vladimir Monomakh”, its genre and purpose. The ar­ticle identifies the plane of content of author’s modality and the means of its representation in the text of the manuscript. The authors establish the role of the author’s modality in the creation of Vladimir Monomakh’s portrait char­acteristic, which describes him as a person and a statesperson.

The article offers a comparative analysis of phraseological units with the component cердце / cœur / Herz in the Russian, French and German lan­guages. As a result, not only the similarity of semantic attraction in the idi­oms of the languages of unrelated families is revealed, but also the factors that determine the difference in the semantic charge of both nuclear and differential semes. The proposed corpus of illustrative material allows us to solve a num­ber of problems of the national-cultural field of phraseological units of the Russian, French and German languages, to determine the universal and na­tional-specific features of the phraseology of these languages, to reveal the pe­culiarities of the worldview and worldview of Russians, French and Germans. The choice of somaticisms cердце / cœur / Herz contributes to the most ac­curate description of the emotive component as one of the leading in the se­mantic structure of the compared phraseological units and to the identification of factors that determine the use of phraseological units in speech. A methodo­logical set for semantic comparative analysis of phraseological units in Rus­sian, French and German makes it possible to identify semantic universals and specific national features of phraseological units, as well as to analyze the linguistic and extralinguistic reasons for the similarities and differences of phraseological units in the studied languages. Component analysis of the studied phraseological units gave a clear picture of the commonality of poten­tial semes “сердце, cœur, Herz” in unrelated languages.

The authors study emotive and perceptual vocabulary through its se­mantic reflection of the holy as the most important component of religious linguistic consciousness. The complex approach offered in the works of S. P. Lopu­shanskaya served as the basis for analyzing the language material. It examines the intralinguisitic systemic analysis of language unit structures, paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations at various levels of the language hier­archy, and their functional application in various contexts.

The criteria for selecting lexical units with perceptual semantics as well as their pattern of use are determined by the language system peculiarities and current ideas of holiness. The paper reviews the means of linguistic explica­tion of perceptional processes that are significant for describing holiness. The dominance of visual perception as a process that determines interaction with the real world (which is reflected in the direct meanings of linguistic units) and also reveals a connection with mental activity (reflected in the figurative meanings of linguistic units) has been established. The article describes expli­cation of processes that are beyond the boundaries of perception by means of the senses and that open up to the men of faith.

When analyzing the emotive vocabulary used in hagiographic texts, it was found that the vocabulary of emotions in the life reveals the meanings that are essential for understanding the author's concept and becomes an im­portant means of creating the image of a saint. These linguistic units are used in key fragments of the hagiographic text in order to describe and characterize people, objects and phenomena of reality. In this case, the following parame­ters are relevant: the nature of the emotion indicated by the verb (positive / negative) and its intensity (low / medium / high).

This study endeavors to determine and describe the connection between a person’s gender and prosody of demands in spoken German. Prosody is one of the major phenomena reflecting a speaker’s intentions and the key tool used by speakers to reach their communicative goals in a conversation. This is espe­cially the case when phrases with negative meaning are concerned. The possi­ble influence of gender on prosody of demands seems to be a research-worthy problem. The article describes the experiment which included locating the key syllables of the phrases, measuring fundamental frequency (F0), sound inten­sity (volume) and syllable duration and analyzing the acquired data. This study provides F0, volume and syllable duration progression charts and anal­ysis of F0, volume and syllable duration values.

The article verifies the proposal that the study of the onomastic compo­nent makes it possible to reveal more fully the specific of the language person­ality of the Russian military officer. Theoretical analysis of existing papers re­sults in a generalized concept of a language personality as an image of a bear­er of knowledge, models of behavior and reactions, cultural-linguistic and communicative-activity values. The vocabulary activated in communication is considered from the point of view of stylistic differentiation, as well as in its division into common and proper names. Onyms are presented as linguocul­turological units that make up a special sign system. The author proposes the application of the concept of onomastic space to a community and gives a de­tailed description of various proper names that call the subjects and objects of activity in a military society, demonstrating the need to study official and un­official anthroponyms, toponyms, chrematonyms, ergonyms and chrono­nyms, since this will reveal such qualities of military officers as patriotism, emotion­ality, as well as high level of intellectual development and creativity in nam­ing.

The article is an attempt to examine the terms «image» and «literary im­age» as a concept of cognitive science (in humanities: linguistics, psychology, cognitive studies, literary studies). It analyses different approaches to defining these terms, aiming at focusing on a cognitive definition of image. The article contains an overview of the analysis of the term in psychology: psychoanalytic approach, the theory of reflection, cognitive psychology. It describes cognitive features of image and the ways of their representation in the novel «The Mas­ter of Petersburg» by J. Coetzee. An image is viewed as an iconic sign incor­porated in the structure of a concept, being an element of its figurative-and-associative layer. It contributes to cognition of reality, reflecting a specific model of reality which connects concrete perceptible characteristics of an ob­ject or phenomenon with the subjectivity of the author’s individual mind. Af­ter the exploration of the cognitive approaches, a literary image is considered as a verbal sign representing the author’s worldview within the literary text. It is highlighted that while interpreting images it is important to pay atten­tion to both the textual representation of the author’s intention and the read­ers’ perception of them, especially the emotional reaction.

The article represents a cognitive-discursive study of means to create an image of the language in a literary text. It involves different types of analysis such as semantic, conceptual, and interpretive. Special attention is paid to the linguistic factors that influence the creation of metalinguistic utterances, in particular, the word-formation potential of the German language (neologiza­tion). The article also stresses the importance of extralinguistic context, the knowledge of which enables to interpret the meanings of lexical units as cogni­tive phenomena. Among the basic techniques of conceptualization being de­scribed are nomination, predication (identifying the main definitional features of the concept, actualized in the utterance) and figurative-descriptive repre­sentations (such as ontological cognitive metaphors). The study has shown that the complex use of the above mentioned tools enriches the interpretation field of the existing concept and can serve as the basis for the emergence of a new one. The theoretical ideas are illustrated by examples from German texts by P. Celan, many of which have not been translated into Russian before. It is concluded that the following features prevail in the author's individual image of the language: direct nomination based on metaphorical representations and language play, descriptive and subjective predication, as well as intertextual symbolic representations.

Those foreigners who study the Russian language, experience great diffi­culties in the perception of literary speech. These difficulties are brought about by the verbal images which saturate the literary speech. Even greater difficul­ties arise when foreigners encounter ver­bal images as part of catchwords. The paper describes the experimental stage of the research focused on identifying the specifics of teaching foreigners to perceive verbal images as part of famous catch phrases. The article presents results of the survey, the purpose of which was to identify degree of difficulty of various semantic components of the ver­bal image in the catch phrase ‘Enchantment for the eyes’ (from poem ‘Au­tumn’ by Alexander Pushkin) for foreign students. The ex­perimental data is analyzed from a semantic and linguo-didactic points of view. It is concluded that the greatest number of difficulties for foreigners is caused by semantic components of two levels: 1) the verbal image as such and 2) the specific char­acteristics of the prece­dent text. Particular attention in teaching is to be paid to functioning of the verbal image as a catchword in the modern speech of Russian language native speakers. As a result of the research, methodological recommendations for teachers of Russian as a foreign language are given, ways of working with verbal images that received the status of precedent text are outlined.