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This article contains a comparative analysis of the axiological component in phraseological units with the color name red in Russian and Persian linguistic cultures. Phraseological units with color names are numerous in both languages and represent a microsystem united by the semantics of color, the components of which enter into intralingual and interlingual relationships of full or partial equivalence, synonymy, homonymy, or antonymy. The research objective was to compare figurative meanings of the color component in phraseology of the two different languages on the basis of culture linguistics and axiological analysis. The study provided an insight into the national mentality of the two peoples, which emerged as such under the influence of historical events, climate, religion, traditions, and values. The research material included 53 Russian and 20 Persian phraseological units. Both worldviews demonstrated an axiological component in the idioms with color name red, as well as a binary axiological opposition. In Russian, it demonstrated a positive meaning (66%) whereas in Persian it had a mostly negative meaning (80%). In Russian, the color red had a positive meaning in such categories as beauty; respect, festivity; holiday, fun; especially valuable; oratory; the key thing, the beginning; achievement; response action; embarrassment. Categories with negative meaning included beauty; timidity, shyness; oratory; limit, danger; fire; aggression; response action; shame. In Persian phraseology, positive meaning was detected in such categories as appearance; embarrassment; preserving one’s dignity, appeal. The negative categories included change in complexion; troubles; limit, danger; anger, irritation; duplicity; obstruction; cruelty; bad consequences. In addition, 19% of Russian phraseological units were classified as neutral and belonged to the categories of trade, revolution, and communism. The method of lexical-axiological analysis makes it possible to use the results in teaching general linguistics, Russian, Persian, translation, and comparative typology, as well as in in lexicographic practice.

Excluding D. De Vivo's 1882 Russian grammar, commissioned by the publisher Schnaken-burg in Dorpat, the first grammar of the Russian language published in Italy dates back to 1897 (Voinovich) and was published in Milan by Hoepli. In the 20th century, the elaboration of volumes aimed at teaching Russian progressively evolved in Italy, in accordance with the new direction that glottodidactics was developing, moving away from the grammatical-translative method and embracing communicative approaches. It is, however, in the last three decades that we have witnessed a surprising flowering in quantity and quality. The article begins with an overview of the types of aids and manuals for Russian language teaching published in Italy in the last thirty years, highlighting the objectives achieved and the possible aspects to be strengthened, and then provides some reflections on the perspectives of further development that are already evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a historical-critical approach to highlight the main trends and lines of development in Russian studies in Italy dedicated to the teaching of Russian as a foreign language (rfl) at universities. The research's strengths, gaps, and challenges are emphasized to reveal new perspectives on language education. Specifically, we focus on the last decade (2013-2023) and the following areas: teaching of grammar and vocabulary and didactics of literature and culture. The examination of rfl research devoted to the Italian university context uncovered some specific insights. If we count the numerous studies dedicated to the teaching of grammar and vocabulary versus the didactics of literature and culture, the latter area has seen less success among Italian Russianists. Overall, the transversal and interdisciplinary character of many works and the variety of theoretical-methodological approaches employed can be considered the greatest strengths of the studies reviewed. However, more critical and non-essentialist positions should be explored in future research. Additionally, the field needs to pay greater attention to concrete teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper provides a critical assessment of research into Russian diachronic linguistics and Russian philology carried out by Italian Slavicists over the last thirty years. This article first examines how Italian scholars have understood and engaged with fundamental issues in the history of the Russian language, which have been at the centre of discussion on an international level. It then explores the advances made in Italian research on historical grammar and emphasises the peculiarity of the approach to textual criticism developed by Italian scholars and its relevance to Russian philology. Finally, the paper discusses major Italian contributions regarding specific issues in Russian diachronic linguistics and philology, which reveal innovative solutions to long-standing problems. While further exploration is necessary in several areas, in qualitative terms the hitherto accomplished research cannot but be positively assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet communication and its genres are one of the most relevant issues of modern linguistics. Genres of Internet communication are in constant development. Internet chats started as a platform of phatic communication that provided leisure activities. These days, group chats serve a lot of purposes. For instance, commercial group chats are aimed at online buying and selling. This research focused on two Viber commercial chats that united women-customers and sellers from the city of Saratov (2021–2023). The discursive analysis revealed conflict-free environment, which is not typical of phatic chats, where anonymity usually contributes to the violation of communication and ethical standards. The authors identified the means of harmonizing communication that communicants resorted to for effective interaction. The participants created a benevolent atmosphere by using hypocoristic proper names, emoticons, complementarity, etc. Etiquette genres of greetings, gratitude, compliments, congratulations, and wishes resulted in a balanced communication. Tactics of conflict prevention included solidarity, mitigation, e.g., diminutives, reminders, concern for the addressee, assessment, courtesy, humor, etc. The resulting communicative attraction contributed to effective communication between sellers and buyers. The positive communication experience in such chats may improve the real communication.

This article examines the Russian translation of 'Le leggende sarde' [Sardinian Legends] by Grazia Deledda, which deals with the extremely complex language of the Italian-Sardinian hybrid original text. The aim of this work is to verify the achievement, in the target text, of functional equivalence (f-equivalence). In direct dialogue with the translator, the strategies involve the explanation and application of the theoretical tools dictated by the most recent studies in translation studies.

In Italy the teaching of translation as a specific skill for bilingual speakers is normally not included in the programs of Russian special schools, the so-called subbotnie školy, where the development of language skills (especially listening, writing and grammar accuracy) in heritage speakers generally takes top priority. As already pointed out in other works (Perotto 2020, 2022), the activity of translation exerts an important influence on the cognitive development of the child, especially if bilingual. It helps him/her not only to differentiate and develop two parallel linguistic and cultural systems, but to approach them with a greater metalinguistic and cultural awareness. On the basis of translations made by bilingual participants to the international Cultural Bridge competition, Russian-Italian an Russian-English parallel corpora were created for the analysis of translation difficulties of heritage speakers living in Italy and usa. These difficulties will be analyzed separately or comparatively on the Sketch engine platform, providing some basic indications for a more targeted teaching of translation. The use of corpora can be an important teaching tool to improve heritage speakers' linguistic competence and translation awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the pragmatic, semantic, and axiological features of the speech genre of congratulation complement in pedagogical discourse with asymmetric communicants. The research material included 170 fragments. The research revealed two groups based on semantic, axiological, pragmatic, and linguistic differences: personal informal internet congratulations made by teaching staff to students and formal public speeches given by university rectors and teaching staff to students published on official websites of universities. The analysis relied on the factor of formality / informality. The differences between formal and informal congratulations manifested themselves in the content, language, and tactics. Both types were detailed and poly-intentional. The informal congratulations touched upon the addressee's personality, hobbies, achievements, and character traits. The formal congratulations showed a much greater distance between the sender and the addressee. They focused on the addressee's status, not personality. The texts often reflected current events, e.g., in 2019–2020 they touched upon the COVID-2019 pandemic.

The present research is aimed at conducting a study with regard to Russian-Italian medical translation on the current development of two Machine Translation tools that feature prominently in today’s Neural Machine Translation framework, namely DeepL and Yandex. For the purpose of our research, we have selected a number of Russian medical articles: three highly specialized and three popular-science articles concerning coronavirus pandemic. Such a choice is justified by the willingness not only to analyse recently published scientific documents but also to investigate the particular linguistic implications of 2020’s coronavirus pandemic outbreak. In fact, during the period of pandemic a set of terms has been introduced and coined in every-day communication and entered the boundaries of scientific terminology. We have considered this existing linguistic phenomenon as a proper condition to test the performances of Machine Translation tools. In particular, we discuss the most relevant features of the comparative error analysis as well as the BLEU metric for both DeepL and Yandex.

In this paper we shall analyze several examples of morphological and syntactic calques taken from the Russian language, used in oral and written communication by the Romanian-speaking population in the historical province Bessarabia, the present-day Republic of Moldova. Unlike semantic calques, the morphological loan translations we have identified in source texts are less numerous, because the morphological structure of the language is not so receptive to foreign influences as its lexical structure. In terms of the morphological loan translations, we have chosen to contrastively analyze the forms resulting from calquing the reflexive diathesisin Russian. The constructions with an obligatory reflexive are taken after the Russian language, when, in fact, the literary Romanian language norm often recommends the use of the active voice.The syntactic loan translations we have identified are much more numerous as compared to the morphological ones and, most of the times, they reside in imitating case relationships according to the Russian language pattern

In this paper, the authors presented a new Russian Language textbook Ni puha ni pera! for initial learning (level A1). The macrostructure of the textbook, the structure of the textbook lesson, is presented in order to point out several possible ways of organising the linguodidactic material. In the section on standards for A1 level textbook development , the authors concluded that the written text is the basis for three of the four language skills: reading, speaking and writing; oral text in the form of dialogue and monologue is the basis for the linguistic competence of listening. Therefore, the authors concluded that a textbook written in the spirit of the communicative method must have a sufficient number of texts, followed by a sufficient number and quality of exercises. The authors pointed out that care should be taken that in a textbook written in the spirit of the communicative method, exercises can prevail in relation to texts, concluding that the relationship between texts and exercises in the textbook must be balanced. The text is the basic unit of the textbook, while without exercises there is no adoption of communicative functions or grammatical structures. Ni puha ni pera!, as the authors conclude, has an excellent balance of text and exercises. In 10 lessons of the textbook, all types of texts are sufficiently represented, whether it is a text for written expression, or for reading comprehension or speech. Approximately 35 dialogic written texts were composed, approximately 20 monologue written texts; about 20 dialogic oral texts, about 20 monologue oral texts. Communicative functions and language structures are practiced through various written and oral exercises: there are about 265 exercises in all 10 lessons that practice and activate language habits. The introductory phonetic course precedes the lessons. The test for checking the achievement after the course is standard in terms of scope and quality of A1 level tests at St. Petersburg University. The chapter on textbook lesson structure presents a uniform, modular lesson structure. Each lesson has 6 parts: in the first part of the lesson, three dialogues with 10‒12 oral exercises are presented. The second part follows, in which the vocabulary and communicative functions that are the topic of dialogue with accompanying oral exercises are usually presented in a table; in the third part, linguistic and cultural elements with exercises are presented. In the fourth part, grammar and phonetics are presented, with exercises for adoption. The fifth part presents a recapitulation of vocabulary and communicative functions through a series of written exercises. The test that follows is the sixth part of the lesson: the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar of the given lesson is checked, as well as all four skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. In the section in which the authors write about the methods of organizing linguodidactic material, the authors highlight that it is not necessary to follow the given order: the author's idea was that the student first intuitively adopts communicative functions and language structures, and only later systematically considers them. The authors suggest that each lesson begins with phonetics that is presented in fourth part of the lesson, and with the phonetic exercises from the introductory phonetics course, and that the next part can be either processing dialogues with exercises, or processing grammatical material, which would eliminate difficulties in working with dialogues. The authors believe that one should always start with phonetics and end with a test, and that everything else can go in the order that the teacher considers more appropriate for a specific group in specific circumstances. The possibility of different organisation of linguodidactic material in different lessons additionally gives dynamics to the methods of organising.

This paper presents a sociolinguistic analysis of the current linguistic situation in the Russian Federation. Preservation and development of the Russian language represents the national interest of the state. The Russian language has the status of a state language, but, given the large number of ethnic groups living on the territory of Russia, it must not jeopardise other national languages, as this could lead to inter-ethnic conflicts. Some of the key issues Russia is currently facing in this field are: the process of globalisation, the uncontrolled penetration of anglicisms into the Russian language, the adverse impact of the Internet and social networks on literacy, especially with the younger population. All valid rules of the Russian orthography are, in fact, prescribed by the Government of The Russian Federation. Laws regulating the area of language policy are the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Law on the Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation, and the Law on the State Language of the Russian Federation.

Adopting a usage-based constructional approach with a functional-cognitive orientation, this study examines the mechanisms that regulate the interaction between intensification and identification of the referent in different types of copular sentences (namely, categorizing, equative, similative, attributive and specificational) in the Russian language. In particular, the intensifying use of the phasal adverb uže 'already' in copular sentences of the type [x (cop) uže y] is discussed. In the second part of the study, a contrastive approach is adopted to highlight, through a comparison with Italian, the process of semantic extension, the presuppositions, and the conventional implicatures that allow an adverb of time to operate in the domain of intensification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Trivolis' life history, together with his fervent activity as a translator, lead us to speculate on the particular attention that he was to pay to lexical features in his own works, regarding, for instance, the attribution of new and/or different meanings to traditional lemmas or the introduction of new terms. In order to verify this hypothesis, we examined the occurrences within his works of some key concepts from medieval and humanistic culture. This paper focuses on the terms pазумъ and самовласть/самовластие in the texts included in the first two volumes of the new edition of Maximus the Greek's works edited by N.V. Sinicyna. The results of the survey are compared with the reconstructed semantics and contexts of use of the chosen words in previous literature, on the basis of the occurrences in the historical section of the National Corpus of the Russian language as well as in a selection of dictionaries of Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic. The analysis allowed us to highlight the deep knowledge of the church fathers, on which the thought of Maximus the Greek was based, and the important role of his Italian experience and the knowledge of Savonarola's works in his intellectual training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L’articolo propone i risultati di un’analisi discorsiva di testi di apprendenti italofoni di russo. La struttura del discorso viene esaminata dal punto di vista delle relazioni discorsive preferite a varie tappe acquisizionali e dal punto di vista della gerarchizzazione. Inoltre vengono analizzati il grado della partizione delle situazioni e il grado della complessità delle strutture discorsive, il che ci ha permesso di caratterizzare la testualità delle varietà acquisizionali considerate rispetto al russo e all’italiano nativi. This article presents the results of a discourse analysis of Russian-learning texts by italophones. The discourse structure was examined from the point of view of the preferences for discourse relations on various acquisitional stages and from the point of view of hierarchization. Furthermore the grade of repartition of situations and the grade of the discourse structures complexity were analysed, allowing us thus to characterize the textuality of the considered acquisitional varieties compared to the native Russian and Italian.

This paper analyses the structure of copular sentences and problematizes their division into predicational, specificational, equative and identificational sentences. Our emphasis is on predicate copular sentences in which the post-copular NP can appear in the nominative or the instrumental case in Croatian, just like in some other Slavic languages. Occurrences of the instrumental case in copular predicates are extremely rare in south Slavic languages and there is some question as to when they appear at all. This paper presents the different theories about the occurrence of the instrumental case in predicative nominals (Mrázek 1964, Bailyn and Rubin 1991). Bailyn and Rubin (1991) consider the use of the instrumental case in secondary predicate adjuncts in the Russian language to be a language innovation, while Croatian and many other Slavic languages have a pattern that is found in the Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian languages. The paper also analyses Croatian grammars, written before the 20th century, with the goal of determining when the instrumental case first appeared with the copula. Many linguists (e.g. Jakobson 1936, Mrázek 1964, Wierzbicka 1980, Janda and Clancy 2002, Timberlake 2004, Geist 2006, Pereltsvaig 2007) consider that the copular sentences with the nominative or the instrumental case have different meanings in the Russian language: the nominative denotes a permanent, inalienable property of the subject, while the instrumental denotes a temporary property. This assumption is analysed in the Croatian language based on the examples from the relevant Croatian language corpora. We confirm the constraint, described in Croatian grammars, that the instrumental cannot appear with the copula in the present tense, but is possible in the perfect and future tenses. Cognitive grammar explains this by the application of the proximity principle: conceptual distance is related to formal distance. Therefore, the instrumental can appear with the copula in the perfect and future tenses, because there is distance between the subject and what he/she/it has been, or is going to become. Conversely, in the present tense there is no distance, and therefore the pre-copular and post-copular NPs have the same case. It is noted that nouns belonging to specific semantic groups appear in the instrumental case (profession, function, part of something, reason for something, goal, base etc.). We conclude that the instrumental case denotes temporary, acquired properties, while the nominative case denotes permanent, inalienable properties. This conclusion is drawn using examples from the relevant Croatian language corpora and based on the fact that the instrumental cannot appear with present tense and that adjectives are rarely marked with instrumental. Furthermore, these conclusions were tested by examining native speakers’ linguistic intuition. Native speakers did not recognize the semantic difference between sentences with a nominative predicate NP and an AP and instrumental. Therefore, our conclusion is that the instrumental case is related to style.

The essay is an annotated bibliography of translations into Italian of the works of Joseph Brodsky, both in verse and in prose. The bibliography begins with the translations on the magazine The literary fair in 1964, and ends in 2012 with the collection The Form of Time. As written in the essay itself: the hope is that the translations can start again to be published, in order to give way to Italian readers to learn more about what the poet wrote. Although an annotated bibliography, it can provide great deal of reflections to the careful reader about: the interest awakened by the name of Brodsky; the long years of silence since the last editorial translation; the specific weight of Russian culture in the Italian publishing; to underline only certain aspects.

This paper deals with listing as a useful conceptual tool for categorization and offers an overview of the different types of lists in Russian, highlighting both universal and language-specific characteristics of this kind of construction. The data-driven approach adopted in this study allows you to identify the main criteria according to which lists can be classified (exhaustiveness of the enumeration, conjunction, types of constituents, compositionality, and so on). Particular attention is paid to paradigmatic lists, i.e. lists whose items are in a paradigmatic relationship with each other as either synonyms, co-hyponyms or co-meronyms. The features of this family of lists are dealt with in the framework of Construction Grammar, which accounts for both similarities in structure and meaning and differences in pragmatic and communicative functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay is an annotated bibliography of translations into Italian of the works of Joseph Brodsky, both in verse and in prose. The bibliography begins with the translations on the magazine The literary fair in 1964, and ends in 2012 with the collection The Form of Time. As written in the essay itself: the hope is that the translations can start again to be published, in order to give way to Italian readers to learn more about what the poet wrote. Although an annotated bibliography, it can provide great deal of reflections to the careful reader about: the interest awakened by the name of Brodsky; the long years of silence since the last editorial translation; the specific weight of Russian culture in the Italian publishing; to underline only certain aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses translation into Russian of the medieval Latin book "Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum" (Deeds of the Franks and Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem), a historical source about the First Crusade. Among other topics addressed are the influence of previous translations such as into English, French, and Italian, issues related to rendering of certain Latin technical terms into Russian, and relevant details of history from the time of the work.

The present-day revival of the religious Christian discourse in Russian language urges university teachers of Russian language and literature to recall and enlighten from a comparative point of view the common Christian lexical heritage of European languages of culture. The article suggests effective didactic ways to approach fundamental texts of Christianity, such as the Pater noster, the Decalogue, the Sermon of Beatitudes, as well as pan-European biblical expressions (mainly from Psalms and Gospel) in Italian Faculties of Humanities. Particular attention is devoted to the significance of iconostasis and the order of the Twelve Feasts: the principal Christian holidays are common in the liturgical calendar of Russian Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard language is conceptualized as linguistic capital, in terms of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. The Twentieth century in Russia was an epoch of revolutions; linguistic developments in revolutionary and post-revolutionary situations may be efficiently analyzed as transformations of linguistic capital: the old linguistic capital is discredited in the course of a cultural revolution and revolutionary linguistic usage becomes new linguistic capital. This process is characterized in Russia (from 1910 through to the 1920s and again in the 1980s and 1990s) by the extensive use of borrowings, vulgar and jargon words, obscene expressions. The end of cultural revolutions is accompanied by the emergence of a new elite and by partial restoration of the old linguistic capital; it is appropriated by the new elite and adjusted to their demands. The article describes two cycles of these developments in the period from 1917 up to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]