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The paper deals with the peculiarities of using the name of August in the poetic discourse. The high connotative background of descriptions is set by the positive characteristics of the month (clear, light, lovely, etc.). This nomination has a living inner form, dating back to the name of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Sphere is represented on one of the Emperor Augustus coins as a symbol of power. So it is an apple that is mentioned in some texts about August. Personification is the most popular poetic means. It is built not only on playing around the name, but also on explication of various associative semes - "the month of stars", "the month of fruits", "the month of hunting" and others. August appears first of all as an "evening" or "night" month, when stars are brightly shining in the sky. Sustainability of metaphors based on actualization of the seme "a number of stars" indicates the poetic formula, transforming in different literary systems: stars as rains, stars as nails, and others. Etymological potential of the name August (the Emperor's month) actualizes the semantic group of monarch and power. Specificity of the month's name creates contexts with diffuse meaning. The high degree of frequency of the month's name in the poetic discourse has determined the appearance of sustained metaphors based on the opposition of month names (August - September, August - October and others), including those which are not successive (August - May): Our August looks as if it is September; August is May for you and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of the present study is speech verbs that belong to the basic vocabulary of different languages, because these words are used to designate the act of speaking, an activity peculiar to mankind. The aim of the paper is to compare the semantic, stylistic, and grammatical characteristics of various Russian speech verbs that represent direct speech in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" and its Estonian translation. The study of the original text and its translation, conducted according to the principles of comparative stylistics, indicates a certain similarity between the usage of speech verbs in literary texts of different languages. In direct speech verbal lexemes of semantically different lexical-semantic groups become functionally equivalent. Expressive verbs of different semantics serve at the same time as a means of characterizing the speech of the novel's characters. The linguistic temporality of verbs representing direct speech is manifested in the predominant use of the past tense, which is preserved in the translation. Translators seek to preserve the denotative semantics and emotionally expressive shades of meaning of the Russian text. However, due to the national specificity of different languages, the discrepancy between the shades of meaning of words, and sometimes due to the preferences of translators, the offered equivalents are at times denotatively inaccurate (but functionally possible) or less expressive, which causes some loss of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper regards the proper names of football and hockey teams of England, the USA, Russia, and Belarus. The investigation is based on a vast factual material comprising 550 proper names of teams that play on the top levels of the national and supranational league systems. The author aims at describing the main characteristic features of the four systems and bringing out the main tendencies in naming sports teams by contrasting them with each other. The peculiarities of naming sports teams are studied on the levels of structure and semantics. English-language names are multiword in 9 0% of cases, with 100% names of hockey clubs being complex by structure. Simple names of teams are observed in English football clubs (33% of all English FC). The Russian-language names are more diverse. The ratio of simple, compound, and complex names of teams is 76:10:14 in Russian. The non-typical character of the compound names of teams for Russian is reflected in numerous juxtaposed names. Complex names are quite often the result of the influence of North American system of names. They are helpful while differentiating between the team and its affiliate. Semantic characteristics largely depend on the traditions in the process of naming teams in English and Russian. Multiword names of English and American sports teams traditionally include the name of the city or region where the club is based (the motivator) and the differentiator. The former is an indispensable element of the English-language names; the latter is sometimes absent and mostly does not represent real characteristics. The differentiator turns to the words describing different groups of people, fauna, natural phenomena, etc. in the names of hockey teams. The English tend to work out a system of words like City, United, etc. specialized in naming football clubs. In Russian both elements (the motivator and the differentiator) merge, while the name of the region moves out of the proprial part of the name. Proper names of sports societies and cities and common names denoting people, objects and substances motivate Russian names in most cases. Belarusian names are derived from the proper names of towns and enterprises and common names denoting people of certain profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the Russian morpheme -ca shows that everything within a language closely interacts. This morpheme has a wide range of different meanings, which are formed on the basis of an opposition of lexical and grammatical (passive) -cn. In light of intralinguistic interaction, the paper discusses the system and normative restrictions of the formation and usage of imperfect and perfect passive forms with -.... Liberalization causes native speakers to violate the rules of the language for passive forms of both types in everyday speech, on television, and in internet texts (especially in forums). Such violations are primarily characteristic of spontaneous speech as well as wordplay, which is perceived as such only against the background of already established standards. The intralinguistic interaction of lexicon and grammar in the passive is caused by the connection between word forms and their semantic and stylistic components. When the grammatical component comes into conflict with the lexical and stylistic components, the conflict is usually resolved with the normative prohibition of the grammatical form in favor of the lexical-stylistic component. Due to this, in the case of homonymy the passive form is not considered normative, even if it is permissible from the point of view of grammar. Although in general the Russian passive continues to be strengthened as a grammatical phenomenon, the postfix -... is developing its own semantics, because the elimination of the subject in the two-part passive construction helps to emphasize the spontaneity of the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]