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An exhaustive review of different archived documents at the University of Costa Rica was the starting point of this paper, in order to: highlight the work of the School of Philology, Linguistics and Literature, since its inception, in the field of writing, to point out the approaches used in the teaching of specific writing courses (Composition And Style, Basic Writing Course, Written Expression I and II) and to discuss the existence or absence of paradigm changes in the programs of said courses through the years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to a discussion note by Yuliia Normanskaya about consonantism in the first Meadow Mari primers (1870 and 1873). The journal "Ural-Altai Studies" previously published a study of the grapho-phonetic features of their vocalism (Klyucheva and Normanskaya 2015) and consonantism (Klyucheva 2017). An article on consonantism was followed by a discussion note in the same issue of the journal (Normanskaya 2017). It contains a discussion of some of our conclusions, in particular: 1) some objections are raised against the compilativeness of the Primer of 1870; 2) the conclusion about the Morki-Sernur dialect in the Primer from 1873 is confirmed by additional argumentation. Besides, Normanskaya made a clear conclusion about the dialect basis in the Primer from 1870: it is identified as the Yoshkar-Ola dialect of the Mari language. But this conclusion cannot be accepted. The localization of the âYoshkar-Ola dialectâ âover a wide area from Yaransk to Urzhumâ and generally the classification of Mari dialects in the Normanskaya diagnostic table are doubtful; we also noticed incorrect dialectological data in it (especially significant for affricates). In sum, this was the reason for writing a detailed answer. This paper also provides arguments for our new decision that the dialect of the Primer from 1870 corresponds most of all to the Volga dialect of the Mari language. The authorship of the Mari primers of 1870 and 1873 is discussed, based on revealed new archival data, and some general methodological conclusions are made on the problematic point of dialect attribution of early Mari books.

The article discusses the use of the Komi indefinite pronoun мÑйкö âsomethingâ as a discourse marker. It is revealed that synchronically this pronoun is as a multifunctional linguistic unit. When used as a discourse marker, it shows different degrees of embeddedness in the morphosyntactic structure of the utterance: it may function as an agreeing or as a non-agreeing (default) marker. As an agreeing marker, it is inflected for the categories of the constituent it replaces, either fully or partially. Its function is an approximative marker or placeholder. It is shown that the marker most often replaces a substantive component, where, as a rule, it shows grammatical marking fully coinciding with the grammatical design of the replaced unit. In verb substitution, there is either a pronominal verb formed on the basis of the pronoun âsomethingâ with the help of derivational suffixes, or a construction with the auxiliary verb âto doâ. As a non-agreeing marker, the pronoun âsomethingâ is used in the function of a hesitation marker.

In Karelian and a number of Finnic languages, a common lexical fund can be traced, including the names of a number of ailments, reflecting ancient religious and mythological ideas of the people about the causes of their occurrence. This article discusses the Karelian designations of some diseases containing the component nenä. It is noted that all the designations are compound words with a mythological meaning, which are of interest in relation to the principles of nomination. The names under consideration include two components: the first, as a rule, is the âsubject of influenceâ, and the second is the âresult of the influenceâ.

This scoping review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the contemporary studies regarding ethnic and national identities written in the Russian language. The study reveals major contexts and patterns of the operationalization of the concepts. The scoping review is based on the framework outlined by Arksey and O’Malley, with qualitative content analysis as its primary method. Samples from 114 papers were analyzed to find existing approaches to identity studies and conceptualization. Explicit and implicit identity definitions and identity attributes were mapped and coded. The research found that scholars tend to provide original definitions and relate identity to consciousness. Implying the idea of a person’s uniqueness, identity is often regarded as rooted in memory, hence the number of mentions of memory studies and memory politics in the reviewed articles. Another finding is that multiple and/or complex identities are widely investigated, and these identity types are given original names, mostly compound. With a great number of identity types, there is still a common understanding of identity as a constructed, dynamic phenomenon. The study concludes that identity is a common value-charged notion for Russian academic discourse, with national and ethnic identities being at the heart of the ongoing studies. The paper concentrates on identities of large groups, which is viewed as a politically sensitive issue, closely intertwined with the view of identity as a factor and resource of the development of society. Main topics are politics, history, representation, dynamics, plurality, communication, cultural factors, and territory. The analysis of the identity studies contributes to professional discourse by illuminating how concepts of ethnic and national identities are operationalized and communicated in the Russian-language academic community, thus enhancing cross-cultural understanding and facilitating more effective professional communication in related fields. Given the limitations, the findings identify the main patterns of concept usage, point to research gaps, and provide a basis for future research.

Hybrid learning technologies are increasingly being integrated into modern educational practices, eliciting both public concerns about the quality of education and positive feedback regarding the potential of digital learning environments in hybrid classrooms. This learning format acts as a catalyst for enhancing the quality of education and broadening access to educational programs. However, challenges such as student motivation in online settings and teachers’ readiness to use modern learning technologies persist. This research aims to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of hybrid learning. The study employs both theoretical and empirical methods. The theoretical component includes a comprehensive literature review on the topic. The empirical component involves (1) surveying higher education teachers and students about their perceptions of hybrid learning, (2) conducting classes in a hybrid format, and (3) comparing this format with traditional in-person and fully remote learning. The findings reveal that hybrid learning offers distinct advantages, particularly in organizing panel discussions, engaging students who cannot attend in person, and facilitating online programs, minor programs, and employee training. However, these benefits are more pronounced for administrative purposes than for teaching staff, many of whom express skepticism about the long-term effectiveness of hybrid technologies. Identified drawbacks include increased resistance from faculty during the adoption of new technologies, limited access to hybrid learning methodologies and resources, and the need for continuous technical support. Additionally, the study highlights specific challenges in using hybrid classrooms for foreign language instruction, which could be mitigated by increased investment in resolving technical issues.

This article examines the representation of the FAMILY concept in English and Chinese newspapers. The research material was gathered from ten information sources and included 200 news articles, selected through continuous sampling using the keyword FAMILY / 家庭. The articles were analyzed to identify relevant issues and categorized based on their thematic content. In each article, key content elements—words and phrases that carry significant semantic meaning—were identified and used for cognitive matrix modeling. The findings reveal cognitive asymmetry in how the FAMILY concept is portrayed in English and Chinese media. In English-language media, the concept is centered on fundamental semantic components that form the cognitive core of the FAMILY concept, such as family members and their relationships. The representation also extends to areas like family activities, children, finances, employment, family pets, and legal issues. In contrast, Chinese media emphasizes the government’s role in educating the younger generation on family behavior, fostering a new generation of families that adhere to the country’s ethical norms, traditional cultural values, and moral standards. The central aspect of the FAMILY concept in Chinese media is the significant governmental support and societal focus on family needs and moral education, with family being viewed within the broader context of societal relations. The observed asymmetry is attributed to cultural, economic, social, and political differences. In capital-oriented social systems, the family is seen as an independent unit capable of self-sufficiency without substantial government intervention. This study is particularly relevant for understanding the role of professional discourse in shaping public perceptions of family across different cultures, highlighting how media narratives reflect and influence broader societal values and professional communication practices.

This article examines inclusive writing in the university discourse of France and Italy from a comparative perspective. The research aims to analyze the use of gender-specific and gender-neutral forms in higher education institutions in Paris (Sorbonne University and Paris Catholic Institute) and at the University of the Aosta Valley in Italy (a private university located in a region where French is the second official language). The study is based on a corpus of archival texts and documents, selected through continuous sampling from electronic versions on archive.org between 2020 and 2023. The authors draw conclusions about the specificity and frequency of inclusive writing in these institutions. The findings indicate that, in France, despite the country’s language policy efforts to ban inclusive spelling at the official level, public universities actively use it, in contrast to private institutions, where gender-specific forms are primarily found in job vacancy sections. The authors conclude that the choice of using gender-specific or gender-neutral forms is often left to the discretion of the individual or institution. The study also explores the most common methods of expressing gender specification, including the duplication of feminine and masculine forms, the use of feminine endings/suffixes in brackets or separated by a hyphen, and the marking of positions/professions with “(M/F)” after the masculine form. The potential implications of these practices are analyzed. In Italy, the study reveals a strong connection between French and Italian university cultures but finds no evidence of inclusive writing within the Italian university discourse. Despite the active development of gender equality programs at the state level, there remains an uneven tendency toward gender specification in Italy. The authors conclude that the methods of expressing gender specification play a significant role in shaping the university discourse in both France and Italy. They also note the complete absence of gender-neutral language or any moves beyond the gender binary in the universities studied.

Language Olympiads have been effectively used by Russian universities for enrollment purposes for years. Consequently, secondary and high school students are often coached to participate in these Olympiads to improve their chances of university admission. This research aims to trace the development and transformation of tasks used in EFL Olympiads over the past decade to identify the most common types, thereby providing school English language teachers with a clear framework to better prepare students for these competitions. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze past Olympiad papers from 2015 to 2023. An in-depth analysis of the tasks in top language Olympiads revealed the predominance of tasks focusing on receptive skills, integrated skills, and cultural knowledge, in contrast to those assessing productive and creative skills. While tasks aimed at evaluating productive skills are largely absent in the elimination rounds, they account for more than 50% of the total score in the final rounds. Speaking tasks for secondary and high school students are minimally represented among the Olympiad tasks. Additionally, there is a noticeable trend toward assessing participants’ knowledge of the history, literature, and culture of English-speaking countries, both directly and indirectly, while testing both receptive and productive skills. Moreover, tasks assessing integrated skills, which were previously the least common, are now gaining prominence. The findings suggest that preparation should focus more on skill development rather than on individual tasks. This shift would facilitate simultaneous preparation for multiple EFL Olympiads and improve students’ performance in the short term. This study also contributes to the field of professional discourse and the teaching of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) by highlighting how the evolving nature of EFL Olympiad tasks can inform the development of targeted ESP curricula that better align with the communicative and cultural competencies required in academic and professional spheres.

Online dating has become a popular stage to find a romantic partner. In such context, interlocutors must employ language carefully to reveal their intentions, attract attention and as well sustain intimacy with their potential partners. While previous studies have explored aspects such as self-disclosure and linguistic strategies in impression formation, there remains a gap in understanding the structured interactions that occur between potential partners on dating sites. This study, therefore, investigated the linguistic elements and interactional structures characterizing online dating discourse, focusing on two popular platforms, Tinder and Tagged. Adopting Halliday and Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential framework, the study examined conversations of thirty participants (potential partners) whose relationship ranges between two weeks to three months. Findings revealed seven key stages: Discourse Initiation (DI), Introduction (INTR), Question and Response (QAR), Request (RQ), Admiration (AD), Declaration of Dating Intention (DDI), and Topic Formation for Conversation (TF). Each stage is marked by specific linguistic features and serves unique functions within the communication process. DI involves friendly greetings and endearments to initiate conversation and signal interest. INTR often includes declarative statements that provide personal information, establishing familiarity and a good first impression. QAR facilitates information exchange through questions and responses. RQ, predominantly by males, involves polite modal verb constructions to move the conversation to more personal platforms or obtain further information. AD includes compliments and positive affirmations to express appreciation and create a positive interaction tone. DDI features direct and indirect questions about relationship status to clarify the intent behind the interaction and define the nature of the potential relationship. Finally, TF sustains conversation with statements and questions about daily activities and interests. This study contributes to the broader understanding of professional discourse by analyzing the structured linguistic strategies and interactional patterns employed in online dating, demonstrating how individuals strategically use language to manage impressions, negotiate intentions, and build relationships – skills also crucial in professional communication.

The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) biennial conference on psycholinguistics focused on the psychological, social, and biological foundations of human speech. The conference took an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on data from cognitive research, neuroscience, computer science, medicine, genetics, anthropology, and evolutionary theory. This article provides an overview of the keynote speeches and the most significant posters, presenting the findings of scholars from around the world.

The concept of authenticity has received much discussion in applied linguistics and educational studies. Valuable insights have been gained into how authenticity is problematised in language teaching and how to improve the situation by engaging learners with better-designed materials and activities. These achievements notwithstanding, empirical evidence remains insufficient to understand learners’ meaning-making endeavours in real-life learning scenarios. The current study attempts to examine authenticity in additional language learning from a semiotic perspective, which may shed new light on the complex cognitive process of beginner learners’ first encounter with a new language and how this process could be motivated and facilitated by teachers in a classroom setting. Evidence of semiotic articulation and production of authenticity from a low-pressure Spanish classroom is analysed focussing on cultural authenticity, interactive authenticity and authenticity of behaviour and engagement. The evidence is discussed to find how semiotic resources in combination with lived experiences may help learners’ comprehension and appreciation of the target language and its culture. These findings reveal the relevance and value of semiotic approaches to language teaching research and provide practical implications for exposing pre-tertiary young learners to languages other than English for more diverse and extensive learning experiences.

This paper explores the deployment of metaphors in the BBC Yoruba-medium football results of the English Premier League, examining how cultural metaphorical choices shape meaning in online sport discourse. Through a discourse analysis of Yoruba-medium football results, the study reveals how metaphors drawn from Yoruba cultural milieu and everyday life are used to create vivid descriptions of game events, players, and teams. The study relies on Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor theory, complemented by Kress and van Leeuwen’s social semiotic approach to multimodality. Findings reveal that metaphors describe game events, teams, and players, thus, framing the contest in unique and evocative manners, drawing on cultural and shared knowledge to shape the understanding of the game in an adversarial sense. This study, therefore, argues that metaphors are deployed to convey deeper cultural meanings and values, and add creativity to match results. The findings point to the role of language and culture in shaping the experiences of football fandom in sports and media.

The release of nuclear wastewater by Japan has generated strong opposition from Japanese citizens, governments of neighboring countries, and global environmental advocates. China, representing the concerns of neighboring countries, has underscored the illicit and detrimental nature of this action. This study explores the metaphors employed in Chinese media regarding the discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water. Based on the self-built corpus, we reveal the rhetorical motives underlying the metaphors, drawing on the framework of critical metaphor analysis. The study centers on two major metaphors – war and liar metaphors – in the discourse of two Chinese official media, China Daily and People’s Daily Online. It is found that according to Chinese media, initiating and protesting the discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water is a war; and that the Japanese government and TEPCO are liars. The metaphor choices reflect China’s stance of opposition and condemnation against the discharge and its intention of uncovering deceptive and misleading information.

This essay is a re-application of the language codes of Roland Barthes and Jonathan Culler’s concept for Structuralist Poetics. The approach I use explores the codes demonstrated in Barthes’ well-known text, S/Z with slight modifications for their application to poetry. The concepts borrowed from Mr. Culler are from his book of the same title: Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (Cornell University Press, 1975). Culler’s main argument is that there must be other, un-attempted strategies combined with conventional approaches in literature of that time period. His answer to this problem was to develop a set of linguistic-based concepts to compensate for the reader in the analysis of literary works. I have applied in this essay my approach based on Culler’s methodology and the language codes of Roland Barthes: semantic, symbolic, cultural-referential, actional and hermeneutic. I apply Culler’s concepts to a reading of poetry followed by an application of the language codes as a further development of my work in revitalizing this never-before applied method.

This research paper delves into the intricate role of music as a symbolic form in Pascal Quignard’s novel Tous les matins du monde, exploring its capacity to convey profound human emotions and experiences. Set against the backdrop of 17th-century France, the narrative follows the lives of Monsieur de Sainte Colombe and Marin Marais, renowned viola da gamba players, to contemplate the essence of music and its representation of human sentiment. The paper examines the semiotic nature of music, its relationship with memory and emotion, and the philosophical inquiry into music’s intrinsic value as an art form. It also discusses the novel’s adaptation into a film and its impact on the revival of Baroque music. Furthermore, the paper draws parallels between the myth of Orpheus and the characters’ personal journeys, highlighting the transformative power of music and its ability to transcend reality. The analysis is grounded in the works of various scholars, including Ferdinand de Saussure, Suzanne Langer, and Charles Sanders Peirce, to provide a comprehensive understanding of music’s symbolic essence in Quignard’s literary creation.

Newspaper political cartoons, known for their satirical nature, employ semiotic and linguistic techniques to comment on or criticise political leaders and events humorously. While previous studies on Nigerian newspaper political cartoons have focused on ideological issues and discourse frames, little attention has been given to the linguistic investigation of semiotic humour techniques in these cartoons. This study, therefore, investigates these humour techniques, utilising Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) as the framework within a descriptive design. Three newspapers – Punch, The Guardian, and Daily Trust – were purposively selected for their regular publication of cartoons, criticising Nigeria’s politics. Eleven political cartoons were purposively selected for their semiotic and humorous depictions of Nigeria’s politics, and subjected to linguistic analysis. Six semiotic humour techniques were identified in the cartoons: exaggeration, humorous metaphor, distortion of formulaic expressions, neologism, innovative collocation, and sarcasm. These techniques were employed to satirise three governance issues in Nigeria – misgovernance, corruption and insecurity.

Malcolm Bradbury’s novel Rates of Exchange, taking the economic term “rates of exchange” as a central metaphor, depicts various exchanges occurring in the socio-economic landscape of Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. In the context of governmental emphasis on economic development, the novel intricately explores exchanges among diverse entities, playing with multiple meanings of the term “exchange”. In this way, the novel itself becomes a form of “legal tender,” exchanged for reader comprehension, communication, and participation. It highlights the ubiquitous presence of exchange and the risks associated with the uncertain exchange rates between different entities. Furthermore, it invites readers to participate in the story-telling and the nostalgic journey back to British literary tradition. This paper, drawing on Roland Barthes’s semiotic theory along with structuralist and poststructuralist concepts, investigates the multifaceted meanings of “exchange” in the novel. Through this analysis, the paper aims to illuminate the semiotic significance of various narrative forms and the profound thematic concerns in Bradbury’s work.

Analyzing the diachrony of Hebrew bein, originally a spatial preposition ‘within/among’, this article traces several grammaticization clines associated with bein’s gradual evolution into a rich variety of functions within various constructions. While its early function is purely locative, bein later participates in an array of constructions and sub-constructions, where its syntactic status, its semantic meanings and functions, as well as its discourse role, have shifted considerably. Bein may thus be part of a conjunctive or a disjunctive construction, but it may also be part of an ‘in any case’ adverbial, and later an ‘anyway’ discourse marker. It conveys different locative construals (‘within’, ‘among’ and ‘between’), but also various abstract symmetric relations, such as ‘difference’, ‘dispute’ and ‘separation’. Some bein constructions partition a set, focusing on a subset of it, while in other cases bein serves as an ‘all-purpose’ preposition. Nevertheless, our goal is to show how each grammatical, semantic and discoursal phase is well motivated, given the previous phase. Based on written historical corpora, from Biblical to contemporary Hebrew, we provide a step-by-step diachronic development from earlier to later bein functions.

Quantitative studies of V2 in Medieval French have produced diverging results with respect to the rate of use of V2 and the informational value of the initial XP. These divergences are hypothesized to relate to the register of investigated texts. The hypothesis is verified by the systematic analysis of unambiguous V2 (with an expressed post-verbal subject) with respect to rates of use and informational value of XPs in three register-differentiated Anglo-Norman prose legal texts from the 1260–1300 period. On rates, unambiguous V2 is three times more frequent in the most formal, legal treatise text than it is in the less formal, court dialogues. On informational value, indications are provided that the XP tends to have a Focus value more often in more formal texts. Register thus impacts the behavior of unambiguous V2 configurations in Medieval French; using data less remote from the primary competence of speakers helps in approaching the effective curve of change.

In French, Italian, and other Romance languages indefinite nominal phrases can be introduced by what appears to be the conflation of a genitive preposition and a definite article, the so-called “indefinite partitive articles” (e.g., Fr. Je cuisine de la soupe depuis deux jours. ‘I’ve been cooking soup for two days’). This is rather unexpected, since these nominal phrases are neither definite nor in a syntactic position in which we expect to find a genitive preposition. This led part of the literature to consider them as built by lexical items synchronically distinct from the genitive preposition/definite article but homophonous with them. This contribution shows how a constituent-based approach to the lexicon-syntax interface as nanosyntax, paired with a specific take on the sequence of syntactic functions, can capture their apparently conflicting distribution without stipulating multiple homophonous lexical items. The key factor in this proposal is a revised analysis of the Romance lexical item (LI) for (i) definite articles – linked to a constituent containing not only features of definiteness but also lower indefinite features and higher nominative/accusative case features – and (ii) the genitive preposition DE – linked to a constituent containing not only genitive features but also lower nominative/accusative features. Holding these LIs crosslinguistically stable, the variation attested in this domain is modeled as depending on the amount of functional structure lexicalized by the nominal root in the different languages.

This article offers a case study of a definiteness split in a language in which three different types of nominal expressions are available for definite descriptions. The article contributes ample empirical data and comprises a close investigation of the patterns found in Reunion Creole (Réyoné), the language under study. Réyoné displays one kind of contrast also found in other languages which is frequently analyzed in terms of semantic versus pragmatic definiteness (following Löbner) or uniqueness versus familiarity (following Schwarz). What sets Réyoné apart from other languages though, is that it features a determiner that is dedicated to functional concepts. The language thereby distinguishes individual from functional concepts: the former type (the sun; the News) is exclusively expressed by bare noun phrases, while functional concepts – definite descriptions with functional head nouns (prefect of y; head of y), including a subtype of bridging reference, as well as compositionally created functional relations such as superlatives – are realized by lo-marked noun phrases. These facts offer strong support for Löbner’s theory. The article also discusses demonstrative descriptions, which have already been reported to play a role in certain definiteness splits, and which are obligatory with sortal concepts in Réyoné. It is argued that demonstratives are pragmatic definites.

This paper explores variation in the patterns of reflexivity marking in the Mano language and possible influence from the Kpelle language by using an experimental design with a picture questionnaire. While Kpelle does not have a morphological distinction between reflexive and basic pronouns, the Mano variety spoken by Mano-dominant individuals does possess such a distinction in 3sg. In contrast, the Mano variety spoken by Kpelle-dominant individuals shows a pattern borrowing from Kpelle into Mano, whereby the basic pronoun is used for both coreferential and disjoint readings. In a bilingual village, however, despite daily usage of both languages, almost all speakers from our sample manifest a uniform pattern that aligns closely with the monolingual Mano pattern of reflexivity marking. Therefore, the intensity of contact alone does not predict the amount of influence of Kpelle on Mano. Contrary to predictions by Labov (2010. Principles of linguistic change. Volume 3, Cognitive and cultural factors. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell: 5), we conclude that the languages spoken in a multilingual speech community do not necessarily converge and that a balanced multilingual community may provide enough input to acquire monolingual-like competence, at least according to the specific parameter under investigation. In the long run, however, convergence between Mano and Kpelle could indeed be taking place, with Mano losing its reflexivity contrasts, having already lost the contrast in 3pl.

Both areal and phylogenetic affiliation have been discussed as driving factors of the distribution of word order in the languages of the world. However, disentangling the interaction of these two factors is challenging. Here we take Indo-European as a test case. Word order in this family is largely homogeneous both within areas and within branches, which makes it difficult to assess which factor was more important in shaping the present-day distribution. To break out of this impasse we turn to corpus data and explicit statistical modeling. Building on a parallel corpus of movie subtitles, we investigate word order on the sentence level under stable pragmatic conditions. We measure the similarity of word order variation between pairs of languages with an information-theoretic distance metric. Using cluster analysis and variation partitioning methods these distance metrics show that phylogenetic distance predicts more variation than geographical distance, but the most important predictor is the shared fraction where phylogeny and area overlap. We conclude that word order has evolved along both dimensions and cannot be reduced to a single one.

This article addresses the problem of vowel-generated glides in Kurpian. In general, glides come from two sources: Gliding and Glide Insertion, for instance, word-initial /#iVC/ → [jVC] and /#iC/ → [jiC], where V stands for a vowel and C for a consonant. Even though Gliding and Glide Insertion are different phonological operations, they are united by a single goal: to eliminate onsetless syllables because a glide, regardless of whether it comes from a vowel or from insertion, provides an onset to a syllable. Onset-driven effects are particularly rich in Kurpian because they involve all kinds of vowels, including /a/ but not /ɛ/, a situation that has not been noted in the past research on crosslinguistic typologies (Levi, Susannah V. 2004. The representation of underlying glides: A cross-linguistic study. Seattle, WA: University of Washington dissertation, Levi, Susannah V. 2008. Phonemic vs. derived glides. Lingua 118. 1956–1978; Rosenthall, Sam. 1994. Vowel/glide alternation in a theory of constraint interaction. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts dissertation; Sands, Kathy. 2004. Patternings of vocalic sequences in the world’s languages. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, Santa Barbra dissertation). Further, glides are found both word-medially and word-initially. In this regard, Kurpian is different from Standard Polish, which tolerates both hiatus and word-initial onsetless syllables. It is argued that the constraint interaction required cannot be accounted for in classic Optimality Theory (OT). The solution is to adopt Derivational OT.

The aim of the article is to analyze the calls to the Estonian Emergency Response Centre, focusing on instances where callers reduce the severity of incident or emergency in their first turn. The data comprise 39 calls from the Corpus of Emergency Calls of the University of Tartu. The analysis reveals that callers employ mitigating words and negative turn-initial utterances to reduce the severity. These words indicate the caller’s uncertainty about the information provided or suggest that the reported incident or emergency is minor. The utterances are syntactically and semantically (but not prosodically) completed clauses followed by a second part of the clause construction containing specific information about the caller’s issue. Functionally, these utterances serve as assessments falling into three groups based on the information they project. Some assessments project uncertain information, explicitly expressing uncertainty about the information or using the epistemic marker ma=i=tea ‘I don’t know’. The second group of assessments project information about an incident that the caller does not qualify as an emergency. The last group projects a potential incident or emergency using variants of the utterance ei juhtund midagi ‘nothing happened’. In addition, we offer explanations for why callers reduce the severity of the incident or emergency and demonstrate that reducing severity does not lower the probability of sending assistance. This indicates that call-takers do not rely on callers’ assessments when deciding whether the help is needed.

The article presents a description of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in everyday conversation in Egyptian Arabic. Through a quantitative analysis of 200 sequences excerpted from telephone calls, the analysis is concerned to identify the main design features of RfC sequences and their context-sensitive distribution and use. Analysis reveals that RfCs in Egyptian Arabic often do not bear special syntactic or prosodic marking. Lexical devices, such as inference markers, tag questions, and modulation markers, make explicit the specific epistemic position of the requesters. RfCs mostly attract confirmations. These can be accomplished by minimal responses; however, in most cases, a more elaborate format is used. Greater epistemic independence is suggested in confirmations in which no token is used. Non-minimal responses seem to be normative in the case of disconfirmations. Responders can also employ dedicated means for declining to provide a dis/confirmation. The findings of this study support the view of RfC sequences as a complex site for the display and negotiation of knowledge and social positioning.

The article is devoted to the consideration of the effectiveness of the development of the methodological competence of a foreign language teacher through a business game. The scientific novelty consists in substantiating the need to integrate theoretical knowledge and practical experience of trainees within the framework of primary professional activity. The practical significance of the study is presented in the description of the technology of the business game, the role of the teacher and students. The effectiveness of the use of the business game as a means of professional development is confirmed by the analysis of the results of the study, which testify to the better formation of methodological competence among the students of the control group, the development of the ability for objective analysis and introspection of professional activity.

The article shows how the newspapers of the municipal districts of the Novosibirsk region are represented in social networks. The relevance of the stated topic is due to the fact that expanding interaction with social networks is one of the main features and trends in the development of regional and local press markets in Russia. The novelty is determined by the lack of published scientific articles concerning the current state of affairs in such a large region as the Novosibirsk region, as well as the empirical nature of the work carried out, which made it possible to trace the current state of this segment of the media sphere. The article presents the results of the analysis of audience indicators of public newspapers and monitoring of their content both in traditional social networks, such as VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, and in the relatively new Telegram, YouTube or Yandex.Zen. It is shown that all newspapers of this type have their own pages, on average they have 1.5–3 thousand subscribers on VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. The median number of posts per week is 22.5 posts for VKontakte and 20.8 for Odnoklassniki. At the same time, new platforms, such as Telegram, are just beginning to attract the interest of editorial offices — nine newspapers launched their tg channels in the spring of 2022, but the number of subscribers there is not yet large.

The purpose of the article is to show the irreconcilable position of liberal publicists in relation to the tsarist regime on the eve of the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907 and during the period of active association of liberals around the foreign opposition magazine Osvobozhdenie (1902-1905). Unlike the social-democratic newspaper Iskra and the Socialist-Revolutionary Russia, which developed their party programs for a certain class – workers and peasants, respectively – Osvobozhdenie set the task of a nationwide movement in the struggle for their rights. Therefore, in addition to leading articles, analytical reviews, program speeches by the leaders of the future movement, political satire was actively used in the Osvobozhdenie magazine as a method of political struggle against the tsarist autocracy and effective propaganda against the existing regime.

The article examines the manifestation of racist views and beliefs in various discursive practices. Words, texts and speech can play a key role in the formation of the modern racism. The study provides a brief overview of the concepts of “race” and “racism” adopted in Western science, describes the main approaches to the discursive analysis of racism. The focus is on discursive aspects of racism in Germany and New Zealand. Terms “prejudice” as a negative attitude towards a social group and “stereotype” as expression of a belief about a group or a representative of a group are explored. Strategies for rationalizing prejudices about minorities are listed; themes of racist discourse are described. The semantics of racist discourse manifested in the social, cultural, political, information, business and everyday spheres of life is examined. The authors summarize the broad meaning of the term racism applied in the Western science. The conclusion is made about the unifying and divisive functions of racist discourse and its differentiation into levels: “domestic racism”, “elitist racism”.

The purpose of the study is to determine the role of relational verbs in words with the root -house- in the works of 1950–1960 by F. A. Vigdorova. The article analyzes relational verbs with words with a root -house- in literary texts of 1950-1960 by F. A. Vigdorova, characterizing an important fragment of the picture of the world “House” for the writer. It has been established that relational verbs with words with the root -house- are used in texts to indicate the relationship of characters in the interpersonal and social spheres, to the ways of their manifestation, express the pragmatic, pedagogical views of the writer. In the works, as well as in the usage, these verbs are presented to a lesser extent (14) compared to actional ones (83), but they are stylistically significant in the mental-lingual complex of F. A. Vigdorova’s linguistic personality. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time the analysis of the semantics of relational verbs with words with the root -house- in the prose of 1950–1960 was carried out. F. A. Vigdorova, which made it possible to expand the idea of the specifics of the writer’s idiostyle, which consists in describing the spiritual, social life of the country in 1920–1950, in particular, by examining the lexical-semantic groups of verbs with the semantics of 'relationship': verbs of social relations, verbs of interpersonal relations, verbs of possession, verbs of relationship, including those used in a figurative sense. The results of the work make a significant contribution to the developed methodology for the linguistic analysis of the Vigdorova’s text.

Pragmalinguistic analysis of media texts with a destructive component (violence, suicide, revenge, reprisals) is presented. A feature of the media content under study is: 1) the presence of a digital communicator – a digital platform (blog, messenger, social network, video, etc.) for broadcasting and replicating the communication process by the participants themselves (representatives of generation Z); 2) the place and role of a digital communicator in the implementation of a given destructive behavioral model. The transformation of axiosphere was revealed: there were axiological shifts in the conceptual field "LIFE-DEATH". Due to it we were able to identify the potential activity of the destructive vector of the homo digitalis behavioral model. The "axiologeme" is interpreted by us as a speech signal of hidden influence. In the text it acts as a lexical unit with code evaluation, which forms positive, neutral or negative associations: death (negative in psychological and emotional terms; neutral (logical conclusion of the life way) from the point of view of Christian morality in objective reality, neutral in virtual reality, as it is possible to reboot and positive (receiving bonuses: likes, discussions, comments). The development of influence plans ("positive-approving, neutral-indifferent or negativedisapproving") for the described events allowed us to identify the author's assessment of the media text with a destructive component. Positive-approving plan – 36.4%, negative-disapproving - 46.1%, and neutral-indifferent – 18.5%. These data reflect the prospects for the preservation/non-preservation of the axiosphere of Russian linguaculture.

This study is devoted to the study of the implementation features of derivational mechanisms for modeling occasional vocabulary in the Russian-language media space. On the example of language units, which include the prepositive component de-, the semantic and grammatical features of occasional units implemented in the current media space are established. The material for the study was the texts of electronic newspapers, magazines, news agencies for the period from 2020 to the present, as well as forums, chats, blogs, political illustrations related to research topics. As a result of the study, a wide range of language units with a prepositive component de- was established, expanding their meaning in the texts of modern media. Thematic groups are identified and described, thematic groups organized by language units with the prepositive component de- are established, their contextual meaning and semantic-pragmatic features of implementation in the current media space are determined.

We consider the category of “paschality”, introduced into Russian literature studies by Ivan Esaulov, in Anton Chekhov’s tale “In the Ravine”. In Russia, Easter is celebrated more solemnly than Christmas. According to I. Esaulov, this makes people give greater importance to life in Heaven and makes them ready to suffer and die in order to receive it. We recognize that the category of “paschality” can be fruitful for literature studies and, in particular, for the interpretation of Chekhov’s tale. Yet, we propose to amend it. We disagree with I. Esaulov’s opinion that giving a key importance to Easter distinguishes Russian Orthodoxy from the Christian West. But, first and foremost, we think that the paschal spirituality of the New Testament should not be juxtaposed neither to the Pascha (Passover, Exodus) of the Hebrew Bible, nor to the crucial role the New Testament gives to the Christmas mystery of the Incarnation. Instead, the paschal mystery should rather be seen as the continuation and fulfillment of both. This kind of “paschality” complements the social criticism of the tale “In the Ravine” and gives it a deeper sense. The horror described in “In the Ravine”, which reaches its culmination in the little child’s murder, is both exacerbated and softened by allusions to Christ’s birth and to Our Lady. Besides, due to references to the salvation of little Moses and the newborn Jesus, even ex negativo the tale alludes to Lipa’s and her fellow workers’ future salvation and liberation.

The main communicative strategies and their implementing tactics were revealed in German newspaper interviews devoted to the events in Ukraine in March – May 2022. The main communication strategies in this genre of German media are the information and interpretation strategy, the strategy of the reader's emotional mood and the strategy of self-presentation. The most common lexical units, lexico-stylistic and syntactic-stylistic means that implement basic communicative tactics in interview texts are established.

The article is devoted to the relevant problems of modern communicative linguistics and network genre studies. A comparative analysis of dialogic communication in live speech with dialogic communication on the Internet (within the framework of information and commentary blocks) was carried out according to the following criteria: 1) pragmatic coordinates of communication; 2) the type of dialogue according to the nature of the addressee; 3) the main factors influencing the organization of dialogic structures; 4) thematic specificity of the dialogues. Online comments is characterized as a response Internet genre, the texts of which are thematically, structurally-semantically and pragmatically closely related to the original (root) message (post) and form a kind of dialogic unity with it. The studied network genre meets the urgent need of Internet users for feedback and is a time-demanded media embodiment of the addressee factor. This genre is intended primarily to express the point of view of the addressee and various modal meanings of the sphere associated with the addressee: agreement or disagreement, approval or disapproval, various cognitive-modal assessments and qualifications.

The peculiarities of the interpretation of the Russian myth about Don Quixote in the series of stories by A. Belyaev "The Inventions of Professor Wagner" is revealed within the specifics of the image of the main character, a rebel, an impostor, an extra person, a wanderer who appears as a knight of science. Wagner, whose image goes back to the figure of a cultural hero, strives to transform the reality around him, literally perceived as material for creating a new better world. Ridiculing the past as a trickster, the hero affirms the future of the "golden age" as a demiurge. The quixoticism of Professor Wagner is a scientific service in the name of humanity, a daily and intense, like a feat, work of a scientist.

M.A. Sholokhov in the novel "And Quiet Flows The Don" created a unique gallery of original female images – the images of the Cossacks. This article is devoted to the consideration and understanding of the role of female images in the course of the narrative of the Vyoshenskaya (UpperDon) uprising – the key event of the third book and the novel "And Quiet Flows the Don" as a whole. When creating the characters of the Cossacks, Sholokhov seeks to follow the historical truth and embody the disharmonious state of the world, where women, faced with revolutionary and military events, for the most part do not take part in the political struggle and retain their inherent gender traits – female wisdom, sensitivity, comprehensive mercy. The artistic representation of the Cossack women in the chapters on the Vyoshensky uprising is considered as one of the characteristic features of M. A. Sholokhov, since it was in the system of female images that the spiritual and valuable essence of any non-warrior who fell into the events of the Civil War was embodied with particular clarity and relief.

Mandelstam's poem "With a thin Gillette plate ..." has rarely been subjected to detailed analysis and still contains riddles, the possibility of variable interpretations. This concerns the subtext, the system of images, the intertextual structure, the poetics of the lyrical landscape. In particular, the important components for understanding this text are the connection with traditional culture, the specifics of the "tree" and "river" figurative codes, the relationship of the landscape with other semantic layers, the forms of the presence of the lyrical subject. The image of the half-blood Don, the main mystery of the poem, is of the particular interest. A consistent analysis of stanzas in a system of different contexts allows us to get closer to understanding the symbolism of the poem.

The article raises the question of the folklorism of V.V. Mayakovsky, whose artistic heritage in literary criticism from these positions has been little studied. The latent forms of penetration of the folk tradition into the poetics of the author of the beginning of the 20th century are considered. Folklore in the study is understood comprehensively, culturally and philologically expanded, taking into account the forms of myth, ritual, that is pre-genre formations. The material for the hermeneutic analysis was the poem "An extraordinary adventure that happened with Vladimir Mayakovsky in the summer at the dacha", which is especially distinguished by literary critics in the poet's work. Much attention is paid to the problem of national topics, the archetype of the World Mountain in the verbal culture of modernism, whose representatives were acutely aware of the problem of feeling space and time, "top" and "bottom", "day" and "night". The folklore commentary on the poem also allows rethinking many issues of the poet's work from ontological and metaphysical positions. This poem has a great cultural potential for the study of solar images in the Russian poetry of the Silver Age, artistic anthropocosmism, which was associated with the philosophy of cosmism. The results of the work can also be used in teaching courses on Russian literature of the XX century, folklore, philosophy.

The article is devoted to a relatively new genre of speech – self-presentation. The research is based on self-presentations of non-philological students of the geographical, sociological, biological faculties, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, the Institute of Physical Culture and Sports of Saratov National Research State University named after N. G. Chernyshevsky and philologists studying at the Institute of Philology and Journalism. The purpose of the study is to identify the genre features of these texts. The multidimensional analysis of self–presentations revealed genre-forming features, the most typical cognitive models (scenarios) of self-presentation, which allow us to conclude that the student’s self-presentation is a synthetic speech genre pursuing informative, imperative, evaluative goals. It can also be attributed to the genre of reaction. The genre of self-presentation interacts with other speech genres, as a rule, self-presentation includes a call, a message, gratitude. Bachelors and specialists choose a strategy – the desire to please, to seem attractive to others, Master’s students – self-advertisement, self-promotion, proving their professional competence. The choice of these strategies is related to the basic characteristics that the author defines for himself as essential: for Master’s students this is a career, for bachelors and specialists – a family, in which they live, and positive personality qualities. The article presents an overview of the forms of students’ self-presentations. Examples of atypical self-presentation are poetic texts and fairy tales, in which verbal-logical and emotionally expressive elements of speech as means of influencing the audience. Irony, jokes, puns are successfully used in students’ self-presentations, but in general the degree of seriousness within the genre is very high, for the most part self-presentations are a variant of business communication. In the works of students of all faculties, except philologists, a rhetorical technique is productive and frequent – the use of quotations and references to the opinions of famous people, philologists use lyrical reflections.

The article attempts to explicate the stylistic figure of the oxymoron as a phenomenon that shows the representation in the sphere of language of a specific property of human consciousness and the picture of the world structured by it – the presumption of the unsubstantial nature of opposites and the possibility, on this basis, of their discursive actualization in the formulas of semantic synthesis. It is shown that the contact arrangement of coreferent antonyms in a single syntagmatic construction is not enough to form an oxymoron (black-and-white movie). This figure of speech arises as a result of the presence of the subject of speech and their evaluative-characterizing intention in the semantic space of the text (sad-happy eyes). Evaluation individualizes the mode of reception and the resulting picture of the world. Thus, the oxymoron comes into play as a way of organizing the cognitive model of non-linguistic reality, as an individual experience of perceiving and semantizing objects and phenomena. On the basis of representative communicative and speech material, the author demonstrates the universal nature of the application and actualization of the oxymoron in the entire range of the main socially relevant types of discourse. It is important to note that each speechgenre area differs in its specificity in the interpretation of the text-forming and pragmatic potential of the oxymoron. In poetry, it can act as a structural-compositional model of the whole work, totally determining the possibility of the appearance and functionality of all other elements of the text. In official business discourse, the oxymoron is present implicitly, as an unarticulated and fundamentally rejected pragmatic antithesis to the technique of textual construction, focused on the exclusive and only relevance of denotative semantics for the organization of the message. The author believes that the constructively significant role of the oxymoron in the processes of reception and verbal representation of the world is proven.

In the basis of a special area of genre PRology as a branch of the science of public relations the authors put the criterion of the diversity of PR-information in multi-channel public communication via new media. As a subject of genre PRology, the authors consider convergence of information formats of a PR text in a multi-channel PR. In the genre revision of PR communication in social media, the genre transformations of PR texts are influenced by the following factors: 1) technological, 2) intentional, 3) structural. Technologically, PR texts functioning in the space of social networks are characterized by 1) a polycode structure, which implies the equivalence of verbal and non-verbal levels of meaning; 2) the transgressive nature of the publication, which determines the animation of the message and its transgression (movement) in the digital space. PR texts are multi-intentional in nature. Structurally, PR texts in social networks undergo three types of convergence: 1) structural or presentational, 2) discursive, and 3) genre. Structural, or presentational, convergence of PR texts in social media is associated with the allocation in the post structure of the presentation (the actual text and iconic materials) and the reaction (readers’ comments). Discourse convergence of PR-text is associated with 1) diffusion of institutional and intentional types of discourse, 2) inter-institutional discursive interaction (PR and advertising). Genre convergence of PR-texts is a genre symbiosis of three types – convergence of primary and secondary speech genres, convergence of primary simple genres of PR-text, and intermedial convergence.

The article is included in the range of works devoted to the study of genre characteristics of texts and genre forms. The relevance of the study is determined by the specific nature of speech genres and their variability. The purpose of the work is to research the magazine “Tram” as a speech genre and its genre forms. The material for the study was the journal issues published between 1990 and 1995. The article tries to consider the relationship between the concepts of “genre” and “genre form”. The authors adhere to the point of view that a “genre form” is a genre that is part of the structure of another, more complex genre. One of the genre characteristics of the magazine “Tram” and its constituent genre forms is creolization/polycode, a combination of verbal and paraverbal components. On the one hand, the interaction of these elements turns out to be a feature of all magazines for children and teenagers. On the other hand, drawings, sometimes their predominance over the verbal text, their location on the page, color, variety of fonts distinguish the analyzed magazine from others. The magazine “Tram” distinguishes genre forms, which are divided into two groups – traditional and new ones. The analysis shows that traditional genre forms are stories, comics, riddles, fairy tales (folk, author’s, fantasy ones), works of young readers, instructions; new genre forms include a conversation with the reader, the genre of limericks, words-epigraphs, fairy tales, messages about Orthodox holidays, cooking recipes (“gastronomic pages”). The authors of the article considers “traditionality” to be conditional, because while maintaining the genre form, the content of the texts presented in the magazine differs from the texts of the same genre forms from other children’s magazines: the basis of the riddle is not comparison or metaphor and epithet, but irony; the stories are constructed as a dialogue that continues from issue to issue, or they are preceded by comments from the compilers regarding the author or the content of the work; there appear intertextual tales, in the creation of which readers take part.

The paper deals with the speech genre “wish” treated as emotional and volitive communicative event, its meaning is an expressed wish of implementation of something good or bad for somebody. Grammatically, this genre is a kind of mood named “optative”. It is a speech act describing a certain situation which implies an emotional reaction of a person. The reaction of an addressee for a good wish is usually expressed in words or gestures of gratitude. In case of a bad wish expressed directly it merges with a quarrel and a reverse bad wish. Common objects of good wishes are good health, happiness, prosperity, success and good luck. Good wishes may be combined with proactive criticism, accusation, reproach, or request. This speech act may be either neutral or discourse specific (used by soldiers, sailors, students, etc.), it is specifically used when addressed to elder people or applied to certain events, e.g. weddings. Bad wishes were initially pronounced as magic meant to bring harm to someone, and nowadays they are used as a kind of invectives or jokes. Bad wishes are usually combined with insult.

In Japan, even now, the genre of seasonal greetings is widespread, which has no analogues in Russia or Europe. Such genres may have lexical specificity; often their units belong to non-equivalent vocabulary. Such words cannot be translated into another language with one word or phraseological unit without losing or adding information, and a “descriptive” translation can be extremely inconvenient and wasteful, not stylistically appropriate, and some components of meaning may be lost or, conversely, added. Postcards are written according to a certain template and sent expressing feelings in connection with the beginning of one or another of the 24 seasons of the year. They can be joyful or sympathetic depending on the weather typical for the season. The genre, apparently, correlates with the peculiarities of the Japanese picture of the world. Based on a simple analysis of vocabulary, it is obvious that Japanese speakers are constantly associated with the sea, maritime climate, marine fishing; as for cattle breeding it is not very common there. Particular attention to natural processes from weather to inarticulate sounds is often characteristic of the Japanese language. In addition to expressing feelings in connection with the seasons, onomatopoeia and imagery are of particular importance to it; such vocabulary can appear in a variety of genres.

The article characterizes conceptual metaphors as one of the ways of structuring the genre of analytical review in modern Russian newspapers. The object of the study is spatial transfer models used by analysts (professional journalists and experts) to represent the image of the United States in the modern world. The research material consists of 138 spatial metaphors in 410 contexts extracted from 43 articles of six socio– political newspapers dating 2022–2023. The relevance of the topic is determined by the need to clarify the place of metaphors in modern mass media, which are undergoing significant changes both in genre-structural and linguistic aspects. The aim of the work is to identify the role of spatial metaphors in the conceptual representation of the United States in the genre of analytical review in modern Russian newspapers. Based on a comprehensive analysis using modern semantic, cognitive and discursive methods of textual material, it was found that in the genre under study spatial conceptual metaphors occupy an important place in the implementation of the main functions of the analytical genre – conceptual (logical-argumentative), evaluative and influencing. In particular, it is shown that in modern all-Russian newspapers, with the help of three basic models of spatial metaphorization (purposeful activity, being and development, systemic connections and relations), an integral image of the United States is formed as an active participant in global economic and socio-political processes, the main purpose of which is to assert its leadership position by subordinating allies and weakening opponents and competitors. The result of such actions is the growth of conflicts and general instability in the world.