Rhema. Рема

This paper presents an experimental study of genitive of negation in Russian. There are two types of genitive constructions: subject genitive of negation and object genitive of negation. The use of genitive depends on many factors: in some conditions it is obligatory, in others, on the contrary, it is prohibited, and in some conditions there is variation between genitive and nominative/accusative genitive and nominative/accusative. In this study, we identified the main factors influencing the use of genitive of negation and measured their statistical significance using experimental methods. Respondents rated sentences on a Likert scale from 1 to 7. The independent variables were: 1) verb type, 2) verb transitivity, 3) negative quantifier, and 4) noun phrase case. The results of the experiments show that in sentences with genitive verbs, genitive is rated higher than with non-genitive ones. The negative quantifier also increases the acceptability of genitive. With non-genitive verbs, subject genitive of negation is rated lower than object genitive of negation, while with genitive verbs such differences are not observed.

Key words: genitive of negation, subject genitive of negation, object genitive of negation, negation, case, experimental syntax, Russian.

For reference: Maliavkina O. Multifactorial analysis of Russian genitive of negation (an experimental study). Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 2. Pp. 9–32.

This article examines the changes in the productivity of the derivational suffix -ισσα of feminives in the Greek language. In the Modern Greek, this suffix is the most productive and is represented in 887 lexemes. In Ancient Greek, on the contrary, the suffix -ισσα is quite rare, limited to 8 lexemes. During the diachronic analysis, we find that a sharp increase in the productivity of the suffix -ισσα occurs during the Hellenistic Koine period. In subsequent periods, its productivity continues to increase. In the Modern Greek, the suffix -ισσα in most cases is involved in the formation of katoikonyms, but the high productivity of the suffix contributes to its active participation in the formation of feminitives-neologisms of other semantic fields.

Key words: morphology, word formation, feminitives, productivity of the derivational suffix, suffixes, diachrony, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek.

For reference: Chueva S. Changes in the productivity of the feminine suffix -ισσα in Greek (diachronic analysis). Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 2. Pp. 33–60.

Code switching (CS), along with other types of language contact in bilingual speech, is one of the most studied phenomena in bilingualism research. Our paper focuses on the syntactic aspect of code switching in speech. There are models designed to summarize the fragmented facts about CS and to describe general constraints for any language pair. The Matrix Language Framework Model (MLF) is a model of bilingual speech production that is dominant in the study of the syntactic constraints of CS. The MLF describes the speech production in bilinguals as a sequence of stages that determine syntactic constraints on the generated structures. This research tests the validity of MLF predictions using a grammatical acceptability survey..

Key words: bilingualism, language contact, code switching, MLF, matrix language, embedded language, content morpheme, system morpheme, congruence, French, Lingala.

For reference: Tsurkis M., Nikolaeva Yu. Syntactic factors for code-switching in Lingala-French bilinguals. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 2. Pp. 61–85.

This paper explores the influence of family and surrounding networks on the English language competency of final-year undergraduates of Sri Lankan state universities. I analyze the language norms, practices, and attitudes of the Sri Lankan society and how they affect the potential opportunities associated with English language competency. The findings reveal that the final-year undergraduate population, who predominantly represent youth with middle-class backgrounds, demonstrate an average level of English skills. A noticeable disparity exists in the confidence to use the language, particularly in speaking and listening. Students from Westernized and English-based backgrounds are less influenced by societal biases compared to their peers with limited language access. These findings suggest that while English competency is critical in life success, its effect is moderated by the socio-economic background the students are coming from. Policymakers and educators should understand this scenario and design strategies that will minimize the influence of socioeconomic background in acquiring English competency and the future life paths of state university students of Sri Lanka.

Key words: English, English competency, socio-economic factors of English competency, career aspirations, Sri Lanka.

For reference: Alles S.S. Public attitude towards English language and its implication in life progression in Sri Lankan final year government university students. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 2. Pp. 86–112.

The article discusses the significance of using cognitive strategies in the process of teaching to read texts in a foreign language with a professional focus. The authors suggest that the application of these strategies can significantly improve reading learning outcomes among students of non-linguistic universities. To confirm this hypothesis, a study aimed at identifying the cognitive strategies used by learners was conducted.

Key words: teaching foreign languages, discourse, cognitive strategies, non- linguistic university.

For reference: Bortnikova A., Baykova I. Using cognitive strategies in teaching professionally oriented foreign language reading. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 2. Pp. 113–125.

As one of official languages of the United Nations, Russian plays an important role in China, given the long history of Sino-Russian relations. Especially in recent years, with the development of globalization and technological revolution, society’s demand for diversification of talents’ skills has become increasingly obvious. Thereby, Russian language education faces changes. In this study, characteristics of Russian language education system before implementing economic reforms in 1978 were reviewed. The innovative changes in modern stage were analyzed based on a review of undergraduate Russian language programs in Chinese universities. Based on a comparative analysis of traditions and innovations we propose predictions and recommendations for the future Russian language education in China.

Key words: Program plan, Russian as a foreign language, training model, traditions, innovations.

For reference: Hu Jian. Innovations in undergraduate programs in Russian as a foreign language in Chinese higher education institutions. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 2. Pp. 126–141.

The article analyzes how the Danish spatial adverb hen is used in speech.The adverb hen lacks lexical semantics, may be used or omitted in similar contexts,canbe combined with various prepositions – all this makes it necessary to identify its invariant meaning, to describe its combinatorics with verbs and prepositions,and analyze semantics of these adverbial-prepositional combinations. The analysis of texts shows that the adverb hen indicates movement towards an object within easy reach on the horizontal plane,and can form combinations with the prepositionsad, mod, over, til. Comparing the combinations hen til and hen mod allows us to explore the functional features of these spatial indicators and specify typical contexts of their use.

Key words: Danish language, spatial-temporal semantics, dynamic indicators,adverbial-prepositional combination, mental space.

For reference: Krylova E. Danish adverb hen as an indicator of spatiotemporal semantics. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 1. Pp. 9–27.

Equasimilative constructions belong to the semantic field of comparison,but have been studied to a much less extent than comparative constructions.There are practically no areal-typological studies in this area. This paper focuses on equasimilative constructions in Khwarshi proper (Nakh-Dagestanian). Additionally,it provides an overview of equasimilative constructions in the languages of the Caucasus to determine the parameters that influence the marking of these constructions and compares the Khwarshi field data with data from the broader region.Thus,this paper views the Khwarshi equasimilatives in the broader context of Caucasian equasimilatives.

Key words: equatives, similatives, Caucasian languages, Nakh-Daghestanianlanguages, Khwarshi.

For reference: Poliakova E. Just like the ones around here: Equasimilative constructions in Khwarshi and beyond. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 1. Pp. 28–60.

Pronouns and their categories in Russian and Persian are different. In the classes of Russian as a foreign language in Iran, the mistakes are often observed when using the pronouns svoi, sam and sebya. In the process of learning these pronouns their Persian equivalent khod acts as a powerful source of various types of interference and mistakes. Due to the fact that the most effective strategy in teaching foreign languages is to explain new material considering possible difficulties and mistakes, the article compares these pronouns,analyzes the common mistakesof the Persian-speaking students,shows dissimilar contexts that cause difficulties and proposes a series of exercises to overcome these difficulties.

Key words: pronoun, interference, antecedent, Russian, Russian as a foreignlanguage, Persian.

For reference: Ebrahimsharifi Sh., Iskandary M. Analysis of mistakes made by Persian-speaking students in the use of Russian pronouns svoj, sam and sebja. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 1. Pp. 61–78.

Modern education is undergoing significant changes as artificial intelligence (AI) is introduced into learning processes. The scientific research presented in this article aims to analyze the perception and use of AI by higher education students. Using surveys, we found out how students assess the level of use of AI and its role in learning foreign languages. The study results provide greater insight into whether students perceive AI as a tool for self-directed learning and the extent to which they are willing to use it to solve educational problems. This research has important implications for the development of educational strategies that promote better integration of AI into educational processes and meet the needs of students. As further research, we are going to work out and pilot a model of AI integration into teaching foreign languages to create personal learning path.

Key words: artificial intelligence, independent learning of students, foreign language at university, student awareness of artificial intelligence.

For reference: Avramenko A. Bulanova E. Prospects for the developmentof student self-study in the context of integrating artificial intelligence technologies into foreign language education. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 1. Pp. 79–91.

The paper addresses the problem of using scientific and pedagogical texts in foreign language in the process of teachers’ professional training. We define the concepts of “scientific and pedagogical text”, “scientific and methodological text”, discuss their types and requirements for them, we provide evidence that using such texts in the process of teaching students and developing the professionalism of teachers is crucial. The main content of the article is the analysis of a voluntary survey of teachers and students of various universities to assess the scientific and pedagogical texts as a means of professional development of a teacher.

Key words: scientific and pedagogical text, scientific and methodological text, types of scientific and pedagogical texts, sources of scientific, pedagogical and methodological information, reading strategies.

For reference: Bornovalova N. Foreign language scientific and pedagogical text as a means of professional development of a teacher. Rhema. Рема. 2024. No. 1. Pp. 92–102.

In this paper, we examine Differential Object Marking in Tatar building on Baker’s recent classification of Differential Object Marking across languages as derived either via object shift (Hindi), pseudo-noun-incorporation (Tamil), or both (Sakha). We argue that the seemingly similar phenomenon in Tatar cannot be accounted for by either object shift or pseudo-noun-incorporation. Specifically, we show that accusative objects need not appear in the object- shifted, VP-external position either at Spell-Out or post-Spell-Out. Moreover, we demonstrate that unmarked objects do not appear in a special structural position, such as head-adjoined to the verb or PF-adjacent to the verb. Instead, we propose that the contrast between accusative and unmarked objects in Tatar correlates with the internal structure of the object: accusative objects are DPs whereas unmarked objects are Small Nominals. We enumerate the contrasts between full-fledged DPs and Small Nominals and show that unmarked objects fit the cross-linguistic profile of the latter.

Key words: Differential Object Marking, Tatar, extended noun phrase, case marking, formal models of Turkic languages.

For reference: Lyutikova E., Pereltsvaig A. Towards a formal model of Differential Object Marking in Tatar. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 4. Pp. 9–26.

The paper describes key areas in current experimental research on argument structure. We discuss the experiments that compare verb classes in order to test the argument structure complexity hypotheses and to highlight common argument structure features. Then we present research on argument structure alternations, carried out both on groups of various verbs and on single verb root appearing in various syntactic contexts. Finally, we examine the experiments that focus on the role of argument structure in incremental sentence production.

Key words: argument structure, psycholinguistics, incrementality, argument structure alternations.

For reference: Modina V. Experimental research on argument structure. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 4. Pp. 27–46.

Students business communication in a foreign language by students at non- linguistic universities often does not meet accepted norms and standards. The paper provides suggestions about the reasons for these difficulties. We propose a solution in the form of integration of reference schemes into the educational process and their systematic training use at a university training civil defense specialists. The formation of discursive competence based on the use of supporting schemes in a non-linguistic university is possible and effective, but requires special attention to the selection of material on the topic, to the system of exercises and the method of work in practical classes. Particular attention should also be paid to feedback from students: in this study there is experience in adjusting the exercise system in accordance with the characteristics of groups of students.

Key words: teaching foreign languages, discourse, discursive competence, non-linguistic university.

For reference: Bortnikova A. Development of discursive competence of civil defense specialists based on visualization with the help of schemes. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 4. Pp. 46–60.

The anthropocentrism of today’s educational paradigm prioritizes foreign language learners’ ideological self-determination. The latter actualizes the need to define the concept and the components of existential competence in foreign language education. A literature review in existential analysis helps to identify the meaningful models potentially suitable for developing existential competence through an examination of authentic cultural facts. The research paper defines the concept of existential competence, justifies the potential of intercultural foreign language education as a factor in existential competence development, and suggests a short lesson scenario as an educational technology for developing existential competence in senior school students.

Key words: existential competence, intercultural foreign language education, intercultural approach, experiential existential values, creative existential values, attitudinal existential values, cultural fact, wabi-sabi.

For reference: Burmistrova E. The potential of intercultural foreign lan- guage education for the development of existential competence in senior schoolchildren. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 4. Pp. 61–76.

This article is aimed at justifying the viability of the polyethnic Ghanaian audience for the implementation of the ethnomethodological approach to teaching Russian as a foreign language. Applying the analytical research method in reviewing literature, dedicated to the study of the ethnomethodological approach to teaching Russian as a foreign language, and literature, that describes the peculiarities of the Ghanaian contingency of students, thus the subject of this research work, the author recommends how the Russian language teacher can contribute to the effective implementation of an ethnomethodological approach to teaching the language in Ghana, regardless of the difficulties presented by the polyethnic Ghanaian landscape.

Key words: ethnomethodological approach, ethnos, Russian as a foreign language, the Republic of Ghana, polyethnic Ghanaian audience.

For reference: Tenkorang R. The perspective of an effectual application of the ethnomethodological approach to teaching the Russian language in the polyethnic educational space of the Republic of Ghana. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 4. Pp. 77–89.

In this paper, we consider directive acts as part of a quotation in Modern Japanese speech. Using the texts of electronic diaries as a kind of written expression of conversational discourse, we studied the ways of transmitting directive acts as part of a quotation, as well as to analyzed how the choice of a certain form of expression of directive acts as part of a quotation may indicate the direct or indirect nature of the citation. After giving a preliminary theoretical picture, we turn mainly to the direct (morphologized) imperative forms of the Japanese language. These forms are enough to show the complexity of the directive category in the "polite" language of the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun. In any case, the analysis of morphologized forms inevitably moved to the syntactic-discursive level. The peculiarity of the approach is in the analysis of several texts by one author to determine the language techniques characteristic of this author, which is used, among other things, as an argument in favor of direct or indirect citation, since Japanese (as well as for a number of other languages) is characterized by a rather complex, subtle distinction between direct and indirect ways of transmitting someone else’s speech. The material convinces us that only a complete analysis of both the quotation itself and the context (for example, texts by the same author) allows us to get a more accurate picture of the phenomenon of the distinction between direct and indirect citation. Among other things, the conducted research has the theoretical significance in terms of thinking about the phenomenon of quoting in language in general. It is clear that this phenomenon (especially in the light of modern information-polymodal, postmodern and other trends, in particular trends in the psychologization of discourse) should be understood more difficult, as new research in this field proves, and as our paper shows.

Key words: directive acts, citation, direct and indirect speech acts, narrator, speaker, Japanese, complexity of the directive category in Japanese, difficulty distinguishing direct and indirect citation.

For reference: Ermishina E. Directive acts as part of a quotation in Modern Japanese speech. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 3. Pp. 9–32.

Based on a sample of 218 languages, the paper shows that most languages tend to use conjunctions and converbs for expressing ‘until’. In a number of languages, these markers appear to be diachronically connected to case markers (e.g. dative case markers), verbs (e.g. ‘to arrive’), nouns (e.g. ‘edge’), and adverb(ial)s meaning ‘only’. Also discussed are other rare strategies, which seem to show clear areal patterns. In particular, some languages from Mali use an ‘until’ clause with a verb meaning ‘to get tired’ to express ‘for a long time’, and some languages from Mesoamerica use ‘until’ clauses with expletive negative markers.

Key words: ‘Until’ clauses, adverbial clauses, typology, areality, language contact.

For reference: Olguin Martinez J. ‘Until’ clauses in typological perspective. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 3. Pp. 33–64.

The author highlights the rationale of expanding the functional positions of a modern foreign language teacher, considering the integration of digital tools into education. The article summarizes the results of a theoretical study aimed to identify and analyze existing deficits within the framework of normative goal-setting of professional pedagogical training in Russia. Exemplified in the area of the English language, the filling of the level system of such requirements was considered from the position of the main participants: regulatory documents (Russian Federal Standards of Education, Professional Standard) in line with Professional requirements for teachers of foreign languages and employers’ expectations in the field of online language education. Considering digitalization of teaching, the analysis makes it possible to identify the fact that the requirements of the educational and pedagogical system are ahead of the officially declared goals and content of professional and pedagogical training of modern teachers of foreign languages.

Key words: professional and pedagogical training of teachers of foreign languages, requirements for educational results, online language education, digital literacy.

For reference: Goncharova V. Professional and pedagogical training of teachers of foreign languages: Do the goals meet the expectations? Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 3. Pp. 65–79.

The article considers the issues of teaching FL communication to non-linguistics students in terms of latest developments of instructional design determined by the research in personality psychology, cognitivism, structural linguistics. The authors suggest using the ADDIE model to design the teaching process in the context of the insufficiency of classroom hours for the discipline “Foreign language”. The authors have designed a course programme “Young professio-nal” embracing terminological thesaurus, speech patterns, specialized texts, tests, exercises to develop FL communication skills, with 3/4 of the study time focusing on students’ autonomous work with teaching materials in “Electronic educational environment”. The ADDIE model-based learning technology was tested with 4th year – physics and mathematics students of State University of Education and positively assessed.

Key words: need of self-actualization, instructional design, ADDIE model, note-taking, a level of FL proficiency, professional community.

For reference: Komochkina E., Selezneva T. FLT in a non-linguistics university with the ADDIE model of instructional design. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 3. Pp. 80–96.

The article deals with the current state of competence-based language education from the perspective of language teacher education in a dynamically changing world. The article aims to present professional competences as an element of language education, which can be integrated with competence development. It presents a definition of professional communicative strategy and a classification of strategies that must be formed in future language teachers. The main practical outcome of this study is the creation of tasks aimed at the development of professional strategies, some of which are shown in this article alongside some samples of students’ work and reflection.

Key words: professional communicative strategy, professional communicative competence, competence-based education.

For reference: Korenev A.A. Professional communicative strategies as an element of language training in language teacher education. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 3. Pp. 97–121.

This paper opens the issue compiling a series of experimental studies on variable agreement in Russian. The agreement variation is not integrated into grammatical models due to the lack of any systematic approach to collecting data on the effect size and scope of relevant grammatical factors. We discuss methodological problems related to the study of agreement variability, and present case studies published in the special issue. We show that one of the possible solutions to the problem of including variability phenomena to the empirical basis of formal syntax is to use the methodology of experimental syntax.

Key words: agreement, variation, experimental syntax, Russian language.

For reference: Lyutikova E., Gerasimova A. Studying agreement variation in Russian: Problems and methodology. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 9–27.

This paper deals with the problem of feature identity in Russian noun phrases with coordinated modifiers. The data from various languages shows that ellipsis allows mismatch of some morphological features for the elided and the spelled-out constituents while other features must match. The studies of Russian noun phrases with coordinated modifiers propose ellipsis analysis but does not determine the constraints on feature identity for the elided and the spelled-out noun. In this paper, we analyze the identity of such noun features as number and case by conducting a corpus study and a self-paced acceptability experiment. The results demonstrate that the difference in number is unacceptable for conjuncts without numerals (singular vs. plural nouns) but acceptable with paucal and other numerals (numberless vs. plural nouns according to D. Pesetsky’s analysis). The noun number features mismatch in noun phrases without numeral, but number features in numeral phrases do not conflict. The coordination of a noun phrase without numeral and a numeral phrase is also unacceptable. While the nouns in both conjuncts are plural, the case is different (external case vs. genitive). Thus, the ellipsis in Russian noun phrases with coordinated modifiers requires the lack of number feature conflict and the case identity for the elided and the spelled-out nouns.

Key words: experimental syntax, coordination, ellipsis, Russian, syntax of noun phrases, syntax of numeral phrases, agreement.

For reference: Studenikina K. Towards the feature identity for ellipsis in Russian: Evidence from noun phrases with coordinated adjectives. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 28–52.

The article examines Russian predicative agreement with a coordinated subject containing personal pronouns. In cases when the conjuncts have different person features, the choice of person agreement is based on the person hierarchy; it is considered to be an almost universal mechanism. However, the corpus and experimental data presented in this article show that the person hierarchy is not strictly imposed in Russian. We consider the two types of coordinated subjects, mismatched in person: 1) я и Х ‘I and X’ / Х и я ‘X and I’, where X is a masculine proper name, and 2) я и ты ‘I and you’ / ты и я ‘you and me’. Six experiments were conducted using 1–7 Likert scale. The experiments presented sentences with different word order (SV(О) / (О)VS) and conjuncts (I and X / X and I / I and you / you and I). In addition, we included the predicate characteristics as separate factors in the experiments – temporal characteristics, unaccusativity/unergativity. In all experiments, 1st person plural agreement (for non-past tense) and plural agreement (for past tense) were rated most acceptable. Sentences with such agreement are also the most frequent in the collected corpus material. With (O)VS word order, first conjunct agreement also becomes possible. In non-past tense, 3rd person plural agreement is also acknowledged, even in experiments, in which none of the conjuncts bears the 3rd person feature. Examples with such agreement have also been found in the corpus. The acceptability level of possible agreement strategies depends on such factors as word order, conjuncts order, and agreement characteristics of the predicate.

Key words: predicate agreement, coordinated subject, the Russian language, experimental syntax, corpus study.

For reference: Belova D. , Davidyuk T. Agreement with coordinated subjects containing a personal pronoun: Experimental data from Russian. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 53–88.

This paper presents the results of an experimental study addressing predictions of the ATB-analysis of predicative partial number agreement in Russian. In case of partial agreement in clauses with a coordinated subject, the predicate shows singular agreement with only one of the conjuncts. The alternative strategy, full agreement, involves plural agreement with the entire coordinated subject. According to one of the approaches to partial agreement, the ATB-analysis, partial agreement is impossible if the predicate is symmetrical or linearly follows the subject. We conducted an experimental study using acceptability judgement task (Likert scale 1–7), aiming to test these statements. The experimental design included three independent variables: 1. predicate type, 2. predicate position in relation to the subject, and 3. predicate number. According to the results of the experiment, the hypotheses of ATB-analysis were not confirmed: sentences with partial agreement of symmetrical and non-symmetrical predicates were rated equally acceptable; sentences with partial agreement in postposition were rated significantly more acceptable than ungrammatical fillers, but less acceptable than sentences with partial agreement in preposition. The results provide an argument against the ATB-analysis.

Key words: ATB-analysis, experimental syntax, partial agreement, Russian, symmetrical predicates, word order.

For reference: Pasko L. Against ATB-analysis of partial agreement in Russian: An experimental study. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 89–103.

There are two strategies of agreement with coordinate constructions in Russian: standard agreement, in which the predicate takes plural form, and partial agreement in which the predicate agrees with one of the conjuncts. Both subjects having the same gender and number characteristics is one of the factors that make partial agreement more plausible. We explore whether in this case the acceptability of partial agreement is increased due to the syncretism effect. To study this issue, an experimental study was conducted. Our main hypothesis stated that the acceptability of partial agreement will be higher for the stimuli with the conjuncts of the same gender. The Russian correlative conjunction i...i was chosen for the stimuli as its semantic features are similar to the typical ones of constructions with partial agreement. The design included two independent variables (number of predicate and combination of conjuncts’ genders). Likert scale 1–7 was used to measure acceptability. The results show that matching features of conjuncts influence the acceptability of partial agreement in Russian. Although matching features significantly increase the acceptability of partial agreement, this agreement strategy is possible in non-syncretic sentences as well, what makes the observed effect different from the cases of resolution by syncretism. The possibility of partial agreement with coordinate constructions compound of conjuncts of different gender may also be interpreted as an argument in favour of post-syntactic model of agreement.

Key words: coordination, correlative conjunction, experimental syntax, subject-verb agreement, partial agreement, syncretism.

For reference: Vrubel D. The role of syncretism in the predicate agreement with coordinate constructions with the Russian correlative conjunction i...i. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 101–116.

The paper examines the distribution of gender agreement patterns with common gender nouns and the factors influencing the choice of a particular agreement pattern in Russian. After conducting a series of sentence completion and acceptability judgement experiments, we argue that referential agreement is the most preferable agreement model. Mismatch with a male referent is unacceptable; for the female referent it is marginal and dependent on the type of construction, but the acceptability and sentence completion data come into conflict. Mixed agreement is unacceptable. I show that common gender nouns do not possess lexical gender, and mismatch occurs due to agreement with default masculine gender.

Key words: common gender nouns, mixed agreement, referential agreement, semantic agreement, gender agreement, Russian.

For reference: Danilova A. Gender agreement with common nouns. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 119–170.

The paper reports the results of a syntactic experiment which was aimed at comparing locality conditions imposed on two well-known long- distance syntactic processes: intra-clausal negative concord (licensing of negative pronouns by sentential negation) and wh-movement in matrix constituent questions (placement of interrogative pronouns at the beginning of the clause). Since only the latter non-local interaction nearly always results in overt displacement (while negative pronouns may remain in their base position upon agreeing with the Neg0 head), we hypothesized that sentences exemplifying negative concord should receive higher scores than sentences with wh-movement. Two structural configurations were investigated: the negative pronoun or the interrogative pronoun was (i) either (the head of) the direct object of the verb, (ii) or it was embedded inside a nominal (NP/DP). In addition to sentences with negative concord and wh-movement, our materials also included those without any such long-distance interactions. Thus, we asked 60 native speakers of Russian to judge such sentences (as well as some fillers) on a 7-point Likert scale. The results, somewhat surprisingly, did not bear out our expectations. Encapsulating the Goal of an Agree relationship inside a nominal does not lead to a significant change in mean scores (except for sentences with negative concord), while there is a statistically significant difference between sentences with negative concord on the one hand and other types of sentences (those containing wh-movement and those without any non-local dependencies) on the other. Such a stark contrast between negative concord and wh-movement casts doubt on approaches trying to assimilate them (and eventually aiming to reduce negative concord to Aʹ-movement of negative pronouns to their licensor).

Key words: generative syntax, Russian syntax, negative concord, wh-movement, noun phrase, determiner phrase, syntactic locality.

For reference: Baykov F. Non-local syntactic interactions across an NP/DP boundary: Negative concord and wh-movement. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 171–189.

Nikolai Cherginets, a Belarusian author of prose fiction, was recently honored as People’s Writer of Belarus (2022), thus becoming the first holder of this title whose books are written in Russian. The quantitative linguistic analysis reveals that Cherginets’ novels “Riskovannaya igra” (A risky game), “Russkaya krasavitsa” (A Russian beauty), “Poslednii geroi” (The last hero) significantly differ from his other oeuvres and from each other. Linguistic and narrative similarities, improbable to arise by chance, are found between these novels and the creative output of Andrei Voronin, a collective pen name. We argue that the three books, released under the name of Cherginets, were in fact authored chiefly by the creators of Andrei Voronin.

Key words: stylometry, authorship attribution, language of fiction, Nikolai Cherginets.

For reference: Kuzniatsou S. Nikolai Cherginets’ prose: A quantitative stylistic analysis and the problem of authorship. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 1. Pp. 9–30.

The article proposes an analysis of the functioning of the conjunction i (Russian ‘and’), borrowed from Russian into five Selkup dialects. The analysis allows us to see that the Selkup dialects differ in terms of how the functional adaptation of the borrowed unit (which is polysemous in the donor language) takes place. Several strategies for such functional adaptation have been identified, based on whether the functions of the borrowed element are identified with the functions of some “native” element of the recipient language, or whether the functions of the borrowed element are replicated from the donor language to the recipient language. This study allows us to investigate some mechanisms of assimilation of the grammatical system of the recipient language to the grammatical system of the donor language. The article also suggests which sociolinguistic characteristics of the contact situations may correspond to different strategies of functional adaptation.

Key words: language contacts, borrowing, Selkup dialects, Russian language, conjunction.

For reference: Urmanchieva A. Functional adaptation models loaned from the Russian conjunction i (‘and’) in Selkup dialects. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 1. Pp. 31–57.

The article considers modal verbs in German as elements of the language system, which can act in a literary text not only as actualizers of different types of modality, but also as means of linguistic expressiveness. In the text of H. Müller’s novel “The Swing of Breathing” (Herta Müller “Atemschaukel”), we find the necessary prerequisites for the realization of the expressive potential of modal verbs. The corpus of examples demonstrates that the concentration of modal meanings in rather small parts of the text, the contact arrangement of markers of non-deictic and deictic modality, their combinatorial combination, the juxtaposition of the meanings of necessity, possibility, desirability or undesirability intensify the expressiveness of the content. With the help of the variable use of modal verbs, the author figuratively represents the situation of violence and coercion, which constitute the dominant meanings of the narrative.

Key words: literary text, deictic (epistemic) modality, non-deictic (deontic) modality, accumulation of modal meanings, confrontation of modal meanings, semantic dominants of the narrative.

For reference: Shipova I. Modal verbs as a means of expression in a lite- rary text (based on the novel “Atemschaukel” (“The Swing of Breathing”) by H. Müller). Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 1. Pp. 58–76.

Due to the high and steady popularity of Chinese, a sufficient number of new techniques for studying Chinese characters are being developed today, many of which often represent updated versions of classical methods. We attempt to evaluate the ways of memorizing Chinese characters, to identify the difficulties faced by students. The article studies methods and techniques of memorizing Chinese characters used by students at a language university. We conducted a survey which revealed the techniques and methods of memorization that are used most frequently. When identifying the individual effectiveness of the use of techniques and methods by students, a discrepancy was found and analyzed between the use of certain methods and the assessment of students’ personal effectiveness. The authors also investigate the possibility of using a linguacultural approach to teaching Chinese hieroglyphic writing and predict the success of its application for the full assimilation of Chinese hieroglyphic writing and the acquisition of the cultural code of the country through hieroglyphs.

Key words: teaching Chinese characters, Chinese character, linguacultural approach, hieroglyphics.

For reference: Oreshkova N. Popularity and effectiveness of modern ways of memorizing Chinese characters. Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 1. Pp. 77–93.

The article deals with the problem of the development of communicative strategies for gender balance among trainee teachers. The article describes the study conducted to estimate the level of development of communicative strategies for gender balance of undergraduate and graduate students in Linguistics. According to the study, the most difficult aspects of the communicative strategies for gender balance are: the use of gender- neutral lexical units, the ability to recognize gender stereotypes in the English teachers’ speech, the use of gender-balanced forms of address and the ability to define the problem of lack of knowledge in the field of gender balance in English. The results of the study demonstrate that it is possible to integrate tasks aimed at developing communicative strategies for gender balance into the professional communicative training of English teachers.

Key words: gender balance, gender neutrality, communicatve strategies, professional communicative competence.

For reference: Shchedromirskaia A. Communicative strategies for gender balance as an aspect of professional communicative competence of an English language teacher.Rhema. Рема. 2023. No. 1. Pp. 94–113.

The paper presents the results of a comparative metrical analysis of Calderón de la Barca’s polymetric dramas “No hay cosa como callar” and “La vida es sueño” and their translations into Russian by Natalia Vanhanen. The dramas premiered on September 1, 2003 (“No hay cosa como callar”, Soprichastnost’ Theater, Moscow) and on October 16, 2021 (“La vida es sueño”, Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, Moscow). They appeared in-print at the end of 2021 when the Rudomino publishing house published a book containing both translations (Moscow, 2021). We examine the selection of meters in Vanhanen’s translations in the context of the history of Calderón’s translations into Russian and in comparison with previous experiments in rendering the polymetry of Spanish theater: verse translations by Sergey Kostarev (1861), Konstantin Balmont (1900–1919), Valentin Parnach (1949), Inna Tynianova (1961), and Mikhail Donskoy (1983). The present study shows how diverse the implementation of the equimetric principle can be when Russian translators work with the Romance syllabic verse.

Key words: Natalia Vanhanen, Calderón de la Barca, equimetric translation, poetic translation, polymetry.

For reference: Babushkin A., Polilova V. Calderón de la Barca’s dramatic polymetry in Natalia Vanhanen’s translations (“No hay cosa como callar” and “La vida es sueño”). Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 4. Pp. 9–31.

The paper describes NP conjunction in Ossetic (Iron dialect), which can be marked by the coordinating conjunction æmæ, the additive particle dær, the ablative-instrumental case marker -æj/-jæ, the comitative case marker -imæ and the comitative preposition æd. We show that æmæ and -imæ are the basic means for marking coordinating and comitative constructions, respectively. Along with the unmarked coordination strategy, there is an emphatic polysyndetic construction with the additive particle dær. This construction also competes with “ablative coordination” and (mainly in Digor Ossetic) with the construction with the preposition æd, which are used for exhaustive enumeration of objects (‘both old and young’; ‘both girls and boys’).

Key words: coordination, comitative, additive, ablative, instrumental, Ossetic.

For reference: Belyaev O., Khomchenkova I. Noun phrase conjunction in Ossetic. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 4. Pp. 32–54.

The study examines the relative frequency of complex nominal phrases with nominalisations in physics and humanities academic discourse subsets of the English language. Using corpus methodology, we demonstrate that, contrary to expectations, there is a 9% prevalence of NPs with nominalisations in the latter. The findings of the study allow to draw conclusions about the prevailing strategies for nominalisation usage in disciplinary academic discourse subsets (NPs as a means of technicality construing in physics discourse subset as opposed to NPs as a tool of rendering temporal, causal and instrumental relations in humanities discourse subset). The resulting functional model can be used as a framework of reference in EFL academic writing teaching and be of use to L2 scholars that would like to make their writing consistent with the tendencies of the particular academic discourse subset.

Key words: nominalisation, nominal phrase, disciplinary academic discourse, academic writing, corpus methodology.

For reference: Galeyeva A., Gumovskaya G. Disciplinary-specific grammatical patterns of nominal phrases with nominalisations. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 4. Pp. 55–80.

Corpus studies have long gained popularity among linguists. The obtained results are accurate, verifiable, and widely applicable. However, some corpora are noteworthy and yet remain unknown to a potential user. One of the examples is the Japanese language corpora which were developed by the National Institute of Japanese Language and Linguistics, and the purpose of this article is to fill this gap. The article focuses mainly on a comparison of the currently available corpora, their search options, and an assessment of the corpora’s representativeness. The article shows identified shortcomings in the data balance and the features of the search based on the ideas of the Japanese linguistics tradition. They must be taken into account when conducting a study based on the data of these corpora.

Key words: Japanese corpus linguistics, Japanese text corpora, the National Institute of Japanese Language and Linguistics.

For reference: Koretskaya I. Corpora of the National Institute of Japanese Language and Linguistics. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 4. Pp. 81–110.

The article focuses on a specific restriction on the use of Russian past passive forms with an auxiliary (byl postroen ‘was built’, byla svarena ‘was cooked’) in embedded clauses. These forms are known to differ from forms without an auxiliary (postroen ‘is/was built’, svarena ‘is/was cooked’) by the absence of resultative meaning component. However, it turns out that other restrictions exist: forms with byt’ in embedded clauses disfavor irreality and repeatedness contexts. I explain this saying that in general, forms with explicit byt’ are likely to be used when the situation has taken place in reality (this generalization also excludes repeated action contexts, because they do not refer to a specific realized situation). I make a preliminary conclusion that this generalization also manifests itself in independent clauses. No reality-based restrictions are valid for passive forms without auxiliary.

Key words: passive, auxiliary, resultative, reality/irreality, repeatedness, pluperfect, retrospective shift.

For reference: Letuchiy A. Specific restrictions on the use of byt’-passive in Russian: The reality restriction. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 4. Pp. 101–116.

This article describes the results of the author’s analysis of written works of English–speaking students (level A2–B1), the purpose of which was to identify, describe, systematize and classify grammatical errors caused by interlanguage interference when using Russian auxiliary parts of speech . The revealed errors in the use of Russian official parts of speech account for 21% of interlanguage interference errors and 13% of all grammatical interference errors. Among them, there are such types of errors as: omission, substitution, use of a preposition in an uncomplicated phrase (10% of all interlanguage grammatical errors); use of an inappropriate conjunction (7%); improper replacement of the conjunction with a particle (about 2%), use of an incorrect conjunction word (2%). A high percentage of errors in the use of service parts of speech indicates the complexity of these categories for English-speaking students and the need for targeted work to prevent and eliminate interlingual interference disorders. The materials of the article can be used to create special exercises and further study the problem of interference as a linguistic and methodological phenomenon.

Key words: interlanguage interference, grammatical errors, use of auxiliary parts of speech, Russian as a foreign language, mistakes of English speakers.

For reference: Barakhta A. Interlanguage interference in the use of Rus- sian auxiliary parts of speech by English speakers. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 4. Pp. 117–127.

The paper presents the study of the figure of the swallow in the ancient and modern Greek spring calendar folklore. The paper aims at exploring the structure of the Greek ritual texts, associated with the meeting of spring and the first swallow with regard to the methodology of the ethnolinguistic analysis by N.I. Tolstoy, as well as the analysis of the composition and motives in calendar songs proposed by T.A. Agapkina. Ritual elements have producing symbols (egg, ivy leaves) and transitional symbols (images of a swallow, sea, desert). The structure and the symbolism of the rite, as well as the ritual text, have been preserved from antiquity to the present day, which indicates diachronicity and continuity of the Greek culture. The presence of the figure of a swallow in the calendar folklore of other countries of the Balkan sprachbund (Balkan language area) may serve as an argument for a common Thracian substrate.

Key words: swallow, meeting of spring, spring rites, folk calendar, producing symbols, binary oppositions.

For reference: Yakhontova Ya.В. The figure of the swallow in Greek calen- dar folklore from antiquity to the present day. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 3. Pp. 9–26.

The research deals with the calculation of some typological characteristics of the evidential paradigm in modern Bulgarian following G. Gerdzhikov’s theoretical view on typological indices. Gerdzhikov’s indices rely on data taken from paradigms, contra to J. Greenberg’s approach, which is based on texts, that generally bear information about style, register, themes, etc. In the Bulgarian conclusive, renarrative and dubitative, variability in the microparadigm of negative posterior tenses is observed, which brings the comparison of five indices found in Gerdzhikov’s theory: degree of analyticity, degree of syntheticity, degree of composition, degree of markedness of a paradigm member and the discretization of the grammatical information of 14 evidential microparadigms in modern Bulgarian.

Key words: typological indices, dubitative, renarrative, conclusive, indicative, syntheticity, analyticity, markedness of a paradigm member, discretization of the grammatical information.

For reference: Aleksova Kr. Five typological indices of the verb paradigm in modern Bulgarian. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 3. Pp. 27–63.

The least studied function of the Bulgarian dative pronoun is that of the subject of opinion and appraisal. This function is realised primarily in the colloquial language and its written form – internet communication. The paper is focused on deadjectival verbs meaning “have a perceptively observable attribute denoted by the motivating adjective” (beleya ‘be/show white’, zhalteya ‘be/show yellow’, kiseleya ‘taste sour’, sladnya ‘taste sweet’), which may be used with a dative pronoun marking the subject of opinion (the subject of epistemic assessment, in particular) rather than the experiencer: Mlyakoto leko mi sladni. ‘The milk tastes somewhat sweet to me’. We also study the use of the dative pronoun with other verbs with the same word-formation structure (Glupee mi tozi vic. ‘This joke sounds (a bit) stupid to me’), as well as with predicates denoting interpretation.

Key words: dative, experiencer, subject of opinion, epistemic subject, predicates of perception, colour predicates, colloquial Bulgarian.

For reference: Ivanova E., Kustova G., Leseva S. The use of the dative pronoun with attribute-denoting verbs in Bulgarian. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 3. Pp. 64–87.

Bezhta (a language from the Tsezic branch of the Nakh-Daghestian family) is a language with limited serialization. We analyze Bezhta serial verbs together with other constructions like borrowed compound verbs and converbal constructions. Bezhta serial verbs are presented as a sequence of two verbs, one of which is used as a bare stem whereas the second one bears all the derivational marking; serial verbs describe a single event, and the components cannot be separately put under question or negated. Bezhta serial verbs are asymmentrical: both, the lexical verb and the serializing verb come from the closed class of verbs.

Key words: Bezhta, Tsezic languages, serialization, completive, causative, inchoative, complex verbs, perfective converb.

For reference: Khalilova Z.M. Serial verb constructions in Bezhta. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 3. Pp. 88–113.

The article analyzes how and to what degree the Russian-language phraseological competence of schoolchildren studying in the eighth grades of the Kyrgyz school is formed. We conducted an experimental study, which aimed to determine the knowledge, skills and abilities in the field of Russian phraseology of eighth graders of the Kyrgyz school. The results of the experiment showed a low level of Russian-speaking phraseological competence among the subjects. The identified difficulties are associated with the semantization of a phraseological unit isolated from the context. To improve the level of Russian-speaking phraseological competence of Kyrgyz students, phraseological exercises were prepared taking into account grammatical topics in the Russian language course for the eighth grades of the Kyrgyz school. The suggested system of exercises is focused on the formation and improvement of the skills of Kyrgyz eighth-graders in the use of phraseological units as a unit of speech in various types of communicative statements in Russian.

Key words: Russian as a foreign language, Russian phraseology, phraseological competence, Kyrgyz school, system of exercises, Russian culture.

For reference: Kovaleva A.V. Development of phraseological competence of eighth grade students Kyrgyz school. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 3. Pp. 114–127.

This article examines the textual history of M. Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Stories”. The first publications of each story are compared with the 1936 version in several aspects: aesthetic, stylistic, ideological and censorial. The aim of the article is to elucidate the evolution of the author’s aesthetic and ideological attitudes, to suggest the reasons for the revisions, and thus to deeper understand Zoshchenko’s text.

Key words: Mikhail Zoshchenko, “Sentimental Stories”, textology, textual history, censorship.

For reference: Bао T. Towards the textual history of Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Stories”. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 2. Pp. 9–20.

The article deals with some features of the acoustic representation of literary space (the space of nature, mortality, etc.) in Gennady Aygi’s poetry. The author focuses on the images of silence of nature, non-acoustic (metaphorical) singing as an actualization of space and an object in it in the context of divine images. The article analyzes scream and silence that define the mortality topos and the artistic expression of space through a synaesthetic metaphor that implements an acoustic image.

Key words: Gennady Aygi, literary space, acoustics of space, silence, singing, scream, synaesthetic metaphor.

For reference: Reinberg T.V. Acoustics of the artistic space of Gennady Aygi. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 2. Pp. 21–31.

The goal of the study is to define a set of formal parameters to classify Russian binominal clauses. Central to the investigation domain of binominal copular clauses is the opposition between specificational and predicational clauses. The opposition is supported by the differences in the referential status of nominal phrases, the constraints on syntactic movement and the differences in information structure. By contrast, the most elaborated classification of Russian binominative clauses is determined by the referential status of nominal phrases and the agreement pattern. However, this classification does not take into account any variability and fails to classify several types of sentences. This paper offers a comparative analysis of different approaches to Russian binominative clauses classification. We define formal criteria for distinguishing specificational and predicational clauses in Russian. In particular, we suggest to refrain from basing classification on agreement patterns and to focus on referential status of nominal phrases and its relation to the thematic-rhematic articulation instead.

Key words: binominative clauses, specificational copular clauses, agreement, Russian.

For reference: Gerasimova A.A. Towards the classification of Russian binominative clauses. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 2. Pp. 32–66.

The present paper discusses the syntactic statuses of the core arguments in the predicative possessive construction in Neo-Aramaic Urmi dialect. The study analyses a diachronic hypothesis which states that the possessee is an “old” subject which has grammaticalized as direct object, while the previously topical possessor is a “new” subject. The syntactic properties of both arguments are considered based on the eleven criteria for subjecthood proposed in (Keenan, 1976). According to the data obtained through elicitation in the village Urmia (Krasnodar krai, Russia), the conclusion is made that both the possessee and the possessor demonstrate the properties that are characteristic of prototypical subjects in the dialect under discussion.

Key words: grammaticalization, subjecthood, topicality, Neo-Aramaic dialects.

For reference: Logvinova N.N. The syntactic status of arguments in the construction of predicative possession in NENA Urmi dialect. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 2. Pp. 67–85.

The article identifies the conditions for the foreign-language audiovisual competence formation in the digital environment: organizational, technological, spatial, subjective and social. Foreign-language audiovisual competence is a person’s ability to perceive (and generate) foreign-language speech in a digital format, successfully decode and interpret audiovisual messages, as well as encode and compose meaningful visual communication. The new format of training experts in the 21st century requires developing this competence. As prof. T. Chernigovskaya metaphorically said, there is a need for a “key” for a recipient to receive information, a “code” to communicate with another person, and rich “visual experience”. The latter is developed during the lifetime and represents the ability of rapid judgment based on massive experience of perceiving visual and audio objects.

Key words: non-linguistic university, foreign-language audiovisual competence, foreign language teaching, digital educational environment, visual experience.

For reference: Efimova O.G. Visual experience as a condition for the formation of foreign-language audiovisual competence in the digital environment. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 2. Pp. 86–98.

The article is devoted to the relationship between language teacher’s emotional intelligence and his/her professional communicative listening skills, such as empathic listening within supportive listening. The article presents the results of trialing a task for pre-service language teachers aimed at the development of listening for recognition of emotions and analyzes its correlation with emotional intelligence. The study showed a moderate and statistically significant correlation of the task results with the overall score of the EQ test, which shows potential for integration of similar tasks into the professional communicative training of pre-service language teachers.

Key words: professional communicative competence, emotional intelligence, language teacher education, listening skills.

For reference: Korenev A.A., Mitrofanova A.A. Emotional intelligence in the training of foreign language teachers: Professional listening skills. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 2. Pp. 99–116.

Personal and literary relations between Vladislav Khodasevich and Boris Pasternak can hardly be reconstructed from a rather limited number of documents, statements and circumstantial evidence. At the same time, the topic is very interesting for the historian of literature, because reflects not only the confrontation between two contemporary poets, but also two completely different poetic systems. Literary chronicle (from the beginning of the next year it was published under the signature “Gulliver”), which Khodasevich led together with Nina Berberova for more than twelve years in the emigrant newspaper “Vozrozhdeniye”, sheds light on some aspects of the relationship between Khodasevich and Pasternak, especially in the 1930s, when we practically do not meet Khodasevich’s authorized statements about Pasternak.

Key words: Vladislav Khodasevich, Boris Pasternak, Nina Berberova, Russian émigré journalism, First Wave, newspaper “Vozrozhdenie”, Gulliver.

For reference: Zakryzhevskaya E.A. Pasternak as seen by V. Khodasevich and “Gulliver”. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 1. Pp. 9–32.

The article is devoted to the narrative poem “The Cossacks” by the Harbin poet Alexei Achair (Gryzov; b. 1896, Omsk – d. 1960, Novosibirsk), completed by the author at the end of 1927. It was published twice in 1929 in hard-to-reach publications for today’s reader: in two issues of the collection “Free Siberia” (Prague) and in the newspaper “Russian Word” (Harbin). The forgotten poem deserves attention as a case of early imitation of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems, primarily “The Pied Piper”, and also as a detailed essay reflecting the regional mentality of the “Sturm-und-Drang” period of the “Young Churaevka” circle. In addition, this is the largest in volume and the most significant work of Achair, and the only poem published during his lifetime. Achair reproduced the characteristic techniques of Tsvetaeva’s “grand form” poetics and tried to put them at the service of the propaganda of Siberian regionalism. Along with Tsvetaeva, whose poetics determined the structure of Achair’s text, the echoes of Soviet poetry (Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Selvinsky) are also heard, which makes the overall impression of the poem mosaic.

Key words: Alexey Achair, Marina Tsvetaeva, Russian literature in emigration, literary influences, narrative poem, Russian China, Harbin.

For reference: Loshchilov I.E., Poltoratsky I.S. On Alexei Achair’s narrative poem “The Cossacks”. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 1. Pp. 33–56.

The paper is dedicated to the investigation of kinship terms system in Kannada from the point of view of semantic typology. The theory of semantic shifts developed by Anna A. Zalizniak is the theoretical basis of the work. While analysing the semantic changes in kinship terms, we can trace both frequent and rare semantic shifts, for example, frequent shift mother → main and rather rare shifts green → child, mother → smallpox. We suggest the classification of semantic shifts in kinship terms in Kannada on the basis of shift direction and the semantic domains involved. The types of shifts are as follows: Kinship terms (KT) and general designations of sex and age; KT and animals, plants; KT and objects; KT and meanings describing status in a hierarchy; KT and qualities, properties; KT and the name of a disease; KT and abstract concepts; KT and terms of address; KT and interjections; KT and action names; KT and other kinship terms. The cases of grammaticalization (as in father → suffix added to personal names) are also considered.

Key words: semantics, kinship terms, semantic typology, semantic shift, Dravidian languages, Kannada.

For reference: Smirnitskaya A.A. Kinship terms in Kannada: Semantic shifts and the ways of meaning change. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 1. Pp. 57–85.

This article considers terms “methodology”, “method”, “approach, “technology” and “technique” in thei linguodidactic meaning. The definitions given by a number of scientists (E.I. Passov, L.V. Moskovkin, T.I. Kapitonova, A.N. Shchukin, I.L. Bim and others) are compared in this article and is offered a general understading of the terms mentioned above. Authors of this article set the relation between those concepts by uniting the element of L2-teaching in one system. This article might be interesting for scientists and methodologists in the area of linguadidctics.

Key words: methods of teaching L2, didactics, linguodidactics, Russian as a foreign language, RFL.

For reference: Mozelova I.V., Mikova S.S. The concepts of “methodology”, “method”, “technology”, “approach” and “technique” in linguodidactics. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 1. Pp. 86–108.

The article is devoted to the development of communicative tasks on Russian speech etiquette for foreign students who possess Russian language competence at B1–B2 level. Acquiring etiquette formulas of the Russian language foreign students successfully realize their communicative intentions in different situations; this fact determines the demand for a communicative approach in teaching Russian as a foreign language. Practical approach in education, real life situations contribute to the intensification of the learning process: stable motivation, lack of communication barrier, mastering main types of speech activity, expansion of the vocabulary of etiquette formulas, enrichment of knowledge about the country of the target language, mastering the skills of national communicative behavior.

Key words: Russian as a foreign language, national communicative behavior, communicative approach in teaching, Russian speech etiquette.

For reference: Mosova D.V., Dmitrenko N.P., Kolchina O.N. Communication tasks in Russian speech etiquette classes for international students. Rhema. Рема. 2022. No. 1. Pp. 109–121.

The distribution of adverbial adjuncts in Late Archaic Chinese (LAC) demonstrates similarities and differences with that in modern Mandarin. Aspecto-temporal, comitative, epistemic, evaluative, iterative, reciprocal, sequential, subject-oriented and temporal adverbials in LAC are restricted to preverbal positions; duration and frequency adverbials in LAC are attested in both preverbal and postverbal positions. Nevertheless, degree, instrumental, locative and source adverbials only appear preverbally. By means of scrutinising the clausal positioning of preverbal adverbial adjuncts and their relative sequence with subject, negation and modal verbs, I propound a hierarchy of adverbials and medial elements in the left periphery and sentence-internal domain.

Key words: Late Archaic Chinese, adverbial adjuncts, distribution, hierarchy.

For reference: Wang Aiqing. Adverbial adjuncts in Late Archaic Chinese. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 4. Pp. 9–37.

In colloquial Russian answers yes and no to negative polar questions can either stand for confirmation or contradiction of the proposition of a question. This paper uses the results of an acceptability judgment experiment to investigate the correlation between the choice of yes or no answer and the way of expressing negation and the presence of li particle in a question and also of comprehension of the short yes answer. The results showed that there are several competing strategies for answering negative polar questions and acceptability judgments of possible answers in Russian. Importantly, for questions with li particle most of the participants used a different strategy than for other types of questions. Before the present paper, the patterns of choice between yes- and no-answers to negative questions had not been experimentally researched. In the future, it seems interesting to conduct similar studies with other languages, as well as to compare the results in different age groups.

Key words: experimental linguistics, experiment, acceptability judgment task, negation, polar questions, Russian.

For reference: Panchenko Yu. Yes and no answers to Russian negative polar questions. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 4. Pp. 38–68.

In this paper I discuss the licensing conditions and semantics of negative pronouns (nikto, ničego, etc.) in Russian. On the basis of constituent order, movement constraints and scope, I argue that they are licensed above negation. By virtue of this ni-pronouns outscope negation and should be non-negative universal quantifiers for which there is independent evidence, partially discussed in this paper. Licensing above negation can be formalized using standard Agree without further stipulations: аn uninterpretable feature of ni-pronouns agrees with a c-commanded interpretable feature of negation. I suppose that the present theory applies to other languages with strict negative concord.

Key words: negative concord, NCI, negative pronouns, negative polarity items, NPI, negation, agreement, Russian.

For reference: Rossyaykin P. Russian negative pronouns are licensed above negation. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 4. Pp. 69–118.

This study examines the process of selection professionally-oriented vocabulary for pre-service English language teachers. Some methodological solutions concerning the word list compilation including such aspects as underlying principles, materials and methods are discussed. The article aims to provide a broader view on the professionally-oriented vocabulary list, encompassing its primary goal, namely, the communicative one. A detailed comparison of several authoritative ELT glossaries (Cambridge University Press, British Council, NILE etc.) and athorough analysis of course books devoted to the notion of classroom English made it possible to single out the most frequent and topical vocabulary units in the relevant field. Thus, a two-part vocabulary list for pre-service English language teachers was introduced. The first part contains key ELT terms, abbreviations and ELT-related notions, whereas the second part of the list focuses on typical phrases that are used in situations that occur in the language classroom on a daily basis. Apart from the alphabetical order, vocabulary units are arranged thematically, according to their communicative purpose.

Key words: ltarget vocabulary selection, EFL terms, professional lexical competence, professional communicative competence, pre-service language teachers’ training.

For reference: Gushchina Yu. Selecting professionally-oriented vocabulary for pre-service English language teachers: The essential ELT word list. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 4. Pp. 119–140.

The article is devoted to the description of strategies for learning content differentiation in teaching language for specific purposes. The authors of the article substantiate the choice of an integrative approach as fundamental in the organisation of teaching language for specific purposes in high school. The article describes the classification of existing majors in high school, as well as identifies three levels of career-oriented learning content differentiation, correlated with strategies. The authors provide examples of the implementation of strategies of learning content differentiation at the level of type of the exercise, at the level of content of the exercise and at the level of type and content of the exercise. The results of the testing of the set of differentiated exercises prove the effectiveness of the strategies described in the article. In addition, the content of this article can be used to design alternative educational courses.

Key words: high school majors, teaching language for specific purposes, strategies for career-oriented learning content differentiation, learning content, integrative approach, career-oriented high school.

For reference: Perevertkina M., Zolotareva M. Strategies of content differentiation in teaching English for specific purposes in high school. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 4. Pp. 141–159.

The article discusses the genesis of Alexei Kruchenykh’s manner of writing. To achieve the goal, for the first time, a lexical comparison of the futurist poetic texts and Platon Lukashevich’s book “Charomutie, or sacred language of magicians, Magi and priests” (1846) was made. In the course of the research, borrowing archaic neologisms were found and their features (lexical meaning and origin) were characterized. As a result, the role of the archaic neologisms in the early Alexei Kruchenykh’s works was determined: the poet uses them for a stylization, as well as for visual accentuation of other words that express the content of poems. Thus, on the basis of Lukashevich’s idea of a primitive language and with the help of the words borrowed from “Charomutie...” the futurist forms his “future language”.

Key words: Russian avant-garde, futurism, neologism, amateur linguistics, poetic philology, Aleksej Kručenych, Alexei Kruchenykh, Platon Lukashevich.

For reference: Arzamastseva I., Katanaev N. Archaizing neologisms of Platon Lukashevich in the early works of Alexei Kruchenykh. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 3. Pp. 9–21.

In this article, we try to figure out the linear order rules for the functional words dӗlja and radi as represented in Old Russian texts from the 11th to the 13th century. These rules demonstrate that in certain contexts the syntactic behaviour of the elements in question does not comply with normal patterns for prepositions but is rather characteristic either of the so-called 2nd position clitic adpositions located within the nominal phrase they dominate (which is the most general case) or of the postpositions which follow the whole nominal phrase (which case is far less frequent).

Key words: Old Russian language, prepositions, postpositions, adpositions, clitics, linear order .

For reference: Sokolov E. Function words words dӗlja and radi in the Old Russian language: Prepositions, postpositions or something else? Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 3. Pp. 22–41.

The article explores one of the most popular approaches to language education in western applied linguistics – task-based language teaching (TBLT). In this context, a task is understood as a pragmatic assignment the accomplishment of which requires communicative efforts of the students. The article traces the history and development of the TBLT approach. The existing TBLT models and the main types of tasks are presented. The study highlights the key differences between TBLT and conventional language teaching. A large section of the work is devoted to the technology-mediated TBLT for online and blended environments. Issues related to its practical implementation as well as those requiring further research are discussed.

Key words: foreign language, English, communicative language teaching, language instruction, task, task-based language teaching and learning, language acquisition, digital technologies, blended learning, online classroom.

For reference: Bagrentsova N. Language teaching based on communicative tasks: evolution of the approach and its prospects. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 3. Pp. 42–63.

The article discusses one of the most important problems – the development of linguistic thinking, which is a meta-skill that allows students to successfully master the system and structure of the language. At the moment, the potentialities of occasionalisms in the process of improving logical- linguistic operations as a component of the linguistic abilities of primary school children are far from fully disclosed. The author focuses on the applied aspect of this problem. The article reflects the results of an experiment aimed at identifying the effectiveness of the use of word-formation occasionalisms in the development of linguistic thinking. Examples of tasks that contribute to the development of such components of linguistic thinking as the ability to draw simple analogies, the ability to highlight essential features, and the ability to classify are presented.

Key words: linguistic thinking, linguistic abilities, derivational occasionalisms, primary school, the ability to draw simple analogies, the ability to highlight essential features, ability to classify.

For reference: Kulakova N. The role of derivational occasionalism in the development of linguistic thinking junior school children. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 3. Pp. 64–81.

The article explores the latest tendencies in teaching English pronunciation described in recent research and CEFR, where the main goal of pronunciation acquisition for successful communication in the international context has shifted from “nativeness” to “intelligibility”. The analysis of the latest empirical studies has revealed EFL students’ persistent desire to approximate idealised native-speaker pronunciation despite their awareness of the new status of English as a Lingua Franca. The authors conducted their own quan- titative study by administering a questionnaire to 53 first-year English majors. The results have shown that the participants still see the native-like pronunciation as a goal regardless of the new international recommendations.

Key words: pronunciation, English as a Lingua Franca, phonetics, phonological competence, attitude research.

For reference: Liubimova A., Kolesnikova A. Pronunciation standard in the context of lingua franca: From changing requirements to changing attitudes. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 3. Pp. 82–97.

The article deals with the concept of “The Good Hero of Fairy Tales” in the Russian and Chinese language pictures of the world; identifies the distinctive features (what?) of the universal cultural concept. On the example of the five most common Russian and Chinese fairy tales, the names of the heroes and their origins are analyzed in a contrastive aspect. The study of the texts of fairy tales showed their deep difference: if in Russian fairy tales the positive hero usually bears one name and his image is archetypal, then Chinese fairy tales are distinguished by a variety of positive heroes. Reliance on contrastive research in the practice of teaching foreign languages, in particular, Russian as a foreign language, contributes to the improvement of the process of teaching a second language, helps the student to successfully build his communicative behavior in the context of a dialogue of cultures.

Key words: Russian fairy tale, Chinese fairy tale, fairy tale, positive hero, the origin of the hero, dialogue of cultures.

For reference: Odintsova I., Zhou Yujie. Positive heroes of Russian and Chinese fairy tales (contrastive aspect). Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 3. Pp. 98–108.

The paper presents the “field biography” of Aleksandr E. Kibrik – the outstanding Russian linguist, the founder of the national school of field linguistics. Kibrik’s 1967–2008 field studies of unwritten languages of Russia, most particularly of Daghestanian languages, including Archi, Khinalug, Godoberi, Bagwalal and Tsakhur, are outlined. Description and documentation of languages fundamentally differing from the Standard Average European in their structural characteristics fostered his pioneering research program in theoretical linguistics and linguistic typology, involving the thesis of cognitive motivation of the linguistic form as its fundamental pillar.

Key words: field linguistics, description and documentation of languages, East-Caucasian languages, linguistic typology, intragenetic typology, cognitive science.

For reference: Lyutikova E.A., Fedorova O.V. Aleksandr Kibrik’s scientific school: From language description and documentation towards linguistic typology and linguistic theory. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 2. Pp. 9–22.

Whereas the principles of morphological analysis and glossing are sufficiently standardized in modern linguistics, there are no generally accepted rules for organizing discourse transcript as such. In this paper we propose a standard of transcribing spoken discourse, to be used in a descriptive or documentary project on any language. A transcript must be divided into lines, corresponding to elementary discourse units. A transcript must include an annotation of words, truncated words, pauses, accents, pitch in accents, other prosodic phenomena, as well as punctuation marks conveying phase and other discourse-related meanings. A transcript must be faithful to original signal, register all of its significant elements and avoid artifacts and post-editing. Consistent transcription of discourse in a random language is a manageable task that can be achieved after minimal training.

Key words: descriptive linguistics, documentary linguistics, discourse transcription, elementary discourse unit, prosody, discourse accent, punctuation, pause, disfluency.

For reference: Kibrik A.A., Maisak T.A. Discourse transcription rules for descriptive and documentary studies. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 2. Pp. 23–45.

This paper discusses the graphic system of manuscripts by Konstantin Rychkov (ca. 1910) containing texts in several dialects of Evenki (Tungusic) with Russian translation. The letters г and һ arguably denote voiced velars or post-velars, stops and fricatives alike. The former is only used before front vowels, the latter otherwise. The letter һ is also found quite often in place of the velar nasal. Palatalization is denoted by three means: a dedicated diacritic after the consonant, an umlaut on the vowel, or the vowel і/ы alternation. Russian letters for hissing sibilants were substituted with Latin ones by Rychkov, which might reflect a different (“lisping”) pronounciation. A special diacritic under sibilants and б probably indicates semi-voicing.

Key words: Evenki language, graphic system, phonetics, velar, laryngeal, sibilants, palatalization, Handwritten Text Recognition.

For reference: Arkhipov A.V., Däbritz С.L. Reconstructing phonetics behind the graphic system of Evenki texts from the Rychkov archives. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 2. Pp. 46–64.

In the paper, we present new material to evaluate the theoretical assumptions and basic claims of the idea of “role languages” which was put forward in the linguistic typology about 1980 by William Foley, Robert Van Valin and Aleksandr E. Kibrik. Our point of special interest are the languages of the East and West Caucasian families, including the East Caucasian languages of Dagestan which Kibrik claimed to belong to the role type. Role languages are those in which the morphosyntactic marking of arguments are directly determined by semantic roles, with no intermediate level of grammatical relations like subject and object. It is shown that the characteristics of case marking of verbs’ arguments, lack of the passive voice, neutrality or role orientation of functional priority features do not correlate and most likely do not form any consistent “role type”.

Key words: East Caucasian languages, West Caucasian languages, role languages, grammatical relations, passive voice, ergativity.

For reference: Testelets Ya.G. The role languages of the North Caucasus: A.E. Kibrik’s idea after 40 years. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 2. Pp. 65–83.

The paper proposes a parametric analysis of grammatical asymmetries in Daghestanian languages. In this linguistic family, morphological ergativity is accompanied by non-consistent grammatical asymmentries exhibited by various syntactic operations. I demonstrate that this inconsistency can be accounted for under assumption that the internal structure of case-marked argumental nominals and hierarchical c-command relations are the two major parameters determining the applicability of grammatical operations.

Key words: ergativity, grammatical asymmetries, linguistic typology, Daghestanian languages.

For reference: Lyutikova E.A. Typology of ergativity and grammatical asymmetries in Daghestanian. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 2. Pp. 84–101.

The paper is a survey of all available descriptive data on a rare agreement pattern observed in East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) languages under which nominal dependents take different forms depending on whether their head is in the nominative case or any other case. I show that, depending on the language, “agreement in obliqueness” is attested in cardinal numerals, demonsratives, adjectives (and participles) and nominal possessors. In some form, it exists in Nakh, Tsezic and some Lezgic languages and in Khinalug; while it seems to be completely absent from the languages of the Avar-Andic and Dargwa branches and from Lak.

Key words: East Caucasian, agreement, nominal attributes, oblique.

For reference: Daniel M.A. Agreement in obliqueness in East Caucasian: A formal survey. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 2. Pp. 102–130.

Nakh-Daghestanian languages are famous for its rich and versatile agreement. Among the phenomena attracting linguists’ attention are absolutives as agreement controllers in the clause, agreement of non-finite forms, multiple agreement of participles and long-distance agreement. In addition to these known facts, many Nakh-Daghestanian languages have unusual agreement targets such as adverbs, postpositions, pronouns and even nouns agreeing with the absolutive of the clause. Usage and morphosyntactic properties of these targets have not been studied in any detail. This paper focuses on instances where these targets allow variation in the choice of controller and semantic and pragmatic effects of the choice. Thus, the agreeing adverbs can take the controller depending on their semantic scope and some agreeing demonstratives have a controller choice if they function as markers of information structure.

Key words: morphosyntax, agreement, agreement of adverbs, agreement of postpositions, Nakh-Daghestanian languages.

For reference: Chumakina M.E. Unusual behaviour of agreement markers in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 2. Pp. 131–148.

This article focuses on the morpho-syntactic structure of conflict-inducing phrases in Russian. These constructions are intended for the addressee or nonparticipant of the speech act, but also contain reference to the speaker, who effectively does not participate in the situation but is attached to it emotionally. The speaker’s attachment to the proposition is usually marked by the so-called Ethical Dative. In Russian, however, Genitive with preposition ‘u + Gen’ (‘at, by’ + Genitive, which is also used in possessive constructions rendering the meaning ‘to have / to be in the possession of’) can also be found in this position. This article seeks to articulate the difference in the meaning of both pronominal forms and identify the contexts in which they are used. The data suggest that there is a correlation between the case marking of the pronoun in the ’ethical’ position on the one hand and the verbal modality on the other. We argue that this correlation is governed by the underlying hierarchical structures.

Key words: case marking, ethical dative, genitive, verbal modality, linguistic hierarchies, conflict-inducing phrases, Russian.

For reference: Filimonova E.Yu. Ethical dative and prepositional genitive in conflict-inducing phrases in Russian. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 2. Pp. 149–170.

This article is devoted to the functioning of auxiliaries in Western Russian documents – Polotsk charts of the 14th–16th centuries. During this period, auxiliaries begin to actively compete with their full-stressed variants – personal pronouns, so special attention is paid to the distribution of constructions such as participle + pronoun and participle + auxiliary. It was found out that the model including both auxiliaries and pronouns was used in live speech and was one of the variants of the development of perfect forms in the West. In this paper, we also consider patterns where auxiliaries, being a complete synonym of pronouns, are used as a personal numeric mark for past verbal adverbs.

Key words: language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, auxiliaries, personal pronouns, clitics.

For reference: Doykina K. About constructions with auxiliaries in Polotsk charts of the 14th–16th centuries. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 1. Pp. 9–29.

In this article I discuss the actual methodological problem of distinguishing between performative, semi-performative and non-performative verbs in charms, associated with the performative nature of the ritual as a communicative act. I propose a hypothesis of the functioning in charm texts of verbs endowed with special ritual semantics, opposed to canonical performatives and non-performative verbs in charms. For convenience, the term “charm semi-performative” was adopted for these lexemes. The idea of semi-performativeness makes it possible to find the lexical, verbal core of charm performativity, not being limited to verbs with the semantics of speech action and at the same time remaining within the framework of linguistic analysis.

Key words: performative verbs, Russian charms, causative, intentionality, illocutionary goal, addressee.

For reference: Kulikovskaya Е. Semi-performative verbs in Russian charms: Criteria and definition. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 1. Pp. 30–55.

West Circassian displays two types of cilitive (facilitive ‘easy’ and difficilitive ‘difficult’) forms, namely nominal cilitives, which describe individuals, and secondary cilitives, which describe the state of affairs. Secondary cilitives seemingly originate from nominal cilitives, hence the same cilitive suffixes mark forms that are remarkably different from each other in their morphosyntax. While nominal cilitives eliminate the argument structure of their base, secondary cilitives show optional reduction of the argument structure which is arguably motivated by their semantics and not by any grammatical rule. We also suggest that the contrast between cilitive constructions describing individuals and those describing the state of affairs can be found in other languages as well.

Key words: West Circassian, cilitive constructions, facilitive constructions, difficilitive constructions, argument structure.

For reference: Lander Yu., Bagirokova I. Cilitives (‘easy’ and ‘difficult’) in West Circassian: Semantics, argument structure and part-of-speech characteristics. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 1. Pp. 56–75.

This paper deals with description and analysis of Mombo internally headed relative constructions. In contrast to the previous proposals for Dogon languages it is argued that the head of the relative moves out of relative clause to a position at its left and that a proper movement analysis requires process whereby the internal lower copy of the movement chain receives morphological features of the higher external copy.

Key words: tonosyntax, internally headed relative clause, rightward movement.

For reference: Prokhorov K. Mombo relative constructions. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 1. Pp. 76–98.

The article analyses linguodidactic potential of multimedia program AntConc in the context of development of the methodology of foreign receptive terminological competence formation of medical and pharmaceutical students, which is implemented by the presentation of English terms through Latin/Greek terminological elements that form them and by the possibility of making exercises in this program. The possibilities of using the resources of corpus linguistics in the theoretical and practical methods of ESL teaching at medical and pharmaceutical universities are described. The concordance program AntConc is proposed as a tool for making exercises and the medical-pharmaceutical corpora is suggested as a basis for making exercises and tasks for medical and pharmaceutical students.

Key words: linguodidactic potential of the concordance program, AntConc, terminological elements, foreign receptive terminological competence, digital tools.

For reference: Arutyunyan A. Linguodidactic potential of AntConc multimedia program. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 1. Pp. 99–110.

The article considers the prospects of adaptation of academic discourse to the needs of Russian tertiary students of the Humanities with the view of developing academic literacy in native language. The authors made an attempt to extrapolate the techniques of academic writing, i.e., note-taking, thesis-writing, paraphrasing, paragraphing, hedging, proof-reading etc. to Russian language research papers and to integrate them with the students’ major. The course implies acquiring research and professional competences as well as readiness to construct one’s own knowledge in mother tongue.

Key words: academic discourse, Russian tertiary students of the Humanities, academic literacy, the techniques of academic writing, students’ research papers.

For reference: Komochkina E., Selezneva T. Teaching of academic writing techniques to Russian-language students of the Humanities in native tongue. Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 1. Pp. 191–213.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has a recognised status by the European Union as one of the leading effective means to implementing international language policy of multilingualism. The attempts to implement it into mainstream educational programmes are actively undertaken in Russia. The paper aims to sum up the experience of Tomsk Polytechnic University in running CLIL-based courses. Through “real classroom” data the authors present the way CLIL is implemented and what obstacles it encounters. Based on observations, discussions and surveys conducted by the authors, the conclusion on CLIL methodology improvements applicable to certain settings is made.

Key words: CLIL, bilingual education, multi-purposed language learning, double-agent courses, Bloom’s taxonomy, cognitive load, BICS and CALP.

For reference: Sidorenko T., Kudryashova A. CLIL methodology evolution in Russian Technical University (Tomsk Polytechnic). Rhema. Рема. 2021. No. 1. Pp. 129–143.

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue of Rhema entitled “Literary Environment and Artistic Culture in the 20th century” and devoted to Russian and Ukrainian literary and artistic associations. The concept of “literary environment” developed by Boris Eikhenbaum is revived and expanded here: a follow-up concept of “literary and artistic environment” is introduced, describing the forms of selforganization of the community of “culture makers”. The dynamics of socio-cultural forms of production and consumption of art are interpreted as a catalyst for literary and artistic evolution.

Key words: B.M. Eikhenbaum, Yu.N. Tynianov, literary and artistic environment, literary and artistic associations.

For reference: Pilshchikov I., Ustinov A. Surface tension: History of culture and Boris Eikhenbaum’s concept of “Literary environment”. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 4. Pp. 9–22.

The article proposes a typology of literary associations in the Silver Age, based on three formal (functional) criteria: degree of socialization, degree of formalization and degree of officialization. The result is a tripartite typology of literary associations: salons, circles and societies. Additionally, the article discusses also adjacent forms of literary community describable with the application of the indicated typological criteria: literary banquets (dinners), writers jubilees, death anniversaries, and public funerals of writers.

Key words: literary associations, typology, salon, circle, society, literary community, the social-environmental aspect of literature, Silver Age.

For reference: Schruba M. Towards a typology of literary associations in prerevolutionary Russia. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 4. Pp. 23–48.

The essay is dedicated to the Centenary of the Petrograd House of Arts (“DISK”) and reconstructs 1920 in the biography of the outstanding artist and painter Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinskii (1875–1957), who assumed the leadership of the “DISK”’s Art Department. The first year in the history of this cultural organization was memorable with the scale of its literary and artistic endeavors, in spite of its complicated relations with the official authorities, and was crowned with the publication of the first issue of the magazine / almanac “House of Arts”. Here Dobuzhinskii acted as the chief designer, and his artistic work drew inspired responses from reviewers. However, his main contribution throughout 1920 was in creating and instituting cultural policy of the House of Arts – a unique organization even in comparison to numerous creative communities of post-revolutionary Petrograd.

Key words: Mstislav Dobuzhinskii, Maxim Gorky, Evgenii Zamiatin, Petrograd in 1920, House of Arts, House of Writers, literary and artistic communities, artistic milieu, literary environment.

For reference: Ustinov А. Lettering and pattern: Mstislav Dobuzhinsky at the Petrograd «House of Arts». Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 4. Pp. 49–134.

The article is focused on a comic poem by Ivan Sergeevich Rukavishnikov, dedicated to the dramatic pages of the “Palace of Arts” under his guidance and published for the first time here. The “Palace of Arts” is an early Soviet attempt at organizing a collective literary and artistic space. The commentary that frames the publication reconstructs a few episodes from the history of the “Palace of Arts” and provides biographical information about writers and artists closely associated with it.

Key words: “Palace of Arts”, literary environment, I.S. Rukavishnikov, S.F. Budantsev, A.V. Lunacharsky, V.Ya. Briusov, M.P. Malishevsky, S.P. Bobrov, S.S. Sheremetev, B.A. Pilniak, Ya.N. Mil’kin, A.I. Tiniakov, A.V. Minikh.

For reference: Sobolev A. Toward the history of the Moscow “Palace of Arts”. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 4. Pp. 135–162.

The article discusses Osip Mandelshtam’s participation in the work of the Moscow literary society “Literatuturnyi Osobniak” (“The Literary Mansion”). Previously unpublished documents from the archive of the poet Nikolai Zakharov-Mensky and a description of Mandelshtam’s poetry evening from the diary of the poet Taras Machtet are quoted and analyzed.

Key words: “Literaturnyi Osobniak” (“The Literary Mansion”), minutes from the meetings, Osip Mandelshtam, poet Nikolai Zakharov-Mensky, poet Taras Machtet’s diary, literary environment.

For reference: Vidgof L. Osip Mandelshtam and the Literary Society “Literatuturnyi Osobniak” (“The Literary Mansion”) (Based on archival documents). Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 4. Pp. 163–190.

The article provides a reconstruction of the history of the Ukrainian Constructivist group “Avant-garde” as well as on the artistic and theoretical practices of its founder, Valerian Polishchuk. Special attention is paid to the cultural and historical contexts of the development of the Ukrainian literary avant-garde in the 1910s and 1920s in its close connection to Russian avant-garde, in particular to Futurism and Constructivism. The article also deals with the phenomenon of the Ukrainian Russian-language proletarian literature. It is predominantly based on the archival documents, magazine articles and newspaper chronicles of the 1920s.

Key words: Ukrainian avant-garde, futurism, constructivism, Valerian Polishchuk, Vasilii Ermilov, Velemir Khlebnikov, Grigorii Petnikov, Mуkhail’ Semenko.

For reference: Babak G. Valerian Polishchuk and Ukrainian “Avant-garde” group in the 1920s. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 4. Pp. 191–213.

The article examines the formation process and activities of the so-called “Chertkov’s group”, one of the first informal post-war poetic associations in Moscow founded in the 1950s. Differences are discussed between the group itself and a wider circle of visitors to Galina Andreeva’s apartment, which was named “An attic with windows facing West”. The author traces the chain of events that led to the arrest of the leader of the group, Leonid Chertkov, by the KGB in January 1957. Several documents related to this arrest are published here for the first time. They help us to reveal the method of transferring Chertkov’s poems abroad: they were published in the émigré press in early 1958 as “poems by a Moscow student”. The addendum contains previously unpublished texts of the group members from various private and state archives.

Key words: Russian poetry of the 1950s, Chertkov’s group, Leonid Chertkov, Stanislav Krasovitskii, Galina Andreeva, Valentin Khromov, Andrei Sergeev, Nikolai Shatrov, political repressions in the Soviet Union, channels for transferring materials abroad.

For reference: Orlov V. “I will not ask for the jurors’ pity...”: How Leonid Chertkov was arrested. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 4. Pp. 214–258.

The paper presents a corpus-inspired analysis of lexico-grammatical changes of proverbs in American press and web communication as documented in two synchronous and historical corpora (namely COCA and COHA). Being a case study of two proverbs, Actions speak louder than words and Handsome is as handsome does, it reveals differing types of changes such as variants, derivatives based on modifications (mostly adnominal ones), and derivatives based on syntactic transformations. The tendency is noted for one of the proverbs to turn into a phraseoscheme X is as X does (including but not limited to the “Gumpism” Stupid is as stupid does).

Key words: phraseology, paremiology, lexico-grammatical changes of proverbs, proverbial derivatives, phraseoschemes.

For reference: Dronov P. Actions speak louder than words, Stupid is as stupid does: Lexico-grammatical changes of proverbs in American press and web communication. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 3. Pp. 9–21.

This article features the communicative behaviour of Tony Blair in his premier and post-premier years. It puts forward and corroborates the hypothesis that about two years after his landslide victory in the parliamentary election, Blair switched his strategy from that of an ardent reformer and a pacifist to a hawk, opportunist and conformist, and stuck to it to the end of his legislatures. The charges against Blair in 2016 on the nation’s involvement in the Iraqi military campaign in 2003 caused him to change his stylistic behaviour. Special emphasis is laid on how Blair had long exploited a series of communicative tactics with the intent to manipulate mass consciousness. These include epithets, syntactic repetitions and rhetorical questions; they become frequent in post-premier years. Blair’s selected discourses in 2003, when he was campaigning for Britain’s military involvement in Iraq, and in 2016, when he was trying to justify his actions in court, reveal deception markers, specifically a distribution of I / we pronouns in text, which point to Blair’s evasion strategy. A meaningful part of Blair’s manipulative strategy was to create and sustain several political myths, including ‘appeal for unity’, ‘creation of the Evil opposition’, and ‘appeal to democratic countries as a legitimate source of power’. These were drawn on ungrounded and unverifiable statements.

Key words: Tony Blair, communicative behaviour, communicative tactics, communicative strategy, mass consciousness manipulations, deception markers, political myth.

For reference: Mukhortov D., Dyment А. Traсking changes to the stylistic behaviour of Tony Blair as Prime Minister and former Prime Minister. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 3. Pp. 22–42.

The paper reviews speech behavior of Russian-speaking children aged 10–12 years. There are relatively few studies on speech development of this age group, nevertheless, in our work we attempt to identify some features of discursive and communicative skills built during this period. For this purpose, we used two corpora compiled of the dialogues of children and the dialogs of adults respectively. Namely, we paid attention to the duration of latency in the responses of the participants. A detailed analysis revealed that children need significantly more time to formulate a response than adults do in a similar situation.

Key words: dialogue, child speech, speech production, pauses.

For reference: Slabodkina T. Specific character of planning responses in dialogues of 10–12 years old native Russian speaking children. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 3. Pp. 43–52.

This article raises the question of necessity to develop interaction strategies for master’s degree students of non-linguistic faculties who study French as a foreign language. It also describes experiment of evaluating their interaction strategies skills. The article specifies which microskills are required to use interaction strategies at B1 level and outlines the features of communication in foreign language in mini-groups of 2–3 students.

Key words: interaction strategies, communicative strategies, peer interaction, second language acquisition.

For reference: Avramenko A., Matveeva O. Evaluating the level of interaction strategies of master’s degree students of non-philological specialties (French as a second foreign language). Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 3. Pp. 53–64.

The article dwells upon the possibility to assess quantitative evaluation of the level of articulatory skills. A formula is offered which allows to estimate individual indices R_phon. The index takes account of reading rapidity and correct pronunciation of letter combinations, as well as the placement of verbal accents in the course of reading a coherent text. The procedure includes reading aloud a standard text, and then a text, which contains a number of unfamiliar words (quasi-words). The validity of the proposed procedure is checked by testing about 100 subjects with varying levels of English language training, both on English and Russian material. Recommendations are given on the use of the procedure described. Index R_phon is claimed to be productive in dealing with some investigational items.

Key words: English language teaching, articulatory skills, quantitative evaluation, experiment.

For reference: Vasilevich A. On the possibility of measuring the level of articulatory skills in a foreign language. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 3. Pp. 65–83.

This article considers some distinctive features of accents peculiar for native speakers of Slavic languages in the domain of coronal obstruent pronunciation. This study is based on recordings of several informants whose native languages are from the Slavic group which were subsequently analysed. The analysis made it possible to report on the main common errors as well as some particularities in typical mispronouncing of Russian coronal obstruents by native speakers of several Slavic languages.

Key words: typology of accent, Russian consonants, Slavic languages, phonetic accent, phonetic interference.

For reference: Dashkevich D. Russian coronal obstruents: Pronunciations typical of speakers of other Slavic languages (Linguodidactic aspect). Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 3. Pp. 84–93.

The article deals with the phonostylistic and semantic features of acoustic images in the early realist stories of Alexander Grin. The conclusion is made about their important compositional role. Attention is focused on vocabulary with acoustic semantics, as well as onomatopoeia understood as the imitation of both the sound and its meaning. The functions of sound polyphony in the depicting of landscapes and emotional states and in the plot structure are discussed. The role of alliteration, the temporal characteristics of acoustic images, a combination of autologous and associative images, and variable functionality of remarks in dialogs are described. The prosodic features of the narrative are analyzed. The motifs of silence and music and their role in the semantic structure of Grin’s stories are noted.

Key words: acoustic and prosodic features of artistic text, onomatopoeia, sound imagery, music, silence, Andrei Belyi, W. Weidle, E. Zamiatin.

For reference: Solntseva N., Zhang Rui. The functions of the acoustic images in the early prose works of Alexander Grin. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 2. Pp. 9–17.

In this article, the author proposes a detailed reconstruction of the history of the Petrograd Union of Poets, which was established with an avid participation of both Alexander Blok and Nikolai Gumilev. The author focuses his attention on their literary and organizational activities within the framework of the Union of Poets, as well as on their professional relations that have now become a subject of several myths created by unreliable memoirs and supported by the poets’ credulous biographers. The article is based on archival materials, magazine reviews and newspaper chronicles from 1920–21. The author also uses Blok’s Notebooks, heavily censored in the Soviet times but now made available in autographs.

Key words: Petrograd Union of Poets, Alexander Blok, Nikolai Gumilev, Vladislav Khodasevich, history of Russian poetry, literary institutions, literary environment.

For reference: Ustinov А. Alexander Blok and Nikolai Gumilev in the Petrograd Union of Poets. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 2. Pp. 18–59.

This study is dedicated to the development of methods of computer-aided hyper-hyponymic verbal pairs extraction. The method’s foundation is that in a dictionary article the defined verb is commonly a hyponym and its definition is formulated through a hypernym in the infinitive. The first method extracted all infinitives having dependents. The second method also demanded an extracted infinitive to be the root of the syntax tree. The first method allowed the extraction of almost twice as many hypernyms; whereas the second method provided higher precision. The results were post-processed with word embeddings, which allowed an improved precision without a crucial drop in the number of extracted hypernyms.

Key words: semantics, verbal hyponymy, syntax models, word embeddings, RusVectōrēs.

For reference: Antropova O., Ogorodnikova E. Automated method of hyper-hyponymic verbal pairs extraction from dictionary definitions based on syntax analysis and word embeddings. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 2. Pp. 60–75.

The paper discusses ordering of attributive adjectives, which have differences in their derivational and inflectional morphology. A corpus-driven study is presented: the complex corpus, consisting of Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian texts from 11 to 17 centuries was used. Quantitative analysis shows the different ordering tendencies for attributive adjectives with different suffixes.

Key words: noun phrase structure, attributive adjectives, morphology, Russian, diachrony.

For reference: Kuryanova О. Morphology and linear order of attributive adjectives in the history of the Russian language. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 2. Pp. 76–91.

This paper describes the phenomenon of syntactic priming, that is, the speaker’s tendency to repeat the syntactic construction of an utterence used by himself or his interlocutor shortly before. The main theoretical concepts, experimental methodology, syntactic material, the so-called lexical boost effect, differences in results when using speech production or comprehension methods are considered, as well as the main theoretical models of syntactic priming. Experiments with bilinguals are described in detail. The results of the study of Russian possessive constructions are presented.

Key words: implicit memory, priming, syntactic priming, experiment, lexical boost effect, bilingua, Russian.

For reference: Fedorova O. Syntactic priming in experimental linguistics. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 2. Pp. 92–120.

Verbal images are immanent for fiction texts. Many features of verbal images are difficult to understand for foreigners. The paper considers grammatical structure of verbal images as a source of a possible perceptive failure. Strategies for foreign students to overcome difficulties in understanding lexical, grammatical and imagery structure of the text are described. Experimental data on the perception of “grammar” of verbal images by foreign students is provided. Activities for developing skills in comprehension ‘grammar’ of verbal images for intermediate students are suggested. Verbal images of the poem “Birch” by S.A. Esenin are analyzed as an example.

Key words: language education, intercultural communication, teaching Russian as a foreign language, fiction and poetry, Russian literature, verbal images, grammar, the seasons.

For reference: Eremina E. “Grammar” of verbal image in Russian literature in teaching foreigners. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 2. Pp. 121–135.

This paper deals with the two sets of polarity sensitive items in Russian: ni- and -nibud’ pronouns. Non-specific indefinite -nibud’ pronouns (NSIs) are possible only in propositions that do not ensure truth, i.e. non-veridical contexts. Although clause-mate negation creates such a context, NSIs are incompatible with it and are substituted by negative ni- pronouns that are licensed only by negative concord. The incompatibility of NSIs with negation can be resolved in subjunctive sentences and embedded purpose čtoby-clauses, however, the licensing conditions in these cases are not defined. In this paper I introduce another context which licenses both types of pronouns, namely, negated process nominalizations. I determine the licensing conditions for the two types of pronouns in nominalization, and test previous approaches against the new data. In particular, I argue that -nibud’ pronouns are licensed in the scope of the nonveridical operator that is introduced in the main clause.

Key words: negative pronouns, non-specific indefinite pronouns, negative polarity items (NPI), nominalization, Russian.

For reference: Gerasimova A. When ni- and -nibud’ are logically equivalent: Evidence from Russian nominalizations. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 1. Pp. 9–23.

This paper is dedicated to creating a restrictive account for syntactic phases under some crucial assumptions of the last years such as Reverse Agree and Universal DP. To achieve that, Bošković’s position on Phase Impenetrability Constraint, which entails that it does not affect Agree, is checked against Russian data reinterpreted under Universal DP.

Key words: phases, syntax, Russian language, Minimalism.

For reference: Zelenskii D. Universal DP and Bošković phases. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 1. Pp. 24–35.

This paper analyses a fragment of the morphophonological grammar of Russian, namely the so-called e ~ ’о alternation, within a Lexical Phonology-style stratal model. The aim is to demonstrate that the rule shows a range of properties usually associated with stem-level phonology. Thus, on the one hand, Russian data provides further support for a stratal model of morphophonology, and on the other hand stratal models appear to be a productive approach to Russian morphophonological alternations that explicitly links morphophonology with both phonological patterns and the morphological and semantic structure of Russian words.

Key words: phonology, morphophonology, Russian, stratal phonology, lexical rules, rule ordering.

For reference: Iosad P.V. Stratal phonology and Russian morphophonology. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 1. Pp. 36–55.

Previously, čto-clause complements of nouns were found to be more acceptable in constructions with collocations as opposed to non-collocations, which was taken to support the hypothesis whereby čto-clauses are introduced by a silent preposition licensed by incorporation into a complex predicate (created in collocational constructions). The paper presents the results of an acceptability rating study testing the prediction of this account, namely, that embedding the noun in a coordinate structure should block the incorporation and hence licensing of čto-clauses. In addition, an alternative hypothesis is examined according to which čto-clauses are more acceptable in collocations due to their higher frequency.

Key words: Russian, experimental syntax, noun complement clauses, collocation, coordination, frequency.

For reference: Knyazev M. The effect of coordinate structure on the licensing of čto-clauses in noun complement constructions: An experimental study. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 1. Pp. 56–69.

In the article, I describe cases of special behavior of Russian phrases with quantifiers like neskol’ko ‘some’, mnogo ‘many, much’ and small numerals like dva ‘two’. I show that they can occur in the subject position in contexts that usually do not contain a canonical DP/NP subject (constructions with the verb xvatat’ ‘be enough’, negation contexts with the verb byt’ ‘be’ and its habitual / iterative correlate byvat’), and for neskol’ko-like quantifiers, the direct object position with intransitive predicates like na-...-sja circumfixed verbs is also available. The reason of non-canonical subject behavior is the possibility to be subjects without controlling plural verbal agreement, while the non-canonical direct object behavior is possible because neskol’ko-like quantifiers lack the category of case..

Key words: quantifiers, numerals, case-marking, direct object, subject, genitive of negation, agreement.

For reference: Letuchiy A. Russian constructions with numerals and quantifiers: Their non-standard use in the subject and object position. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 1. Pp. 70–89.

The paper shows that a single aspect operator successfully generates the interpretations of Russian perfective and imperfective forms, if the following requirements are met. First, the default aspect operator has to be based on the notion of state change. Secondly, the output of the operator is filtered by semantic and morphological blocking constraints.

Key words: verbal aspect, default operator, event realization, state change, contextual interpretation.

For reference: Mueller-Reichau O. Default aspect based on state change. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 1. Pp. 90–105.

This paper seeks to investigate some properties of oblique control in Russian. It is demonstrated that oblique control is a subtype of obligatory control, but has some peculiar properties of its own, distinguishing it from object control: Floating quantifiers in oblique control structures necessarily surface in dative case, and the controller DP cannot take narrow scope limited to the embedded clause only.

Key words: Russian syntax, control, oblique control.

For reference: Baykov F. Oblique control in Russian. Rhema. Рема. 2020. No. 1. Pp. 106–125.

The article discusses the results obtained with the help of a computer program created for the automatic analysis of strophic syntax. The program was created using Boris Tomashevsky’s method, which is based on the analysis of punctuation at the end of the poetic lines (the strength of the syntactic pause is evaluated depending on the absence or presence of a punctuation sign: a comma, a dash, a semicolon or a full pause / question mark / exclamation mark). The application of this method to different types of poetic texts made it possible to describe general and unique trends, characterizing authors of different national traditions and periods. This result shows the necessity of a macrostudy that would include a larger number of strophic forms, texts and time periods.

Key words: ottava rima, terza rima, sonnet, strophic syntax, stanzaic syntax, poetics, verse study, strophic macrosyntax, digital humanities, quantitative methods.

For reference: Belousova A. Strophic macrosyntax: Ottava rima, terza rima, sonnet (Russia and Italy). Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 4. Pp. 9–24.

This article discusses one aspect of the poetics of Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”. The originality of the poetics of the zoomorphic detail in this novel is revealed. The article discusses the most frequent bestial elements pertaining to the characters of Sholokhov’s novel. It has been established that the zoomorphic imagery of the novel demonstrates the dynamics from zoomorphic associations and metaphors to zoomorphic constant details.

Key words: zoomorphic detail, zoomorphism, zoomorphic images, “And Quiet Flows the Don”, M.A. Sholokhov.

For reference: Kuksa P. “Zoomorphic” details in the structure of the characters in Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 4. Pp. 21–33.

Based on an empirical verification of L1–L2 contrastive analysis results, the author designed a methodology and a numeric scale for assessing consonant errors typical of Russian native speakers speaking German. The paper describes how the scale can be used for detecting and ranging main discrepancies between Russian and German consonant systems resulting from different phonological status of phonetic palatalization, aspiration and semi-voicedness.

Key words: contrastive analysis, phonetiс L1-interference, second language acquisition, German phonetics, Russian phonetics, palatalization of consonants, aspirated consonants, semi-voiced consonants

For reference: Blok E. Planning and customization of introductory L2 phonetic courses on the basis of a numeric scale for assessing non-native speaker mistakes. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 4. Pp. 34–52.

The article discusses one of the methods of onomastic reconstruction, which allows to restore the region’s early toponymy from the names of medieval mountains, villages and wastelands, as well as to determine the localization of lost toponyms based on the analysis of derived names. Some of these toponyms undergo a “three-step” transtoponimization: first they are stored in the name of the settlement or hillfort (Olpeevskoe selishche / Olpeevsky settlement, Perevitskoe gorodishche / Perevitsky hillfort), then in the name of the village, in a compound with the participation of a special term (derevnyа Olpeevskoe Selishche / village of Olpeevsky Settlement), and further in the name of the wasteland («pustosh’, chto byla derevnya Knyazhnoe Selishche» / «the wasteland that was the village of Knyazhnoe Settlement»). The article explores the Ryazan toponymy.

Key words: Onomastic reconstruction, Old Russian toponymy, wastelands, ancient settlements, hillforts, Russian toponymic traditions, the land of Ryazan, Ryazan toponymy, onomastic research techniques.

For reference: Gordova Ju. Onomastic reconstruction: Restoration and location of ancient toponymy according to the names of wastelands, hillforts, ancient settlements (Ryazan region). Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 4. Pp. 53–69.

TIn this paper I analyze how sanctions against Russia are framed in Russian newspapers in the first period after the Ukrainian crisis. The analysis is based on data from the Newspaper subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus, which contains newspaper articles published from February to August 2014. Through concordance analysis of the word sankcii ‘sanctions’, we analyze the representation, also metaphorical, of sanctions in Russian media discourse.

Key words: sanctions, Russian, media discourse, concordances, metaphor.

For reference: Pinelli E. Sanctions against Russia: Presentation of the first period of the sanctioning process in Russian media. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 4. Pp. 70–85.

The article considers some stylistic aspects of the Russian and English language systems based on A Dictionary of The English Language… by Samuel Johnson, and A Dictionary of The Russian Academy (‘Slovar Academii Rossiyskoy’), 18th c., that laid a foundation of the British and Russian national lexicography. A comparison of major literary sources of the dictionaries and approaches applied in these lexicographic traditions reveals significant differences between the styles of the two language systems, which has an impact on the national mentalities, ways of perception of a mother tongue and а foreign language, as well as methods of teaching the two languages.

Key words: style of the language, language system, A Dictionary of the English Language by S. Johnson, A Dictionary of The Russian Academy (‘Slovar Academii Rossiyskoi’), literary sources of the dictionary, lexicographic approaches, etymology, loan words.

For reference: Hazanova O. Style of the language systems as reflected in A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson (1755) and A Dictionary of the Russian Academy (‘Slovar’ Akademii Rossiyskoy’, 1789–1794). Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 4. Pp. 86–107.

In this paper, I argue that “depth of analysis” does not deserve the prestige that it is sometimes given in general linguistics. While language description should certainly be as detailed as possible, general linguistics must rely on worldwide comparison of languages, and this cannot be based on language-particular analyses. Rigorous quantitative comparison requires uniform measurement, and this implies abstracting away from many language-particular peculiarities. I will illustrate this on the basis of ergative patterns, starting out from I.A. Mel’čuk’s (1981) proposal for Lezgian. This proposal was not successful, but why not? And why is Baker’s (2015) theory of dependent case likewise unsuccessful? By contrast, quantitative worldwide research has found striking similarities of ergative coding patterns, which can be explained by the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding. I will argue that this success is due to a more cautious approach to understanding Human Language, which does not rely on the Mendeleyevian vision for grammar (that all grammars are made from the same innate building blocks).

Key words: syntactic analysis, ergative construction, language typology, grammar blueprint.

For reference: Haspelmath M. Ergativity and depth of analysis. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 4. Pp. 108–130.

The article examines the functional role of the “other’s” word in Andrei Bely’s prose of the post-revolutionary period. Schubert’s vocal cycle Winterreise transforms significantly in the author’s autobiographical mythology. Both the motif of winter wandering and the imagery of the cycle (the wanderer, wandering, the raven), correlate with the typology of the initiation myth and structure the semantics of the narrative.

Key words: Andrei Bely, autobiographical myth, “Crisis of consciousness”, musical cycle, wandering, wanderer, Fr. Schubert, Winterreise, R. Steiner.

For reference: Glukhova E. Motifs and images of the vocal cycle of F. Schubert's «Winterreise» in the context of the autobiographical mythology of Andrei Bely. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 3. Pp. 9–24.

The article discusses the multilingual correspondence of the Prague Linguistic Circle in connection with the typology of scholarly associations, on the one hand, and “cultural polyglottism” of the Prague School, on the other. The author provides addenda to the academic edition Pražská škola v korespondenci: Dopisy z let 1924–1989 (Prague: Karolinum, 2014). Special attention is paid to Roman Jakobson’s Czechoslovak years.

Key words: Prague School, Prague Linguistic Circle, intellectual history, the social-environmental aspect of research, multilingualism and cultural polyglottism, Roman Jakobson.

For reference: Pilshchikov I.A. The Prague School at the “Crossroads of Cultures” (On multilingualism in the correspondence of the Prague Linguistic Circle). Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 3. Pp. 25–52.

In this paper, we analyse the intricate agreement pattern attested with inflected quantifiers, intensifiers and anaphors in Tatar. These nominals can trigger not only a default 3rd person agreement, but also the marked person agreement reflecting the features of their restrictor or binder. We propose that in these constructions, inflected quantifiers, intensifiers and anaphors bear the features the agreement reveals, and propose a mechanism allowing inflected quantifiers, intensifiers and anaphors to aquire the features of the restrictor or binder. We build on the idea that agreeing inflected quantifiers, intensifiers and anaphors contain a minimal pronoun equipped with a set of unvalued interpretable features, and that this feature set gets valued via feature sharing.

Key words: agreement, person, inflected quantifiers, intensifiers, anaphors, feature sharing, binding, Tatar.

For reference: Lyutikova E., Grashchenkov P. On the syntax of person agreement in Tatar. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 3. Pp. 53–73.

The paper focuses on the semantic properties of Classical Armenian periphrastic verbal forms consisting of a participle in -eal and an auxiliary verb em ‘to be’ in past tense; the data are from Armenian translation of four Gospels. The pluperfect in Classical Armenian may function as past perfect representing resultative, stative, and experiential uses. Likewise, irreal (both hypothetical and counterfactual) and antiresultative meanings (non-achieved or cancelled result) are well attested. Finally, standard relative-tense uses are also frequent. The most important discourse function of pluperfect forms is related to marking «out-of-sequence» events. Crosslinguistically, this inventory of functions is more or less standard, but some details require further analysis.

Key words: antiresultative, irrealis, relative tense, Classical Armenian, pluperfect, verbal periphrases.

For reference: Semionova X. The semantics of pluperfect forms in Classical Armenian Gospels. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 3. Pp. 74–100.

The article deals with Modern Greek phraseological units (PUs) containing biblionyms, which originate in the Hellenistic era and represent a special category, being the product of direct quoting of the texts of the Holy Scripture or being used with a reinterpreted meaning. The article presents the philological analysis and semantic classification of PUs with biblionyms, which leads to the conclusion that PUs with biblionyms contain elements of narrativeness and didactics, expressing the positive or negative emotional evaluation of reality, including people, events and a wide range of objects.

Key words: Greek language, Phraseology, Bible, phraseological world’s picture.

For reference: Tresorukova I. Biblionyms in the Greek phraseological picture of the world. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 3. Pp. 101–114.

The paper deals with the Slovenian comitative constructions that encode two human participants who fulfil the same semantic role and are involved in the same event. It analyses their formal and semantic characteristics. A special focus of our analysis is put on the role of the dual in these constructions. We examine the impact of the different parameters (pronouns, predicate form, gender and linear order) on the interpretation of the referents’ number in the comitative constructions.

Key words: Slovenian, comitative constructions, dual, personal pronoun.

For reference: Uhlik M., Žele A. Slovenian comitative constructions with dual personal pronouns. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 3. Pp. 115–132.

The article presents the innovative experience of professional training of teachers of Romanic languages (French and Italian) based on linguo-cultural approach. The stages of the development of linguoculturology are considered. A new approach to teaching foreign languages is proposed, which is implemented in modules of a linguo-culturological orientation and allows students to create professional and special competences through the prism of the national culture of Roman countries..

Key words: linguistic and cultural studies, cultural linguistics, linguistic and cultural approach, methods of teaching Romanic languages (French and Italian).

For reference: Grigoryeva E., Cherkashina E. Implementation of the linguistic and cultural approach to teaching Romanic languages in the system of master degree preparation. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 3. Pp. 133–147.

The article presents a model of researcher training of students in university-level language teacher education programmes. Based on the Russian Federal Educational Standard of Higher Education and the Educational Standard of Lomonosov Moscow State University, the authors of the article describe the main components of the language teacher’s research competences. The content of researcher training is outlined for the second, third and fourth year of the BA-programmes and the two years of the MA-programmes. The article also suggests research competences assessment procedures and tools. Combining the approaches of a classical and a pedagogical university, federal and university-developed standards, the article can serve as a foundation of researcher training programmes development, design of courses aimed at the development of the research competences and to develop specifications of researcher competences assessment for trainee language teachers on different levels of higher education.

Key words: researcher training, research competences, language teacher education, thesis, master’s dissertation.

For reference: Safonova V., Korenev A., Perevertkina M. Strategies of research competence development in language teacher education. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 3. Pp. 148–177.

The article focuses on the correlations between the changes in the Soviet education system under Khrushchev’s rule, the brothers Strugatsky’s pedagogical views, and some aspects of the plot-construction in their novels of the 1960s. Arguments are cited in favor of the influence of the USSR’s education policy on the Strugatskys and the gradual development of the escape motif in their work.

Key words: Strugatsky, boarding school, escape, Khrushchev, “Thaw”, upbringing system, science-fiction..

For reference: Kuznetsov A. The views of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky on the education of the generations: The motive of the escape of children in the novels of 1960-ies. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 2. Pp. 9–18.

The article describes a problem of the reception of the shape of Leo Tolstoy by the French writer E.-M. de Vogüé (1848–1910), whose book “Russian Novel” (“Le roman russe”) (1886) never fully been translated into the Russian language, the influence of “neomisticism” and his interpretation of cultural situation in Europe at the end of the 19th century on the interpretation of the personality and creativity of the great Russian writer, revealed the ambiguity and contradictoriness of the assessment, which gives Vogüé to Tolstoy’s worldview.

Key words: reception, “Catholic revival”, positivism, naturalism, translations, “mysticism”, E.-M. de Vogüé, Lev Tolstoy .

For reference: Trykov V. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy in the book “Russian novel” by E.-M. de Vogüé. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 2. Pp. 19–27.

The article analyzes the implementation of the diagnostic strategy of television medical drama discourse in Russian and American linguoculture on the material of the series “Practice” and “Grey's Anatomy” as the most striking examples of this type of discourse. The study highlights the phenomenon of medicalization and the genre of the television medical drama, introduces the concept of the medical drama television discourse and discusses it de nitional properties, as well as the ways of achievement of compliance at the diagnostic stage in Russian and American medical drama television discourse.

Key words: television medical drama discourse, medical discourse, diagnostic strategy, medicalization, compliance.

For reference: Kerer K. Diagnostic strategy of Russian and American television medical drama discourse. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 2. Pp. 28–47.

This article seeks to introduce bull and bear communicative strategies in the US election discourse. The coinage is derived from the popular images of bull and bear in the economic terms ‘bull market’ and ‘bear market’. The bull strategy focuses on positive self-presentation, while the bear strategy is aimed at negative other-presentation. Research into US presidential debates shows that most frequent communicative strategies aim either to create and reinforce the politician’s positive image or to discredit his or her opponent and ruin their chances to win. Which of the strategies stands to be more efficient is yet a matter of argument; however it is vividly shown that these strategies provide the perfect breeding ground for discursive confrontation.

Key words: communicative strategies, bull and bear strategies, US election discourse, US presidential debates, discursive confrontation.

For reference: Mukhortov D., Zhovner E. The Bull and Bear Communicative Strategies in the US presidential campaign rhetoric. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 2. Pp. 48–60.

Differential object marking / dom is the term for the phenomenon of distinguishing two classes of direct objects, one bearing a special marker, while the other lacking it. In modern linguistics, the marker licensing is partially or fully attributed to the features of a direct object: Animacy/Inanimacy and referential status. Russian didactic literature generally contains a reduced explanatory model of Spanish dom, based on the grammar of the Royal Spanish Academy. For Catalan, the explanatory model is complicated by the usus/norm split, the latter reducing the phenomenon’s scope. The paper focuses on the improvement of dom explanatory models for Spanish and Catalan.

Key words: differential object marking, differential argument marking, Spanish language, Catalan language, language didactics, Iberian Roman linguistics.

For reference: Pakhmutova N. Differential object marking in Ibero-Romance languages: Explanatory models in domestic and Russian educational literature. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 2. Pp. 61–76.

The paper outlines the unprecedentedly rich system of simple (one-word), double and triple reflexive pronouns in the Khwarshi language of the East Caucasian (or Nakh-Dagestanian) language family. The pronouns are formed on the base of a pronominal stem, sometimes with the intensifier particle. The reflexive pronouns show little difference in their distribution: they are all local and apparently lack orientation motivated by syntactic asymmetries.

Key words: East Caucasian languages, reflexive pronouns, anaphors, reflexivity, binding domain, subject orientation, typology of anaphora.

For reference: Testelets Ya.G. A language for Guinness World Records: Fifteen (or more?) reflexive pronouns in Khwarshi. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 2. Pp. 77–99.

This article discusses the possibilities of using linguistic information in CAPT-systems. Information about the user's native language allows to partially predict the pronunciation errors that he or she will make in the target language. This data can be used in phonetic simulators to improve error localization at the level of phonemes. In the first part of the article we summarize the results of two experiments in which we conducted an acoustic contrastive analysis of the Russian and German vowel subsystems and predicted three pronunciation error types that Russian speakers are most likely to make in their German speech. The second part of the article discusses the possibilities of correcting typical pronunciation errors by means of special exercises.

Key words: contrastive analysis, second-language acquisition, CAPT-systems, Russian, German.

For reference: Cherepanova O., Linguistic support of CAPT-systems: Prediction of pronunciation errors and creation of exercises. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 2. Pp. 100–117.

This article looks at the process of assessing L2 student writing and providing written corrective feedback as a part of language teachers’ professional and communicative competences. The author suggests a model of designing a special training module for pre-service teachers aimed at the development of corresponding professional reading and writing skills, as well as the analysis of the results of its approbation.

Key words: teachers’ feedback, assessment for learning, language teachers’ professional training, professional communicative competence, English for Specific Purposes.

For reference: Ershova T. A model of developing language teachers’ professional communicative skills of providing written teacher feedback. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 2. Pp. 118–135.

The article deals with realization of metaphor, which is regarded as a mechanism of constructing fantastic images and plots. The realization destroys the typical conventionality of incompatible properties combination in a metaphor and turns a mental projection into a piece of the objective reality. The possibilities of this method in fantastic literature are exemplified by R. Bradbury’s short stories, where the realization of metaphors functions as an element of a linguistic game, as a mechanism of images construction, and as an original plot device.

Key words: realization of metaphor, metaphor, fantastic fiction, fantastic image, R. Bradbury.

For reference: Gridneva N. The literalization of metaphor in the artistic language of fiction (using the example of R. Bradbury's stories). Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 1. Pp. 9–19.

The paper offers the textual associative field reconstruction method using the “Dostoyevsky Language Dictionary” . The logic of modelling the textual associative field of spatial border is applied to the Dictionary’s data. The idioglosses described in the paper are included in the same symbolic paradigm so the more detailed symbolic meaning description is possible by comparing the contexts of their use. Besides, the comparison of “Dostoyevsky Language Dictionary” and “Russian Associative Dictionary” data allows finding some peculiarities of the words with the spatial border meaning functioning in Russian linguistic world-image.

Key words: Dostoyevsky language dictionary, textual associative field, idioglossa, associative links.

For reference: Konkina N. Associative text field of spatial limit (on the material of the “Dostoevsky Language Dictionary”). Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 1. Pp. 20–35.

The article examines the question of pagan evidences in the texts of Anglo-Saxon and Slavic spells. Spell as a genre of magical folklore has its own peculiarities, due to the syncretism of the pagan mind-set as a reflection of ancient people's perception of the ancient world by an ancient person that caused the emergence of spells in the culture of various ethnic groups. In the course of the development of this genre, the changes in the representation of the characters took place under the influence of Christianization, that was reflected in the texts of the spells.

Key words: magic folklore, spell, syncretism, Anglo-Saxon spells, Slavic spells, paganism, Christianity.

For reference: Prosyannikova O., Skorik K. Pagan characters in the Anglo-Saxon and Slavic texts of spell. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 1. Pp. 36–47.

The article discusses the phenomenon of the ineffability of semantic valencies of the verbs with the meaning of liquidation of a result (liquidatives). The author gives theoretical information about different types of the failure to express linguistically semantic valencies. In the article one Russian verb from the semantic group of liquidatives – the verb rasstegnut ’ (to unbutton) – is analysed. Regularly it is used as an example of a verb possessing an inexpressible valency. Basing on the analysis of semantic and syntactic features of this verb in different contexts the author differentiates two meanings of rasstegnut ’ and examines their government patterns. It has been found out that the liquidative rasstegnut’ in all its meanings does not have any inexpressible semantic valency.

Key words: valency, ineffability of semantic valencies, liquidatives, polysemy, government pattern, diathesis.

For reference: Mukhachyova I. Semantic valencies of the verb rasstegnut’ (to unbutton) and ineffability of semantic valencies. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 1. Pp. 48–64.

In the XXI century, developments in computer technology and changes in lifestyle concepts require new names. Abbreviation remains to be one of the productive models to coin new words. This study investigates several modern theories of word formation in relation to abbreviations, acronyms and alphabetism. The aim of this article is to investigate the formation of newly coined abbreviations registered by the Oxford English Dictionary in the period of 2000 – 2016 and to categorize the spheres of knowledge to which they belong.

Key words: neologisms, word-formation, abbreviations, acronyms, Oxford English Dictionary Online.

For reference: Polukhina P. Social and cultural concepts in abbreviations and acronyms of the English language of the XXI century. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 1. Pp. 65–78.

Research in conflict discourse specifics shows that one of the vital issues is the role of prosody in conflict communication. Since we regard prosody as a contextualization key, we find it relevant to focus on prosodic markers of open and hidden conflict. This article deals with the results of conflict political discourse acoustic analysis. The research corpus comprises samples of debates in the British Parliament viewed as conflict discourse. At computer-based stage of research we used Speech Analyzer application v. 3.0.1.

Key words: open/hidden conflict, opposition, prosodic contrasting, prosodic marker, terminal tone, tempo.

For reference: Seiranian M. Prosodic implementation of the open and hidden conflict in political discourse. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 1. Pp. 79–92.

The article deals with the methodical potential of the corpus in the field of the student research work organization. The paper presents the exercises that can be used in the practice of teaching Russian language, literature and other philological disciplines. The exercises are aimed at analyzing phenomena of polysemy, neologisms, colloquial speech, title of the works, literary imagery, intertextuality. Each exercise is accompanied by the search description and methodological commentary of the teacher's actions and student’s results. The source for most of the exercises was the Russian National Corpus. One of the exercises is based on the sound speech corpus “Funny Life Stories”.

Key words: Russian language teaching, literature teaching, corpus, Russian National Corpus, electronic educational resources.

For reference: Paramonova M,, Olkhovskaya A. Corpus in teaching Russian language and literature. Rhema. Рема. 2019. No. 1. Pp. 93–123.

The paper discusses major theoretical issues concerning the adjectival category in both intralinguistic and crosslinguistic aspects. The basic semantic oppositions in the system of property-denoting lexical items are revealed; grammatical categories characteristic for adjectives are identified, generalizations on the syntactic distribution of adjectives are drawn. Special attention is paid to the issue of the structural position of adjectives and adjectival phrases within nominals.

Key words: adjectives, syntactic category, semantic taxonomy, attributive position, predicative position, attributivization, comparative.

For reference: Grashchenkov P., Lyutikova E. Adjectives in typology and linguistic theory: Semantics, distribution, derivation. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 4. Pp. 9–33.

Separable adjectives represent a morphosyntactic subcategory of the part of speech of adjectives in Bambara (< Manding < Mande < Niger-Congo, Mali, West Africa). A separable adjective is a compound lexeme consisting of a noun root designating most often a body part, a qualitative verb root and a connector -la- ~ -lan- or -ma- ~ -man-. When used predicatively, the final component of a separable adjective (the qualitative verb root) is split from the rest of the form by the auxiliary word ka or man. Separable adjectives express mainly human qualities (moral or physical), and their semantics are very often idiomatic. The productivity of this subclass is limited.
In order to establish an inventory of the separable adjectives, two approaches have been followed: elicitation and a search in the Bambara Reference Corpus (which included roughly 4,110,000 words at the time of this study). The potentially imaginable number of lexemes of this type equals 570 (15 noun roots × 19 qualitative verb roots × 2 connectors). Elicitation provided 75 separable adjectives, and the corpus study, 25, 3 of which are absent from the elicitated list.
This experiment proves that in studies of derivative morphology, when a linguist needs to fill out a matrix, elicitation cannot simply be replaced by a corpus study. On the other hand, the corpus data provides invaluable supplementary data that cannot be obtained through elicitation.

Key words: elicitation, corpus study, adjective, qualitative verbs, Bambara, Mande languages.

For reference: Vydrin V. Where corpus methods hit their limits: The case of separable adjectives in Bambara. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 4. Pp. 34–49.

This paper addresses the issue of case variation in Russian paucal constructions. Previous studies claim that the choice of the case marking on the adjectival constituent depends on the syntactic category of the paucal construction. Using experimental data we show that the distribution of case marking strategies differs for paucal constructions in the quantificational position, where it does not receive structural case, and in the argumental position, where it receives case and agrees with the predicate. Although the experimental data support the hypothesis about the variable status of Russian noun phrase, it also shows the absence of the one-to-one correspondence between case marking and structural context: in particular, in quantificational positions both cases are acceptable.

Key words: case marking, agreement, adjectives, substantivized adjectives, paucal constructions, variation, linguistic experiment, Russian.

For reference: Gerasimova A., Lyutikova E. Agreeing and substantivized adjectives in Russian paucal constructions: An experimental study. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 4. Pp. 50–71.

The paper discusses ordering of different semantic classes of attributive adjectives and possible implications for the syntactic hierarchy based of the (non-)observed linearization. Two corpus-driven studies are presented: the first one considers Russian, the second one deals with the complex corpus, consisting of Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian texts from XI to XVII centuries. Although quantitative analysis shows the tendency towards ordering of attributive adjective, this tendency is not strong and regular enough. The paper concludes that attributive adjectives can be hardly viewed as representing syntactically ordered functional structure and soon argue in favor of attributive adjunction.

Key words: noun phrase structure, attributive adjectives, semantic classes, Russian, diachrony, syntactic typology.

For reference: Grashchenkov P., Kurianova O. The order of attributive adjectives in the history of Russian and the position of adjectives in the noun phrase. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 4. Pp. 72–108.

The paper presents a cross-linguistic investigation into specific characteristics of the expressions translated as ‘other’. We discuss the appearance of ‘other’ expressions at a periphery of nominal phrases or before nouns in right-branching languages, their occasional incompatibility with determiners and certain peculiarities in the expression of number. The features discussed suggest that ‘other’ expressions are in many respects similar to determiners, even though they should not necessarily be treated as such.

Key words: determiners, adjectives, word order, number.

For reference: Cheremisinova M., Lander Yu. ‘Other’: typological observations. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 4. Pp. 109–124.

This paper investigates the syntax and semantics of modifying/attributive adjectives in Russian, a language lacking articles but having complex patterns of case marking and agreement within a noun phrase. It has been claimed in the literature that due to its lack of articles, Russian has a completely different internal structure for noun phrases than in languages with articles. In this paper we argue against that claim and propose that there are six layers of functional structure within a noun phrase which modifying adjectives can occupy.

Key words: noun phrases, attributive adjectives, modification, case marking, agreement, semantics.

For reference: Pereltsvaig A., Kagan O. Adjectives in layers. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 4. Pp. 125–165.

In this paper I discuss attributive in Archi (Nakh-Daghestanian). Archi lacks an independent category of adjective and uses attributives instead. Attributives in Archi belong to a transpositional mixed category that can be formed from any of the four main parts of speech: nouns, verbs, ad verbs and postpositions. Based on a detailed analysis of their syntactic and morphological properties, I demonstrated that Archi attributives retain some of the morphosyntactic characteristics of their base category, whilst simultaneously having morphological and syntactic characteristics shared across transposed forms. At the same time, it can be shown that Archi attributives have a unique distribution and agreement pattern that is clearly distinct from any other lexical class. All these make Archi attributive simultaneously possess both morphological and syntactic characteristics of two syntactic categories.

Key words: Nakh-Daghestanian languages, Archi language, morphosyntaсtic features, mixed categories, adjective.

For reference: Chumakina M. Attributive in Archi. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 4. Pp. 166–189.

History of literary criticism of various nations of Russia in the 19th century is many-sided and is important both for further development of literature and for the process of mutual enrichment, addition of literatures and literary studies. A special place in this context belongs to the Kazan province which has always been characterized by ethnic diversity an multinational structure and to the University of Kazan which is the acknowledged center for studying traditional ways of life, folklore and literature of the Volga region. In the formation of literary criticism and the development of literature of the Volga region in general and Chuvash literature in particular, the activities of the Chuvash writers, actors, artists, composers (I. Yurkin, G. Timofeev, M. Akimov, K. Ivanov, N. Shubossinni, M. Trubina, F. Pavlov, P. Pazukhin, etc.) and researchers (A.A. Fuchs, V.A. Sboev, S.M. Mikhailov, P. Malkhov, I.Ya. Yakovlev, N.M. Ashmarin, etc.) are of special importance.

Key words: literature of the peoples of Russia, the Volga region, Chuvash literature, folklore, poetics, folk culture, tradition.

For reference: Abasheva D., Sigov V., Sharyafetdinov R. Formation and development of the Chuvash folklore studies and literary criticism of the 19th century Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 4. Pp. 190–203.

This small article is an addition to the commentaries included in the first volume of the two volume edition of rhymes and poems by Georgy Shengeli published in 2017. We show that the quatrain “Старый доктор в обветшалой тоге...” (“The old doctor in the decrepit toga...”) written in August 1943, which the compiler of the volume regards as unfinished, is in a fact a quite holistic extempore rhyme – the remake of a final strophe of Nikolay Gumilyov's rhyme “Bologna”. We bring forward the hypothesis that the first line of the Shengeli's quatrain contains an allusion to the first line of another Gumilyov's rhyme – “The spell” and we examine the connection between this quatrain and the rhyme “В шаге легком и упругом...” (“In the light and springy stride...”) written a month and a half later.

Key words: Georgy Shengeli's poetry, Nikolay Gumilyov's poetry, reminiscentia.

For reference: Itkin I.B. “The old doctor in a decrepit toga...”: оn an “unfinished” poem of Georgy Shengeli. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 3. Pp. 9–14.

In contrast to Tolstoy’s fiction, his epistolary has not been studied enough. This article deals with Lev Tolstoy’s correspondence with one of his permanent correspondents – a notable literary critic, philosopher and journalist Nikolai Strakhov. An exchange of letters between them, which lasted a quarter of a century, throws new light on many aspects of Tolstoy’s intellectual and creative activity. In this article, their correspondence is considered as an intellectual epistolary novel sui generis.

Key words: Lev Tolstoy, Nikolai Strakhov, Fedor Dostoevsky, epistolary writing.

For reference: Nikolaeva E.V. Correspondence of L.N. Tolstoy and N.N. Strakhov Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 3. Pp. 15–38.

The article is devoted to the particulars of the poetic genre of ruba‘i in literatures of the Volga region. The subject of an analysis are the poems of the Tatar poet R. Fayzullin, and the Chuvash poet V. Endip. Both authors combine the traditions of Eastern poetry and those of their national literatures and folklore. A similarity between the poetics of both authors is predetermined by their interest in the traditions of Arabic and Japanese poetry.

Key words: literatures of the Volga region, R. Faizullin, V. Endip, ruba‘i, traditions of Japanese poetry.

For reference: Sofronova I.V. Poetic features of the quatrains in the literature of the peoples of the Volga region. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 3. Pp. 39–48.

The paper considers the use of single participles and participial clauses in the corpus of oral stories in Evenki. Their use as head noun modifiers and as sentential complements are illustrated. The formal analysis for participial clauses in terms of generative grammar is proposed.

Key words: participle, syntax, modifier, relative clause, complement clause, formal analysis, Evenki.

For reference: Rudnitskaya E.L. Special features of participles in modern oral Evenki (based on the corpus of oral stories from 2005–2011). Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 3. Pp. 49–68.

This article investigates some functions of regional dialects in modern society. In the focus of this study is the description of features of the native speaker’s speech in official situations. The aim of the study is to describe some features of speech communication among native speakers in Swabia in official situations. The research has been carried out by the method of discourse analysis of directly observed texts. As a result of the study of some features of Swabian regional dialect implementation in official area new social functions of regional dialects have been discovered. They include expression of emotions, drawing attention and regulation of the communicative distance. The results of the study may be useful for sociolinguistics as a description of the territorial dialect functioning in the society.

Key words: dialect, functioning of dialects, the social-groups-dialects theory, sociofunctional model of a dialect.

For reference: Saharusov A.N. On functional characteristics of Swabian regional dialect in the official area. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 3. Pp. 69–87.

The paper explores semantic characteristics of verbal stems in Tundra Nenets that can take different stem-final vowels. I argue that the distribution of these vowels and interpretational effects they induce are best accounted for under an analysis that treats them as phonological signatures of different event structural configurations.

Key words: event structure, states, activities, accomplishments, Tundra Nenets.

For reference: Tatevosov S.G. Event-structural morphology in Tundra Nenets. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 3. Pp. 88–118.

This article is a review of a contrastive phonetic analysis of German and Russian tongue twisters. The aim of the survey was to examine in which way tongue twisters reflect peculiarities of a language sound system and whether it is efficient to turn to tongue twisters while improving foreign language pronunciation, e.g. to use them in computer-aided pronunciation training systems.

Key words: phonetics, German language, contrastive analysis, tongue twisters, pronunciation errors, second-language acquisition.

For reference: Cherepanova O.D. Contrastive phonetic analysis of Russian and German tongue twisters. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 3. Pp. 119–135.

The subject of the present article is overcoming phonetic interference. The main goal of the paper is to analyze and illustrate how the phonological systems of Russian and Northwest Caucasian languages distinguish, and then develop the strategy of lessening and avoiding mother tongue interference in pronunciation of Russian sounds. The paper examines approaches that help the teacher make the process of teaching and learning Russian as a second language (RSL) more productive and efficient for L2 students. This review focuses on using general language teaching methods and techniques based on innovations, such as visual means of learning that allow the elimination of interference on phonological level.

Key words: phonetic interference, contact language, second language (L2), accent, consonantism, vocalism, phonemic awareness, visualization.

For reference: Kazanskaya N.V. General problems of teaching phonetics of the Russian language to Northwest Caucasian students: Overcoming and eliminating phonetic interference in the bilingual education conditions. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 3. Pp. 136–151.

The article discusses a simile in Valerius Flaccus’ “Argonautica” (VIII, 27–31), which is connected with the myth of Endymion and the Moon. The author reveals lexical parallels and situational similarities with other texts, specifies the features that are common for the tenor and the vehicle of the simile, and establishes what is its tertium comparationis. The author also analyzes the verse lines (A. R. IV, 57–61; Verg. A. I, 498–504), which served as the literary sources for both the content and the form of the simile under discussion.

Key words: epic, Roman literature, Valerius Flaccus, “Argonautica”, similes in Roman literature.

For reference: Kotova A.V. On the sources of a simile in Valerius Flaccus’ “Argonautica” (VIII, 27–31). Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 2. Pp. 9–15.

The article systematically considers the proper names from the lyrical and lyric-epic works of the prominent Russian author Alexei K. Tolstoy (1817–1875). The functioning of the poetonyms is analyzed in respect to their paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects. As a result, the functional features of the poetonymosphere of the names used by Tolstoy are identified, as well as the role and significance of the poetonymosphere in his satirical, humorous, and medical poems, juvenilia, ballads, epic songs, parables, odes, fables, narrative poems, poetic billets, etc. The following important categories of poetic speech are revealed: the aesthetic function of words, the author’s individual semantic-stylistic system and the particulars of word usage, the meaning of the word in poetry.

Key words: A.K. Tolstoy, poetonymosphere, proper names in the poetic text, lyrical and liro-epic works, paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects.

For reference: Pronchenko S.M. Proper names in the poetic system of Count A.K. Tolstoy: paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 2. Pp. 16–38.

The article discusses the poetics of time in Ivan Turgenev’s short novel titled “Andrei Kolosov” and is focused on the temporal organization of the text and its connection with characterology. The author establishes the plot-forming role of the poetics of time and considers the concepts that are fundamental to the subject of research. The role of two time axes – “the time of the narrative” and “the time of the plot” – is highlighted. And also our objective is to explain the time gap, which is largely determined by the weak position of the narrator.

Key words: Turgenev, Andrei Kolosov, time, short novel, poetics, narrative, characterology in short novels of I.S. Turgenev.

For reference: Ternika A. The poetics of time in Turgenev’s «Andrei Kolosov». Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 2. Pp. 39–47.

The role of case in noun processing remains one of the unsolved issues in the visual word recognition literature. For instance, it is disputed whether different case forms have equal processing cost. The present work focuses on the processing of Russian nominal inflection. The goal is to assess how joint factors such as case, ambiguity and context affect visual recognition of nouns in the singular form. Here we explore the early stages of word identification using the progressive demasking task. Progressive demasking reveals comparable results to the lexical decision task, supporting the idea that case processing differences are general and not task-specific.

Key words: visual word recognition, morphological processing, progressive demasking task, Russian inflection, case, ambiguity.

For reference: Vasilyeva M.D. Progressive demasking task as a method to study visual word recognition: the case of inflected nouns. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 2. Pp. 48–61.

In this paper I analyze how time is framed in New Year Addresses by the Russian President V.V. Putin during his three terms in office. The analysis of key words (KWIC) such as prošloe ‘past’ and buduščee ‘future’, of past and future verb forms and of the contexts in which they occur make it possible to understand how the past and the future are conceptualized in discourse.

Key words: political discourse, frame, past, future, Russian.

For reference: Pinelli E. Presentation of the past and the future in New Year’s addresses: on the data of V. Putin’s speeches. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 2. Pp. 62–83.

Finite asyndetic complement clauses present an interesting phenomenon to the theoretical and typological works, considering that they allow a number of different interpretations: a parenthetical clause (Eto interesnyj, ya dumayu, vopros, lit. ‘This is an interesting, I think, question’), a complement clause (Ya-to, durak, dumal, segodnya vyhodnoj, lit. ‘I, as a fool, thought there is a holiday today’) or a direct speech construction (On dumal: «Kto zhe na menya napal?», ‘He was thinking: «Who assaulted me then?»’). The paper is devoted to the direct speech construction with the verb dumat’ ‘think’ in Russian. First, I show that the clause that conveys the matter of thought actually has all the properties of the direct speech constructions in Russian, see the list of the direct speech properties in works. Second, I argue that the direct speech construction with dumat’ (almost) does not show clause reduction, as it happens with the asyndetic constructions of supposition. Namely, the direct speech construction with dumat’ can have common nouns as subject of thought, the matrix clause can host adverbials, converbal clauses, epistemic expressions and main clause phenomena. All these properties are attested with both initial, medial and final clauses with dumat’ (i.e. irrespective of the linear position of the matrix clause to the dependent clause).

Key words: complementation, complement clauses, clausal arguments, asyndetic subordination, citation, direct speech, main clause phenomena.

For reference: Serdobolskaya N.V. Direct quotation construction with the verb dumat’ (‘think’) in Russian. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 2. Pp. 84–111.

The article looks at the notion of ‘feedback’ in education, psychology and linguistics. Giving a historical overview of feedback-related studies in Russia and abroad, the author focuses on the interpretation of this notion in psychology and linguistics, as well as the dual nature of its understanding in education. The article also defines the role of feedback in the assessment process, gives an extended typology of feedback and provides methodological recommendations on giving feedback.

Key words: teacher’s feedback, academic feedback, assessment for learning, motivation, pedagogical communication.

For reference: Korenev A.A. Feedback in learning, teaching and educational communication. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 2. Pp. 112–127.

This article discusses the poetics of colour writing in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “The Buried Giant”. The analysis shows that the novel is marked with the scarcity of colours and the colourlessness of descriptions, which is also typical for other works of this author. The basic “colouronyms” used by the author are grey, green and the one which is featured in the final episode of the novel – red. The fiery spots such as a sunset, a candle, fire or a fireplace are especially highlighted on the achromatic background. Moreover, the “chiaroscuro” techniques and the transitional time of day (dawn and sunset) play a significant role in the novel’s structure.

Key words: colorlessness in literature, monochromaticism in literature, colouronyms, the "cut-off" characteristic in the modern literature, images of a candle, images of a moon in the modern literature, images of a shadow in the modern literature, images of a light in the modern literature, Kazuo Ishiguro, "The Buried Giant".

For reference: Nesterenko Yu.S. The poetics of colour writing in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “The Buried giant”. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 1. Pp. 9–18.

The article considers the specifics of addressing the issue of correlating the truth of art and the truth of life in the works of Viktor Sosnora and Joseph Brodsky. It defines a set of significant intertextual links between “Extravaganza” and “Homage to Yalta”. It shows that the text “Homage to Yalta” is focused on “Extravaganza” in its multi-level art organization. A conclusion is made about the difference in the aesthetic positions of the two poets with these distinctions revealed.

Key words: Victor Sosnora, Joseph Brodsky, “Extravaganza”, “Homage to Yalta”, intertextuality.

For reference: Shuneyko А.А., Chibisova О.V. “Two voices conversing aloud” (Victor Sosnora and Joseph Brodsky). Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 1. Pp. 19–27.

The paper describes mechanisms generating Old English poetic discourse from the point of view of finite and non-finite clauses building the narration in the poem “Widsith” and constituting the poetic line. The two-member “telling” proper names are regarded as structural-semantic models generating finite/non-finite clauses as well as determining their succession in the text. Non-finite clauses are considered to be the primary stage of transformation of the noun into the narration while the finite clauses are viewed as its secondary stage. The significance of semantically “complete” and “non-complete” (link) verbs for the process of ‘unfolding’ the nouns into the narration as well as the role of epic “formulas” (based on the heroic epic motives and themes) and the dependence of finite clauses upon the semantic potential of the generating nouns are discussed.

Key words: finite and non-finite clauses, proper nouns, alliterative verse, Old English poetic discourse, epic narration, “Widsith”.

For reference: Gvozdetskaya N.Yu. Finite and non-finite clauses with proper nouns in Old English poetic discourse. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 1. Pp. 28–45.

The article is devoted to exploring the functional aspect of euphemistic utterance in the framework of English dialogue communication. In the focus are pragmatic and interactional properties of the mentioned predicative unit, realized in its structural variability. Some topicality of the research is connected with viewing the euphemistic utterance as a specific indirect speech act, used to establish a communicative strategy for achieving pragmatic intentions in actual verbal communication, namely a defense strategy, or a manipulation strategy.

Key words: euphemistic utterance, dialogue communication, indirect speech act, communicative strategy, a defense strategy, a manipulation strategy.

For reference: Kvaskova L.V. Euphemistic utterance as a factor of realizing a communicative strategy in English dialogue. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 1. Pp. 46–61.

For the Authorship Attribution (AA) task, some categories of character n-grams are more predictive than others, both under single- and cross-topic AA conditions. Taking into account the good performance of character n-grams, in this paper, we examine different features: various types of syllable n-grams as features (for single- and cross-topic AA in the English and Spanish languages). We show that the use of syllable n-grams is usually better than bag-of-words baseline and it overcomes the results obtained using character n-grams in one dataset of three (by 6%), on the other two corpora the difference in results is not favorable, but it is relatively small (2%).

Key words: computational linguistics, machine learning, authorship attribution, stylometry, feature selection, syllables.

For reference: Sidorov G.О. Automatic authorship attribution using syllables as classification features. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 1. Pp. 62–81.

The paper deals with the relationship between the Russian particle bylo and the information structure of the Russian clause. Not only the linear position of bylo within a given clause is semantically motivated, but the presence itself of the particle depends on whether its verbal scope is focalized. The phenomenon is related to the semantics of the particle and is discussed also in typological and diachronic contexts.

Key words: bylo, informational structure, focus, pluperfect, word order.

For reference: Sitchinava D.V. The Russian particle bylo: word order, semantics and information structure of a clause. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 1. Pp. 82–101.

The article researches the problem of compilation of linguacultural minimum (LcM) for foreign students-phylologists with an advanced level of Russian as a foreign language. The classification of cognitive units (lexical units including backgroud component of meaning) included in LcM on the basis of their relevance in language teaching, i.e. their ability to become units of learning, which consists of their cognitive and communicative relevance to the Russian national linguistic worldview. The criteria and experimental methods of selction of communicatively relevant units in Russian fairy tales based on their relevance to teaching are introduced and tested on the material of Russian fairy tales as a special type of precedent texts. The analysis is based on one specific type of reference to these precedent texts – Russian fairy tales onims, which are performing symbolic, expressive, and estimative functions. The article describes the phases of the survey on the common Russian fairy tale onims among Russian native speakers, with the aim to assess cognitive and communicative relevance of these units. Some examples of tasks based on such onims’ functioning in spoken and written languages are presented in the article. The results of the surveys are summarized in the list of cognitive units which should be included in LcM on the advanced level of study of Russian as a foreign language.

Key words: linguocultural competence, linguocultural minimum, bilingual personality, linguamethodical relevance, precedent text.

For reference: Ermakova M.A. Experimental potential of identification of communicatively significant units in Russian fairy tales. Rhema. Рема. 2018. No. 1. Pp. 102–115.

The paper aims at achieving two related goals: to offer summarizing remarks to the Second Formal Approaches to Russian Linguistics conference and to provide the current issue of Rhema with an introduction to formal description of Russian. After a brief overview of the history of formal linguistics in Russia and critical reflections on the state of the art, we present eight contributions that address various research topics in syntax, semantics and phonology of Russian.

Key words: formal linguistics, syntax, semantics, phonology, Russian.

For reference: Lyutikova E.A., Tatevosov S.G. Russian studies and formal linguistics. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 9–22.

The goal of the paper is to examine the intriguing behavior of the subjunctive mood in matrix and embedded clauses. Relying on recent studies on tense-features valuation, we will first discuss some well-known properties of this mood namely tense dependency, event and obviation effects. Then we will turn to crosslinguistic variation focusing on the way three groups of languages, namely Romance, Slavic and Balkan, codify subjunctive. Special attention will be paid to the selection of subjunctive in main clauses and to some discrepancies displayed by the languages under scrutiny.

Key words: subjunctive mood, tense-valuation, evaluation.

For reference: Ambar M., Dimitrova M., Amaral D. A crosslinguistic puzzle for Subjunctive. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 23–37.

This paper discusses palatalisation conditioned by morphological processes in Russian loanwords. In this lexical class, unlike in the native phonology, palatalisation of consonants preceding front vowels can be avoided. When loanwords undergo native-like inflectional or derivational processes, however, root-/stem-final consonants cannot remain non-palatalized. For this reason, this paper suggests that it is necessary to consider syllable structure in order to completely account for sound patterns in loanwords: it is important whether the nuclei originates from a foreign morpheme. In other words, syllable head also plays a key role in loanword phonology.

Key words: Russian linguistics, phonology, palatalisation, loanwords, Optimality Theory.

For reference: Watabe N. Morphologically conditioned palatalization in Russian loanwords. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 38–49.

This paper addresses the issue of gender mismatch in Russian. I discuss mixed agreement patterns in Russian nominal phrases and evaluate different approaches to their analysis. Using experimental data I estimate the current distribution of gender mismatch patterns for both attributive and predicate agreement. I compare recent data with statistical studies from mid-twentieth century and then discuss possible interpretations of the change in distribution of the patterns. In particular, I show that the phenomenon of gender mismatch in Russian correlates with the referential domain in the syntactic structure. New empirical evidence presented in the paper provides both synchronic and diachronic estimation of gender mismatch frequency in Russian.

Key words: gender mismatch, mixed agreement, noun phrase, DP, referential domain, Russian.

For reference: Gerasimova A.A. Gender mismatch in Russian: quantitative study. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 50–60.

The present paper investigates the degree item čut' in Russian, which can be tentatively translated as ‘slightly’ or ‘a bit’. Its properties are of interest because it can appear in a range of different domains. We show that it can be found in the AP, VP, AspP and NegP areas. We argue that in all these domains, čut' makes the same semantic contribution. Specifically, it applies to a predicate that has a degree argument as part of its semantics and contributes the entailment that this degree slightly exceeds the standard of comparison on the relevant scale. When combined with negated VPs, čut' applies to a likelihood scale, which results in a reading comparable to that of the counterfactual almost.

Key words: formal linguistics, semantics, scalarity, degree modification, čut', slightly.

For reference: Kagan O., Wolf L. Toward a uniform account of the degree modifier čut'. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 61–77.

This paper argues for a general DP-shell analysis of clausal complements in Russian. It is proposed that clausal complements are licensed by a null P in Caseless positions. The argument is based on an agentivity restriction on čto- and čtoby-clauses. Experimental evidence is presented that makes use of the factorial definition of the agentivity restriction. Two alternative accounts – in terms of a partial DP-shell and semantic coercion – are discussed. It is shown that the experimental results favor the null P account over the alternatives.

Key words: clausal complements, animacy restriction, null preposition, Case, experimental methods.

For reference: Knyazev M. A general DP-shell analysis of clausal complements: Experimental evidence from the agentivity restriction on Russian čto- and čtoby-сlauses. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 78–94.

Russian event nominals can be divided into three types depending on θ-roles of postnominal genitives. The aim of this paper is to try to provide principled explanation for a restriction on θ-roles of postnominal genitives in event nominal phrases as a syntactic problem. This kind of restriction is thought to result from argument structures of event nominals and these phenomena have been dealt with as a lexical problem. In this paper we propose different syntactic structures for three types of event nominals which can explain restrictions on θ-roles under the frameworks of Distributed Morphology and phase theory.

Key words: event nominal, genitive, θ-role, NP, DP, phase, Distributed Morphology, Russian.

For reference: Miyauchi T. Phase theory and θ-roles of postnominal genitives in Russian event nominal phrases. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 95–107.

Eventive nominalizations and gerunds in languages such as English are typically analyzed as verbal structures embedded under DP, but since many Slavic languages lack articles, the availability of the DP projection in those languages has been hotly disputed. Russian nominalizations have been used to mount arguments both in support of the presence of the DP and for the opposing view. As the debate about the structure of noun phrases in Russian is far from being settled, this paper re-examines whether either of the arguments for or against the DP based on nominalizations is valid.

Key words: noun phrases, nominalizations, events, DP, Russian, cross-linguistic typology.

For reference: Pereltsvaig A. Russian eventive nominalizations and universality of Determiner Phrase. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 108–122.

This paper discusses the syntax and semantics of the Russian coordinating conjunction/particle ni in the light of Mitrović’s theory of conjunction. The crucial observation is that ni, although unable to function as an additive particle (in contrast to the positive i), can occur embedded into each of the conjuncts provided that it occupies parallel positions in the conjuncts. I suggest that the lack of particle uses of ni is due to its need to check the [+NPI] feature, which can be done via the J(unction) head with the same feature. Assuming that ni is decomposable into ne ‘not’ + i, the parallelism requirement is explained if the post-syntactic lowering of ne (and possibly some preceding material, hence the embedded occurrences of ni) onto each of the conjuncts is stipulated.

Key words: coordination, negation, pied-piping, clitics, NPI, Phonological Form, Across-the-Board movement.

For reference: Tiskin D. Ni: Negative concord μ in Russian. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 4. Pp. 123–137.

The paper deals with the laws of a "happy society", which was described by A.P. Sumarokov in his utopia "Dream", written during the reign of Elizabeth. Elizabeth Petrovna is remembered as a "Gentle Empress", who imposed a moratorium on the death penalty. A.P. Sumarokov had different views on her "perfect legislation". He disputed the laws of "Gentle Elisavet" in his utopia and panegyrical writings.

Key words: ode, death penalty in the reign of Elizabeth, the Empress Elizabeth, moratorium on the death penalty, Sumarokov, utopia as a genre 18th century.

For reference: Rostovceva Ju.A. The death penalty in a «happy society»: the «gentle Elisavet» law and Sumarokov`s legalism. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 3. Pp. 9–20.

This article examines the structure of the image of Russian in the book of the French writer and diplomat Еugеne-Melchior de Vogüé (1848–1910) “Russian novel” (1886), the influence of the biographical method and the cultural-historical school on the construction of an image from Vogüé. It is proved that the filters of the representation of the "russianness" in the book was, on the one hand, “neomysticism” of Vogüé, formed in the framework of the “Catholic Renaissance” in France in the XIX–XX centuries, and on the other, “the French standard”, traditional French culture ideal of proportion and rationality. Defines the status of Vogüé in the French discourse about Russia as a writer, opposing the stereotypical notions of the Russian "barbarians", "slaves" and "Asians" complex image Russian, synthesizing both positive (mysticism, synthetism, kindness and humanity) and negative (tendency to extremes, despair, nihilism, lack of balance and rationality) features of the Russian character and worldview for the first time proposed to consider the Russian literature as a moral and aesthetic specimen, which should be oriented writers of the West. However, shown the limitations of historicism, Vogüé, his penchant for mythologizing of the “Russian soul”.

Key words: “russianess”, “Russian soul”, biographical method, cultural-historical school, “catholic revival”, “neomysticism”, “The Russian Novel” by E.-M. de Vogüé.

For reference: Trykov V.P. Constants of “russianness” and evolution of the Russian cultural consciousness in the Eugene-Melchior de Vogüé’s book “The Russian Novel”. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 3. Pp. 21–39.

The Russian language has undergone typologically rare changes in its subject reference marking pattern. Namely, if Old Russian employed verbal inflection for marking subject, modern Russian does it mostly by personal pronouns. During the history verb copulas which performed the referential function in Old Russian were completely lost. The reasons and details of such a transition are of great interest. At the moment, it is established that at the earliest stage pronoun expansion and copular loss have both occurred in nominal clauses, but until now it has not been investigated how exactly these two parallel processes interacted with each other and which of them triggered the initial shift. In this article, based on a new diachronic analysis of the monuments of the 11th–17th centuries (313 relevant clauses), we will try to answer these questions.

Key words: subject reference, personal pronoun, diachronic analysis, Old Russian language, Russian language, nominal clauses.

For reference: Budennaya E. Pronoun expansion in the history of Russian: nominal clauses. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 3. Pp. 40–64.

The paper discusses the preposition-based pattern of differential object marking in the south-western Macedonian dialects of Ohrid and Struga. The author hypothesizes that the explanation of this synchronic phenomenon should be based on pragmatic-semantic criteria. The results from the analysis indicate that the preposition na marks a direct object only if its definite and animate referent is ascribed an important communicative status in spoken discourse.

Key words: direct object, animacy, discourse prominence, Balkan languages.

For reference: Bužarovska E. The Contemporary Use of DOM in South-Western Macedonian Dialects Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 3. Pp. 65–87.

The accentual properties of the only accentuated text in Old Souletin, that is, the New Testament according to Matthew translated by Intxauspe, are analysed in this work. Two accentual classes of morphemes have been previously described in Souletin by Hualde: marked and unmarked. Following an examination of the accentual properties of the morphemes, a third accentual class of extrametrical morphemes is postulated in this paper. Another point analysed in the paper is the origin of accentual classes in Old Souletin, both marked and extrametrical morphemes being able to have different origins.

Key words: Basque, phonology, stress, marked morphemes, unmarked morphemes, extrametrical morphemes.

For reference: Zaika N.M. Accentuation of Nouns in Old Souletin Basque. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 3. Pp. 88–121.

In this paper, we analyze verbal working memory measures: Alpha Span and Speaking Span on material of Russian language. This research demonstrates significant correlation between different measures of working memory. Correlation analysis shows that methods of verbal working memory capacity assessment are reliable and can be used for analysis of relationships between working memroy capacity and verbal fluency.

Key words: psycholinguistics, working memory, Russian language, verbal fluency.

For reference: Potanina Yu.D. Comparative analysis of methods of measuring the volume of working memory for native speakers of Russian (psycholinguistic research) Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 3. Pp. 122–137.

The article considers the ambivalent image of a woman in the Victorian era on the material of the D. Mulock’s novel «Olivе». The author singles out and analyzes the accent of Victorian authors on the visual image of a woman, which is based on the binary opposition of infantility-maturity.

Key words: the Victorian era, infantilism, the image of a woman, Olivia Rothesay.

For reference: Krupenina M.I. The ambivalent image of the woman-performance in the D. Mulock’s novel «Olive». Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 2. Pp. 9–17.

The article analyzes imagery of Norwegian fairy tales and folk legends used in Norwegian modernist poetry in the context of the poem “Now the Fairy Tales Are Hidden”, written by Gunvor Hofmo. The introductory part includes a brief biographical information about the author. The analytical part reviews imagery and plots employed in the poem, analyzes their role. A certain attention is paid to the links between the Norwegian and Russian folklore. The author analyzes the philosophical message of the poem and literary devices employed in it. The article can be of interest for researchers of Norwegian literature and Russian poetic translation as a literary genre and translators.

Key words: poetry, Hofmo, modernism, word imagery, Norwegian folklore, Russian fairy-tales.

For reference: Panov A.M. Now the fairy tales lie hidden: imagery of Norwegian fairy tales and folk legends in the eponymous poem of Gunvor Hofmo. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 2. Pp. 18–26.

The article concerns the relevant issue of intertextuality, focusing on examples from videogames, as, despite being a phenomenon of modern mass culture, videogames have not yet been widely subjected to linguistic study. We examine the roles played by intertextual insertions from English phraseology and allusions to precedent texts – i.e. texts that are easily recognizable by speakers of the language – in the practical material of five fantasy role-playing videogames and three science fiction role-playing videogames. By studying and classifying the examples collected, we can reveal the linguistic study potential of videogames.

Key words: videogame, discourse, intertextuality, intertext, allusion, phraseological unit, precedent text, fantasy, science fiction.

For reference: Bogdanova K.V. English-language role-playing videogame discourse: the intertextual aspect. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 2. Pp. 27–40.

The paper reviews Bulgarian complex sentences containing the subordinate clause with the conjunction bez da relating to an unaccomplished action. Grammatical and semantic properties of this construction are analysed, which are conditioned by the presence of the negation marker and the modal particle da. The paper testifies to the influence that the cumulative action of the two nonfactuality markers exerts on verbal categories of the subordinate predicate. Russian translation correspondences are detailed, and an explanation is put forward for the case when Russian adverbial participles cannot serve as equivalent of those constructions.

Key words: conjunction bez da, subordinate clause of manner, negation, nonfactuality, interaction of grammatical categories, Bulgarian, Russian.

For reference: Ivanova E.Yu. The subordinate clause of unaccomplished action in Bulgarian and its Russian parallels. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 2. Pp. 41–69.

This article reviews topical approaches dealing with the problem of accuracy of neural machine translation. Classification of these approaches is provided in two groups: structural and linguistic. Moreover, the article sheds light on the most common problems of systems with neural machine translation. Effectiveness of the methods reviewed in this article is assessed based on BLEU metrics. Conclusions about the assessment of effectiveness of these methods are given in the closing part of the article.

Key words: machine translation, neural machine translation, neural networks, BLEU metrics.

For reference: Kalinin S.M. Review of current approaches to the improvement of accuracy of neural machine translation. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 2. Pp. 70–79.

The paper presents the study of adjectives and attributive constructions denoting personality traits in Avar language vs Russian and English in derivational aspect. In section 1, the adjective class properties in these three languages are discussed. Section 2 is devoted to the analysis of the word-formation patterns of the Avar personality trait adjectives in comparison with the other two languages. Section 3 presents the structural types of the Avar attributive constructions and phrasemes denoting personality traits. Section 4 summarizes the results of the analysis including approximate quantitative estimation of different derivational and constructional types of personality trait nominations in Avar as compared to Russian and English.

Key words: personality traits nomination, word formation, adjectives, attributive constructions, phrasemes, Avar, Russian, English.

For reference: Jarbilova P., Kobozeva I.M. Formation patterns of adjectival personality trait nominations in Avar against the background of Russian and English. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 2. Pp. 80–102.

The purpose of this article is to consider the use of theatrical anecdotes and actor's funny stories in the teaching of Russian as a foreign language for future actors and directors. Relevance and practical significance of the article is to reveal the didactic potential of the anecdote and actor's funny stories to further their use as teaching material in the lessons of Russian as a foreign language, inclusion this in textbooks and manuals.

Key words: Russian as a foreign language, the actor's funny story, the anecdote, the professional theatrical discourse.

For reference: Volkova M.I. Didactic potential of actors funny stories and anecdotes in the teaching of Russian as a foreign language for future actors and directors. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 2. Pp. 103–111.

On the basis of the materials that the author has gathered during the linguistic expeditions dialectal ossetian word moqo ‘pine’, that has its traces also in South Ossetian toponymy is described in this article for the first time. Questions of the origin and the correlation of this word with common ossetian term for ‘pine’ – næzy are considered here as well.

Key words: dialects of Ossetic, toponymy, etymology, ‘pine’, ‘fir-tree’.

For reference: Dzitstsoyti Ju.А. The Ossetian moqo ‘pine’ in the toponymy of South Ossetia. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 1. Pp. 9–21.

Weak grammatical violations, i.e. violations that result in intermediate unacceptability, pose challenges for a formal description of grammar since it remains undecided whether they are the result of a true grammatical constraint or merely an epiphenomenal consequence of processing complexity. Neither informal grammaticality judgements nor corpus data alone can reveal finegrained distinctions that may be inherent in a grammatical phenomenon. In this context, experimental syntax methods, which have gained in popularity in recent years (see [Schütze, Sprouse 2013]), can be helpful in providing evidence for subtle grammatical distinctions. In this paper I illustrate this thesis with a case study from the distribution of čto-clause complements in Russian focusing on the restriction on the complements of nouns, consisting in the sensitivity to the collocational vs. non-collocational nature of the context. Employing the methodology of the investigation of island effects in (Sprouse et. al), I provide experimental evidence for the grammatical status of the restriction on čto clauses, which cannot be firmly established on the basis of introspection or usage data.

Key words: Russian, complement clauses, experimental approach, acceptability judgments.

For reference: Knyazev M.Yu. Studying a weak grammatical violation with experimental syntax methods: the case of sentential complements of nouns with the complementizer čto. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 1. Pp. 22–40.

The article proposes an analysis of three semantic fields in Russian Sign Language: ‘thick’, ‘thin’ and ‘pointed’. These fields are covered in Russian Sign Language with a particular group of signs, namely, Size and Shape Specifiers (SASSes). The paper describes features of SASSes in other sign languages, known from previous research, and proposes an analysis of these signs in Russian Sign Language based on a detailed study of their contexts. Particularly, the article argues for distinguishing two types of components in these signs (specified and non-specified ones), discusses the semantics of non-manual markers and describes two morphological forms of SASSes.

Key words: Russian Sign Language, Size and Shape Specifiers, SASSes, sign language lexicon, nonmanual features.

For reference: Kyuseva M.V. Size and Shape Specifiers in Russian Sign Language. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 1. Pp. 41–60.

The article is dedicated to the desacralization of saints, which is reflected in the functioning of the hagioanthroponyms (i.e. the names of saints) in the Spanish folklore. The dualism in the views on the saints of the Spanish people, who sometimes place an emphasis on their human hypostasis, can be noticed in the usage of the hagioanthroponyms in the Spanish idioms, phraseological units, proverbs, folk poetry and also in the phenomenon of the creation of the imaginary hagioanthroponyms, based on a wordplay. Sometimes the names of saints are used for the creation of the humorous effect in the text. In the article we reveal the causes of such usage that are possibly due to the peculiarities of the Spanish language consciousness.

Key words: hagioanthroponym, proper name, saints, religion, desacralization, Catholicism, the Spanish language, linguistic consciousness, linguo-culture, folklore, popular hagiography.

For reference: Lavrentyeva A.S. The desacralization of saints as a result of the peculiarities of the functioning of the hagioanthroponyms in the Spanish folklore. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 1. Pp. 61–79.

The paper deals with the use of words that were replaced with expressive diminutives (such as a deva ‘maiden’, hor' ‘polecat’, etc.), marked with respect to original items. These lexemes developed different stylistic and expressive connotations after replacement. This results from the decrease in the frequency of the use of a word and its transformation to an irregular item. Moreover, just the lack of a suffix makes a word marked and this strategy is the most economical. The shiftsin connotations are divided into three types: «neutral → expressive», «neutral → formal», «neutral → stylistic archaism». The conclusion is that the words are semantically predisposed to a specific change of connotations..

Key words: connotations, shift in connotation, archaisms, replacements, diminutives, expressive, semantics, endearment, means of expression of irony.

For reference: Fufaeva I.V. Sosulja, deva, syroega. Shifts in connotations: a case study of Russian lexems, replaced by diminutives. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 1. Pp. 80–93.

The article presents a structural description of the technique used in teaching oral consecutive translation of untranslatable French lexical units in the situation of subordinative bilingualism. It embraces two stages. Each stage presupposes a set of communicative-culturological exercises, in which the degree of similarity of corresponding French, Russian, Belarusian and English lexical units is taken into consideration.

Key words: professional training, intercultural professional communicative competence, methods and strategies of teaching, modeling and simulation technologies, role-playing game, creative tasks.

For reference: Tuchynski A.V. Technology of oral consecutive translation teaching of untranslatable French lexical units in the context of the dialogue of cultures ideas. Rhema. Рема. 2017. No. 1. Pp. 94–115.

This article examines the intertext of the novel «The Boy from Moscow» by L.D. Rzhevsky at the level of interpretation of the semantics of the titles, epigraphs, citations, allusive and associative plans and reminiscences. The intertext background of the novel is very diverse: as well as the twenty quotes and quasiquotes that are present in the text, it also contains more than ten cultural constants of XIX and XX centuries.

Key words: L.D. Rzhevsky, intertext, Russian literature abroad, emigration, quotation, allusion, reminiscence, association, semantics of names, context.

For reference: Konovalov A.А. The intertext in the novel «Тhe Boy from Moscow» by L.D. Rzhevsky. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 4. Pp. 9–23.

In this paper, we propose a method to detect the discourse status of a referent of a noun phrase using shallow features of the noun phrase. We examine a number of theoretically motivated features that allow to distinguish noun phrases with different discourse statuses of their referents. We describe two experiments of applying those features to create discourse status detectors. We show that even the simplest features outperform the heuristic baseline. Also, we analyse the feature importances for the features that we use. This allows us to get the subset of features that are most useful for the classification and to test the theoretical hypotheses that lead to using these features.

Key words: discourse processing, coreference resolution, mention detection, machine learning.

For reference: Ionov M.I. Automatic detection of the discourse status of a referent of a noun phrase. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 4. Pp. 24–42.

This paper is concerned with the parameters of conversion on the one hand and the category of Russian adverbial participles on the other. The latter one represents a source of language units undergoing strict conversion, which is not typical for Russian. The parameters and their values are elaborated with consideration of various studies in derivation. Lexical units resulting from conversion of adverbial participles are also viewed from the perspective of grammaticalization and lexicalization.

Key words: conversion, strict conversion, parameters of conversion, Russian adverbial participle, Russian.

For reference: Kovalskaya V.M. Parameters of derivational conversion and Russian adverbial participles. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 4. Pp. 43–57.

The paper discusses syntactic mechanisms of licensing by sentential negation. The two approaches to NPI licensing – anaphoric and agreement-based – differ with respect to their predictions about (in)dependence of licensing multiple negation-sensitive grammatical phenomena. The paper presents an experimental study of licensing genitive of negation and negative pronouns in Russian based on grammaticality judgments. The data shows that genitive of negation improves significantly the grammaticality of stimuli with negative pronouns.

Key words: negation, negative polarity items, licensing, genitive of negation, noun phrase structure, collocations, Russian.

For reference: Kornakova E.V., Lyutikova E.A., Grashchenkov P.V. Licensing properties of Russian negation. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 4. Pp. 58–82.

In my paper, I will analyze a special feature of clausal complements in the Bzhedug dialect of Adyghe, a polysynthetic language of the West Caucasian family. While in many languages, clausal complements cannot trigger verbal agreement, in Adyghe, the matrix verb can bear plural agreement with a clausal complements, along with the default singular agreement. If there is a coordinate structure including several clausal complements, the agreement slot they correspond to can contain a plural marker. However, this is not obligatorily the case. I will discuss the conditions of this unusual agreement pattern. I will show that the possibility of agreement depends on at least two syntactic parameters: namely, the syntactic position of the clausal complement and the morphological verb form which is used in the complement clause. Non-standard agreement is also subject to a significant inter-speaker variation. Sometimes speakers who do not allow agreement with clausal complements admit instead long distance agreement. The most unexpected thing is that even if the complement clauses are marked with a (typically) non-argument suffix, they can control agreement. This points to the fact that neither the canonical view of the pronominal argument hypothesis, nor classical approaches to agreement, represented in many works on European languages is plausible for Adyghe. The data of this language must be accounted for in a perspective that regards verbal personal markers and verbal arguments as types of items, which are not isomorphic to each other and which both play role in the agreement marking.

Key words: clausal complements, agreement, Adyghe, syntacticposition, accessibilityhierarchy, polysynthesis.

For reference: Letuchiy A.B. Agreement with complement clauses in Adyghe. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 4. Pp. 83–104.

The paper presents an overview of two related events: an international conference on the typologically oriented description of parametric variation in grammar and a conference for graduate and doctoral students with an emphasis on general, Nordic and Slavic linguistics. Apart from the issues of intra-linguistic and typological parametric description, the conferences covered a wide array of topics ranging from the syntax of clitics to differential argument marking and diathesis to noun phrase and numeral phrase morphosyntax. Several talks focused on the history of Russian and other Slavic languages and on their syncronic description, as well as on the documentation of minority languages of Russia.

Key words: argument structure, case assignment, clitics, differential argument marking, linguistic typology, parametric description of grammar.

For reference: Tiskin D. The 6th conference in the series «Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters» and 4th Conference on General, Nordic and Slavic linguistics for graduate and doctoral students (Moscow State University of Education – Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 12–14 October 2016). Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 4. Pp. 94–115.

The article covers main features of Turkish mournful songs called mersiye written in the form of qita. Leaning against qitas recorded in divans of Turkish poets of the XV–XIX cc. the author divides qita-mersiye in three types. These types differ both in formal features (length and presence/absence of chronogramm) and in motives as well as in the aims of their creation. In qitas of the first type poets expressed their own sorrow concentrating on motives of mourning to depict the way they felt. In qitas of the second type main part belongs to motives of departure, with biographical details being interwoven; in qitas of this type poets highlighted the fact of death and marked the time it happened with the help of poetical figure tarikh. In qitas of the third type poets tried to immortalize the name of the diseased and to praise him. The main role in such qitas is given to panegyric motives ornamented with details of the earthly life of the diseased.

Key words: medieval Turkish literature, mersiye, qita, tarikh. For reference: Semina A. On interpretation of motives in Turkish medieval mournful songs (on the material of qita). Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 3. Pp. 9–18.

The article reviews the contemporary novel «Aviator» by E.G. Vodolazkin in the context of the current socio-cultural attempts to rethink the Soviet past and build a dialogue with the Russian literary tradition and philosophy of the twentieth century, in particular the anti-utopian works of A.P. Platonov («The Foundation Pit») and «Philosophy of the Common Cause» by N.F. Fedorov. The author analyzes the transformation in the novel by Vodolazkin Platonov’s themes of overcoming death and symbols of the cemetery, collecting and saving things.

Key words: contemporary Russian prose, literary tradition, dystopia, Russian cosmism, motive, plot, «Aviator», E.G. Vodolazkin, A. Platonov’s prose.

For reference: Soldatkina Ya. The motives of A. P. Platonov’s prose in the novel «Aviator» by E.G. Vodolazkin. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 3. Pp. 19–28.

The purpose of the article is to trace what kind of semantic transformations undergoes legal term outside of the legal discourse, as well as to assess the possible linguistic and legal implications of such transformations. In addition, the article propose criterion for distinguishing such phenomena as despecialization and determinologization, as well as the distortion (substitution) of the concept expressed by the term.

Key words: legal term, meaning transformation, determinologizations, despecialization, substitution of concepts, discourse.

For reference: Barabash O. Semantic transformations of legal terms outside of the legal discourse. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 3. Pp. 29–46.

The paper deals with Old English nominal compounds from the point of view of their place in the syntactic and narrative text structures. The inner semantic form and diffuse semantics of so called substantive epithets is analyzed in its relation to predicative constructions. The connection of compounds with the units of alliterative verse and some techniques of epic narration is discussed, the epic variation in particular. Their similarity to formulaic expressions and their role in the creation of epic imagery is shown at the example of the poems «Beowulf» and «Elene».

Key words: nominal compounds, syntax, semantics, alliterative verse, Old English poetry, «Beowulf», «Elene».

For reference: Gvozdetskaya N. Nominal Compounds in Old English Poetic Text (a Syntactic and Narrative Aspect). Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 3. Pp. 47–62.

This paper addresses intralingual variation in the context of Russian event nominalizations. I present new data that expands our knowledge about case assignment strategies in Russian event nominalizations. Experimental data shows that external argument of nominalization exhibits differential case marking, and that both variants are available for all Russian speakers. My analysis suggests that the observed case variation is determined by the amount of functional structure dominating VP in the nominalization.

Key words: nominalization, noun phrase structure, argument structure, case variation, differential case marking, intralingual variation, Russian.

For reference: Gerasimova A. A parametric approach to intralingual variation: problems and methods. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 3. Pp. 63–74.

The paper investigates the internal structure of Russian adjectival compounds. A theoretical problem, posed by the author is the choice between binary or n-ary branching. As the paper shows, structutres, underlying derivation, are closer to the binary branching than to the n-ary branching. The argumentation is based on the views of the constituency structure, adopted in the modern generative framework. The facts, involved for the discussion, deal with the constraints on the compound derivation, the order of derivation and the accentuation rules. As the author claims, the properties of Russian adjectival compounds can be explained only if we adopt constistent binary branching.

Key words: syntax, constituents, projection, compounds, adjectives.

For reference: Grashchenkov P. Complex Adjectives and Binary Branching in Syntax. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 3. Pp. 75–96.

This article discusses the morphosyntactic properties of Russian loweror paucal numerals (dva/dve ‘two’, tri ‘three’, četyre ‘four’) within a more general crosslinguistic view on (low) numeral constructions. We will show that the diachronic analysis of the processes resulting in the heterogeneous pattern triggered nowadays by these expressions and a comparison with other languages displaying similar morphosyntactic patterns can help us clarify more effectively the synchronic use of these constructions in Russian.

Key words: agreement, animacy, disagreement, genitive case, lower numerals, number, paucal constructions, quantification, Russian.

For reference: Igartua I., Madariaga N. Russian lower numeral phrases in typological and diachronic perspective. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 3. Pp. 97–114.

The novel «Lavr» by E.G. Vodolazkin reflects the world view of the Russian medieval times that is depicted in the symbols and in the explanation and understanding of the events by the characters. The plot is built around the episodes of certain lives and agiorgaphic topos. The fates and thoughts of the characters are connected with the quotes from the «Pchela» digest. There is also a number of references to the important works of Old Russian translated literature. Medieval texts are mentioned, retold and quoted creating historical background and the illusion of reality of events and characters.

Key words: E.G. Vodolazkin, «Lavr», medieval world view, medieval symbols, life description novel, agiorgaphic topos, «Pchela».

For reference: Trofimova N. Tratidions of Old Russian literature in the novel «Lavr» by E.G. Vodolazkin. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 2. Pp. 7–20.

The article is devoted to the study of phrasal structures in French and Russian languages in terms of translation transformations which aims to create a grammar using formal approach from Multivariate Transfer Cognitive Grammar. I reviewed and systematized phenomena of transfer of functional values in the secondary predication and adjectives; I identified frequency characteristics with regard to the analysis of patent texts. The results will be used to create a language module in the linguistic processor.

Key words: syntax, semantics, functional meanings, verbal phrases, French language, machine translation.

For reference: Galina I. Modelling the functionally synonymous transfer of the meanings of some phrase structures in the French-Russian language pair based on the material of patents texts. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 2. Pp. 21–43.

This paper provides the description of the universal concessive conditional (UCC) construction in the Kuban dialect of Kabardian, an ergative polysynthetic language of the Northwest Caucasian family. The Kabardian UCC construction involves a subordinate clause which is marked with a combination of the conditional and additive markers and obligatorily contains an interrogative pronoun with free choice semantics. More surprisingly, for some speakers, the subordinate clause in this pattern may also contain a definite pronoun which receives quantificational reading if it is higher in the hierarchy ergative > absolutive > indirect object > possessor/ postpositional object than the free choice interrogative pronoun. It is suggested that this can be accounted with a semantic representation involving quantification over events.

Key words: universal concessive conditional, Kabardian, free choice, event-based semantics.

For reference: Lander Yu. Kabardian universal concessive conditionals. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 2. Pp. 44–66.

The paper discusses grammatical properties of a special semantic class or relative clauses – appositive relatives. The specific interpretation of appositive relatives is usually derived from their position in the syntactic structure: it is assumed that appositive relatives attach higher than restrictives, at least above the DP level of the modified noun phrase. As for the internal structure of appositive clauses, the mainstream hypothesis is that they do not have any special properties of their own. The paper argues that in Russian, restrictive and appositive relatives differ significantly in their internal syntactic structure.

Key words: appositive relatives, restrictive relatives, noun phrase structure, pied piping, Russian.

For reference: Lyutikova Е. Syntax of appositive relatives. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 2. Pp. 67–87.

The article contains an overview of some observations made in the course of the research aimed at the identification of prosodic parameters of irony in British oral discourse. Irony is examined with regard to the specific features of British linguoculture. The author describes some tendencies in prosodic realization of ironic utterances revealed in the course of research and determines the role of prosody in conveying ironic connotation.

Key words: irony, ironic mode, prosody, context, oral speech discourse, British linguoculture.

For reference: Tuyakov V. Some prosodic realization of irony in British oral discourse (based on british cinematographic and television discourse). Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 2. Pp. 88–101.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the perception of contemporary British writer Tom Mccarthy’s novels in English and American literary criticism, including scientific works and the response in mass-media. The research points out the writer’s place in contemporary literary process, compares positive and negative reviews and designates the most critically observed topics of the novelist’s artistic objectives, such as traumatic experience, the relation of text and its reproduction, a search of identity.

Key words: contemporary English novel, problem, Tom Mccarthy’s novels, poetics, author image, literary criticism, literary text.

For reference: Bzhigakova D. The fiction of Tom Maccarthy in anglophone criticism. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 1. Pp. 7–16.

The given article deals with a functional analysis of the properties of habban (hæfden)+ participle II in Old English based on the “Anglo-Saxon Charter” and “Catholic Homilies I” by abbot Aelfrich. The author draws a functional demarcation in the use of the construction with the possessive verb, on the one hand, and simple preterits as well as preterits with prefix ge-, on the other. An in-depth analysis of the retrieved contexts allows to claim that habban (hæfden) + participle II usually functioned as an aspectual-pragmatic marker. It could also assume a text-forming function, whereas its taxis-temporal characteristics were apparently underdeveloped.

Key words: Old English, perfect, preterit, preterit with prefix ge-, taxis, variation of verbal forms.

For reference: Bondar V. Between perfect and preterit: habban (hæfden) + past participle in the Old English texts. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 1. Pp. 17–35.

The article is devoted to the corpus research of structural features of Japanese representation form with the suffix «tari». We distinguish the following parameters relevant for description of the structure of this construction: presence/absence of an auxiliary verb, the number of «tari-form» in one construction and the syntactic position of the whole construction in a sentence. We will show how these parameters are related to each other in different types of discourse.

Key words: Japanese syntax, representation, corpus-based research, tari-form, comparative quantitative analysis.

For reference: Degtyaryova A. Structural features of Japanese representation form with the suffix «tari» in fictional prose, online texts of diaries and spoken language: comparative quantitative corpus-based analysis. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 1. Pp. 36–50.

The paper focuses on the issues of establishing semantic content of syntactic structures via the contrastive study of the English and Russian language systems and parallel texts analysis for the tasks of machine translation. Particular attention is given to consideration of syntactic polysemy and ambiguity, and the mechanisms of polysemous structures presentation are proposed. The decisions are worked out on the basis of projecting the functional values through the traditional categorial meanings of language units and structures. The syntactic polysemy is understood as the immediate realization of more than one categorial head meaning within the same language structure. The phenomenon of syntactic polysemy determines the possible multiple transfer scheme for a given language pattern. The system of multivariant transfer rules is designed to be further specified by machine learning methods.

Key words: machine translation, syntax, semantics, transfer, linear structures, disambiguation.

For reference: Kozerenko E. Syntactic Polysemy and Ambiguity in Machine Translation Perspective. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 1. Pp. 51–63.

The article offers an account of the historical development of Scottish Gaelic with an emphasis on language contact, and describes the language situation in modern Scotland. The author takes an advantage of a complex approach comprising comparative, historical, statistical and other methods.

Key words: the minority languages of Europe, Scottish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic history, the language situation in Scotland, Gaelic population of Scotland, Gàidhealtachd.

For reference: Korolyova M. Language situation in Scotland: history and modern status of Scottish Gaelic. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 1. Pp. 64–73.

The work is focused on non-canonical argument marking in embedded clauses in Kalmyk, Lithuanian and Irish. We consider constructions similar to subject-to-object raising in English. In all the three languages subjects (in Irish, subjects and objects) of embedded clauses can be marked with the accusative, which is unacceptable for canonical transitive verbs in independent sentences.

Key words: subordination, complementation, complement clauses, adverbial clauses, raising-to-object, Kalmyk, Irish, Lithuanian, argument promotion, left periphery.

For reference: Serdobolskaya N., Arkadiev P., Shkapa M. Raising and related phenomena: non-canonical argument marking in argument and adjunct clauses. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 1. Pp. 74–91.

The article is focused on the names of the bend of the river in the dialects of European North of Russia. The author presents etymology of the lexemes with orthodox roots, analyzes descriptive and metaphoric names as well as the lexemes borrowed from Finno-Ugric and European languages.

Key words: lexeme, semantics, Proto-Slavic language, borrowing, Finno-Ugric languages.

For reference: Teush O. Lexis of the semantics of «the bend of the river» in the dialects of European north of Russia. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 1. Pp. 92–101.

This article shows the most essential characteristics of the Early American literature and describes the special features of a prominent representative of New England literature XVII–XVIII Cotton Mather (1663–1728), his art style and the problems of his literary creation. The article concludes that “massive” writing style of Cotton Mather is formed in the synthesis of various genre trends including epics, documentaries, memoirs, etc.

Key words: New England, Colonial literature, American literature of the XVII century, literary-documentary prose.

For reference: Tserkovsky A. Ideological and artistic originality of C. Mather’s literary-documentary prose. Rhema. Рема. 2015. No. 4. Pp. 5–16.

Several linguistic notions necessary for modeling linear order of simple clauses in complex English sentences are introduced: simple clause, complex sentence, semantic and syntactic Rheme, Theme and Specifier, syntactic and communicative autonomy of clauses. The surface-syntactic structure (in terms of dependency) and syntactic-communicative marking of complex sentences is supposed to serve as input for clause-ordering rules. Rules for the transition from the surface-syntactic and communicative structures of a complex sentence to its linear structure in terms of clauses are presented in full and illustrated in details.

Key words: English syntax, syntactic dependency, communicative structure and word order, simple clause.

For reference: Iordanskaja L., Mel’čuk I. Ordering of Simple Clauses in an English Complex Sentence. Rhema. Рема. 2015. No. 4. Pp. 17–59.

The process of forming telescoped words in the modern English substandard vocabulary is becoming a more popular way of word formation. The analysis of theoretical works helped the authors to define the key terms. The main wordbuilding patterns of telescoped derivatives in the English substandard vocabulary are described in detail due to the use of the method of structural analysis of forming components. These models are illustrated by a number of examples. The use of the method of quantitative counting helped to distinguish the main peculiarities of the structural organization of telescoped derivatives in the English substandard vocabulary.

Key words: substandard vocabulary, telescoped derivatives, complete telescoped words, partial telescoped words, haplological telescoped words, component, fragment, word-building pattern.

For reference: Malysheva S., Konopleva I. Main Peculiarities of Structural Organization of Telescoped Derivatives in the English Substandard Vocabulary. Rhema. Рема. 2015. No. 4. Pp. 60–70.

This paper discusses the status of two types of priority arguments in Modern Russian – the so called weak dative subjects with non-agreeing nominal predicatives like kholodno, priyatno, protivno, and sentential subjects (CP and InfP). We argue that infinitive phrases can take the subject position only if a number of formal and communicative conditions are met, notably, if the entire infinitive phrase is topicalized, behaves as an island and blocks extractions and communicative splits. We also argue that the elimination of a weak dative subject, contrary to the claims made earlier, does not necessarily lead to the shift in the predicate semantics.

Key words: grammatical subject, priority argument, strong subjects, weak subjects, internal arguments, dative subjects, sententional subjects, zero subjects, stage-level-predicates, information structure, Russian.

For reference: Zimmerling A., Trubitsina M. Dative and sententional subjects in Russian: from inner states to general statements. Rhema. Рема. 2015. No. 4. Pp. 71–104.

The article is devoted to the investigation of predictive ideas of language competence, economy of language, the minimalist program, perfection and imperfection processes in languages in works of A.A. Potebnja and his followers, correlation of A.A. Potebnja’s heuristic theory with the scientific program of N. Chomsky.

Key words: A.A. Potebnja, N. Chomsky, language competence, principle of economy of language, progress in language, minimalist program, language perfection, imperfection.

For reference: : Stain K., Petrenko D. Language competence: from A.A. Potebnja to N. Chomsky. Rhema. Рема. 2015. No. 4. Pp. 105–120.

An in memoriam piece for Jens Nørgård-Sørensen (1954 – 2015) follows his academic career and achievements and discusses Nørgård-Sørensen’s contribution to Slavic studies and his activities as an academician.

Key words: Jens Nørgård-Sørensen, personals, Slavic studies, Russian studies, Danish slavicists, academic cooperation.

For reference: Andersen H. Jens Nørgård-Sørensen in memoriam. Rhema. Рема. 2016. No. 1. Pp. 121–122.