"Semantic characteristics of the nouns with meaning ‘rye’ in the slavic languages"

This paper investigates cognitive mechanisms underlying ancient semantic changes in five key lexemes of everyday vocabulary in Russian and English languages: _god_ (“year”), _chelovek_ (“man”), _novyj_ (“new”), _byt’_ (“to be”), and _govorit’_ (“to speak”). It highlights differences in methods of semantic evolution characteristic of Slavic and Germanic traditions. The stages of development of meanings are examined, revealing the employed cognitive transfer mechanisms such as metonymy, metaphor (including functional transfer), abstraction, symbolization and some others. Additionally, a comparative analysis of cognitive mechanisms of semantic change has been conducted, demonstrating possible distinctions in epistemological approaches among researchers studying Slavic and Germanic language groups. The study concludes that there is a predominance of metonymy and anthropomorphism in Slavic languages, while symbolic-metaphorical mechanisms are more active in Germanic ones. It cannot be ruled out that these differences stem from distinct cognitive strategies involved in the semantic development of Slavic and Germanic lexical items. Slavic etymology predominantly relies on metonymy and anthropological conceptual metaphors rooted in social, economic, and ritual practices, reflecting a pragmatic, context-oriented mode of conceptualization. In contrast, Germanic etymology more readily admits symbolically charged metaphorical transfers derived from mythopoetic thought and demonstrates greater openness to imagistic and associative linkages. However, such discrepancies may be attributable less to actual differences in the cognitive models of ancient language speakers than to national traditions in lexicography and scholarly interpretation. This divergence is evident in lexicographic practice: Slavic sources-particularly the Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages edited by O. N. Trubachyov favor rational reconstruction and avoid symbolic or mythopoetic interpretations, whereas Germanic sources (e.g., Etymonline or the works of M. M. Makovsky) more readily incorporate mythological and poetic hypotheses. It is emphasized that the observed tendencies may reflect either the interpretive biases of lexicographers or genuine differences in ancient cognitive frameworks. Resolving this issue requires analysis of a broader dataset drawn from a wider range of sources.

The comparative study of Slavic morphemics is essential for expanding knowledge on such issues as the typology of the structure of Slavic words and its nature, the resources of Slavic nomination (first of all, morphological word-formation), the modes of adaptation of borrowings, and the semantic potential of morphemic resources of Slavic languages (semantic word-formation). This approach focuses on morphemics as a set of means of forming the morphemic structure of a word in a Slavic language and forming Slavic words in general. Such means constitute the morphemic system of a language. At the lower level there are separate morphemes of different classes (roots, affixes, flexions, interfixes). Higher levels of the system consist of complex units – morphemic combinations of different types (affixal pairs and chains, affixal lattices or affix-root combinations, morphemic word structures, morphemic networks of parts of speech). Considering that work on the description of morphemes in modern Slavic languages is at various stages of progress, in order to provide the basis for the development of standards of comparison it is reasonable to examine available descriptions of individual morphemes and compare the range of their formal, semantic and functional features presented in existing morphemic dictionaries of Slavic languages. A comparison of these dictionaries reveals inconsistencies both in terms of description of morphemes, their form, semantics and function in the word, and in terms of how they are presented. This stems from different types of morphemic analysis applied and from the traditions of interpreting the results in particular Slavic languages. It is possible to eliminate such inconsistencies by comparing morphemes with a common form and semantics for genetically related units, and comparing only semantics for units with a different form and origin. The comparative study of individual morphemes will provide a basis for comparing complex morphemic units and morphemic systems of modern Slavic languages in general. The results will make it possible to gain more in-depth knowledge on the typical and distinctive use of morphemic resources of these languages to create a word as the basic unit of their nomination.

The research objective was to show the hybrid characteristics of prefixed verbs in Yiddish caused by its contact with Semitic and Slavic languages. The Yiddish system of verb prefixes, in particular, those with hybrid polysemy, is a phenomenon when the German form and German content acquired a very similar Slavic meaning. As a result, such prefixes retained the features of their German equivalents, while modifying their semantic, morphosyntactic, and word-formation potential. This phenomenon affected some Yiddish verbs under the impact of contacts with adstratum languages and intralinguistic tendencies. The present research featured Yiddish verbs with the ariber- prefix. The analysis revealed that Slavic adstratum semantic characteristics caused the hybridization of the Yiddish system of verb prefixes. As a result, Yiddish prefixed verbs were able to describe and conceptualize situations left out by the German language, but indicated by Slavic languages. To describe the same situation, the same base word in Yiddish could be combined with a larger amount of prefixes than in German and Slavic languages. Thus, synonymous series of prefix verbs in Yiddish occurred as a result of the hybridization of its German-based system with elements borrowed from Semitic and Slavic languages.

The article is devoted to the consideration of euphemistic phraseological units used to nominate topics significant for native speakers of Slavic languages such as birth and death, the human body, age, physiology, diseases, and human vices, as well as their dynamics, semantic and functional characteristics. The studied phraseological units related to non-linguistic phenomena are part of an anthropocentric paradigm and represent a public ban on pronouncing certain nominations in a particular language group. The object of this study are verbal and nominal phraseological units in the system of Slavic languages denoting concepts, phenomena and actions replacing words prohibited for extra-linguistic reasons and having a pronounced anthropocentric character. The purpose of the work is a comparative semantic-functional analysis of phraseological euphemisms in Slavic languages. It is emphasized that phraseological euphemisms replace words denoting concepts, phenomena and actions that are considered taboo for the Slavs, whose history dates back to the distant past of the Slavic peoples. They were originally associated with religious faith, fear of the gods, supernatural beings, nature, magical thinking and the deep conviction about the interdependence between the thing and the name. Comparative semantic and functional analysis of euphemistic phraseological units reveals coincident nominations in different Slavic languages and differences in phraseological units containing standards that replace certain words and expressions denoting objects and phenomena that nowadays replace not taboo entities, but linguistic units perceived in the language collective as non-tactful, rude or vulgar.

This study continues the derivatological and aspectological traditions of studying verbal prefixes as semantic distributors of the verb, expanding its capabilities in the expression of an action. The article discusses the results of a study of prospective semantics based on the verbs with the prefix pred-. This prefix has an old Slavonic origin and is realized in several meanings, the most striking of which is an indication of a previously performed action (prospectivity). This meaning is not primary, as it derives from the spatial one (being ahead), which reflects the general picture of time representation through space, on the one hand, and the models of development of spatial meanings in other semantic spheres that have developed in the language, on the other. Prospective semantics proved to be in demand not only in old Slavonic, but also in other Slavic languages (despite the quantitative differences in the use of units in these languages). The analysis of verbs and units derived from verbs with prefix pred- and its analogues shows a significantly greater number of units with this prefix in Russian and other Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Rusin, Czech, Polish, etc.) in comparison with the old Slavonic language, as well as their constant growth and semantic diversity. The research reveals the semantic features of the prefix pred- in Russian with the background of other Slavic languages (less semantic diversity of prefix meanings and verbs with it in comparison with the Bulgarian and Czech languages; predominance of prospective prefix semantics in the verbal sphere and weakening of the spatial one; absence of the meaning of the preliminary action in relation to the main one), and examines the interaction of the spatial meaning of the prefix with the meanings of prospectivity and superiority.

The article analyzes the grammatical, semantic and functional features of verbal nouns with the meaning of action in the Ukrainian language on the background of other Slavic languages. Research methods: quantitative formally-semantic analysis of the corpus of Ukrainian nomina actionis, obtained by the continuous sampling method from the largest Ukrainian-language dictionary; a linguistic experiment with native speakers focused on finding out the perception of the aspectual properties of the nomina actionis. In the South Slavic, Western Slavic and Eastern Slavic languages the verbal noun of the action is located at different distances from the verb, and has different grammatical status. The verbal noun with the meaning of action in the Ukrainian language isn’t a verbal form. It is a special category of noun. To a large extent this category of words inherits the verbal aspectual semantics. Absolute majority of Ukrainian verbal nouns is strictly related to the verb of a certain aspect. Almost half of the Ukrainian nomina actionis keeps verbal aspectual pairs. Members of such pairs inherit the verbal aspectual characteristics. This especially refers to those nouns that have retained the formal markers of the aspect (perfective prefixes or imperfective suffixes) The speakers of the Ukrainian language clearly differentiate the members of the prefixed pairs in the speech; less pronounced functional difference between the verbal nouns, which differ of an imperfect suffix. The aspectual peculiarity of the Ukrainian nomina actionis is partially affected by the transposition suffixes. The Ukrainian language avoids the aspectual universality of the nomina actionis, in the system of verbal nouns there is a tendency to express different aspectual meanings using different forms. The ratio of nominal and verbal semantics in these hybrid formations is the unique feature of the Ukrainian grammatical system in comparison with other Slavic languages.

The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative study of groups of motion verbs in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Upper Sorbian languages, as well as to analyze the results of the evolution of the motion verbs’ system in modern Bulgarian, Serbian and Croatian languages. The subjects of this study are the composition, semantic and grammatical features of imperfective non-prefixed verbs of motion. These verbs differ on the basis of unidirectional/non-unidirectional (multidirectional) movement. Methods of semantic, grammatical, etymological, comparative analysis, historical and descriptive methods are used in this linguistic research. Identifying differences in the functioning of East Slavonic, West Slavonic, South Slavonic verbs of motion in synchrony and diachrony is the finding of research. The comparison of different Slavonic systems of verbs of motion revealed some archaic features of Common Slavonic verbs of motion and some results of semantic and grammatical evolution of these verb systems. In general, the old Common Slavonic system of verbs of motion that existed before the derivation of the category of verbal aspect retains the main feature of differentiation on the basis of opposition of unidirectional and non‑unidirectional (multidirectional) movement. The loss of some pairs of verbs of motion in East and West Slavonic languages and complete loss of correlation of paired verbs of motion in South Slavonic languages is due to two reasons: 1) the divergence of lexical meanings of these verbs in pairs; 2) the development of the productive process of derivation of aspect verb pairs, in which the non-prefixed verbs opposed on the meaning of unidirectional and non-unidirectional movement evolve to the pairs of verbs opposed on aspects: perfective or imperfective (with or without prefixes). The practical value of the research is to use the results of it to optimize the processes of learning Slavonic languages as foreign, as well as for fundamental studies of the evolution of the Slavic verb.

The article investigates some difficulties in teaching Slavic languages, suggests ways to overcome them, considers the peculiarities of the translation of related languages. In the presented study, the prevention of interlingual interference is seen as an important component of the study of any non-native language, it should be borne in mind that this problem is especially acute in the case of confrontation of languages with similar lexical composition. It is proved that it is expedient to apply a comparative approach to the selection and description of lexical material, as well as the fact that comparing the lexical composition of related languages allows to focus on those phenomena that can cause erroneous associations in the study of Slavic languages (Polish, Czech, Croatian, Belarusian, Serbian, Russian, etc.) and when translated into Ukrainian. It was found that the theory and practice of translation from closely related languages play a significant role in the training of well-educated and professionally competent Slavic philologists. It is established that linguistic study of inter-Slavic translation allows to identify connotational differences in related languages and show the features of the national linguistic picture of the world for each language, and comparative study of Slavic languages must be taken into account in their teaching methods. As a result of the research, a procedure for working on the vocabulary of closely related languages was proposed, which includes the study of the semantic features of interlingual homonyms of Slavic languages. In this context, it is established that the peculiarity of mastering such lexical units is the study not only of the meaning of words, but also understanding the laws of functioning, according to which linguistic phenomena coexist and are interconnected and interact. Therefore, this procedure involves different approaches and methods of learning the language, taking into account the level of preparation of students.

This paper examines the morphological markers revealing the grammatical and semantic markedness of the masculine gender in modern Slavic languages and discusses how these morphological markers have been developed narrowing down to the markers for the human male gender. All modern Slavic languages with six or seven-case declension systems have a masculine singular genitive-accusative syncretism found when the referent is animate. Almost all Slavic masculine genitive plural nouns, except BCSM, are also morphologically marked, and their one-syllable endings are apparently distinguished from the zero endings of their feminine and neuter equivalents. Unlike the East and South Slavic languages, the West Slavic languages have specific means in plural to differentiate masculine animate or masculine human referents from others. The Czech masculine animate accusative and nominative nominal plural endings and verbal past plural endings contain specific morphological markers, and the Polish and Slovak counterparts indicating a human referent are also marked with specific morphemes. West Slavic and Ukrainian also can morphologically mark masculine nouns in the dative singular. Polish and Ukrainian masculine dative singular nouns have an ending different from that of the neuter gender, and Czech and Slovak masculine animate dative singular noun endings are morphologically distinguished from those of the neuter and the masculine inanimate gender. Additionally, Slovak masculine nouns have distinct dative, instrumental, and locative plural endings. Thus the grammatical feature of the masculine gender [+Masculine] is reflected in some distinct morphological markers in Modern Slavic languages. Especially in West Slavic, it gave rise to the morphological markers for the semantic category of male humans, i.e., the virility with the additional semantic features [+Animate] and [+Human]. These Slavic morphological markers for [+Masculine], [+Animate], or [+Human] are closely related to the recognition that the animate objects and human males stand out as the cognitively more significant and marked Figure.

This article studies Russian verbs which name the action of gratuitous material assistance to those in need, i.e. благотворить, благотворительствовать, благодетельствовать, меценатствовать, жертвовать, спонсировать, and their few derivatives. The author focuses on the history of their origin and use in the Russian language, the development of their meanings, semantic features, and functioning in the text. The analysis of these characteristics of the life of the word in the language allows the author to identify and formulate some norms of the use of these verbs in modern charity discourse for those who speak and write about charity. The study is based on historical and modern lexicographic sources, such as explanatory dictionaries of the Old Slavic Language, Old Russian Language, Russian language of different time periods, as well as examples of word usage, retrieved from The National Corpus of the Russian Language. In spite of the fact that the verbs studied realise the predicate of a situation of charity and designate the subject’s action of providing a poor or deprived object with material support, they considerably differ in terms of time of their appearance in the language, periods of usage, and semantic capacity. The analysis demonstrates that there is no verb that could claim the status of a nuclear verbal lexeme of the semantic field of charity: the word with the widest neutral semantics благотворить has almost fallen out of use, the verbs благодетельствовать and меценатствовать have a narrower application, while жертвовать imposes semantic restrictions on the choice of words for the positions of the object and the instrument of charity, and in the case of the verb спонсировать a specific context of “market” charity is important, in which the subject receives a certain benefit from their contribution.

BOOK NOTICES 769 specialists. Worth's book provides evidence for the latter fact. The bibliography is divided into seven sections, of which the third, 'Derivational types and models', is the most important, for it is under this heading that works treating individual prefixes and suffixes are listed unit-by-unit. Someone using the bibliography to search the literature on the suffix -ka, e.g., will find 58 items listed (items 1423-80, pp. 109-13). Other sections deal with the form and meaning aspects of word-formation (§§2 and 4, respectively), general theoretical treatments (§1), conversion (§5, 'Derivation of and from parts of speech'), dialect studies (§6), and foreign influences (§7). An author index comprises §8. The cut-off date for the bibliography is 1973, but Worth declares (pp. xxi, xxiii) his intention of expanding and computerizing the work. The present version, meanwhile, is so thorough and so useful that its acquisition is highly recommended for researchers either in the Russian language, for whom questions of derivation are of utmost importance (in phonology and syntax as well as morphology), or in general derivational morphology, where no modern language offers more complex or more interesting data than Russian. [Philip J. Regier, USC] Etimoloski slovar slovenskega jezika: prva knjiga, A-J. By France Bezlaj. Ljubljana: Mladinska Knjiga, 1976. Pp. xxx, 235. Dinars 450. This is the first volume of a projected fourvolume etymological dictionary of the Slovenian language. In his introduction, Bezlaj writes (vii) that the compilation of such a work was among the first plans made after the establishment of the Slovene Academy of Sciences in 1939. For the first yearbook of the Academy, Fran Ramovä prepared 20 sample entries and described the design of the dictionary ; this was to include all the literary, historical, and dialect lexicon which, regardless of origin, had been adopted by the common language. The chief stress was to be on Slovenian documentation ; for other languages, reliance was to be placed on more widelyrecognized etymological dictionaries. At that time, the state of Slovenian linguistics was unfortunately such that it was impossibleto collect either the historical or the dialect material in an appropriate fashion. A more modest collection of data was available from the older dictionaries and from specialized literature about Slovenian; but as a result of the exceptional development of Slavic lexicology in the past two decades, relatively few entries in the present volume are limited to references to the older dictionaries. Interestingly enough, B points out that the common Slavic word stock is relatively modest, apparently not exceeding 1,700 fundamental words; but every Slavic language has (in addition to borrowings, derivatives, and innovations) a fixed number of characteristics, which can easily be proved to be Proto-Slavic. Since the initiation of the dictionary, B has been working at the task of excerpting the scientific literature for material appropriate for the dictionary. Thus the source material consulted is extensive; I estimate some 800 books and periodicals are listed in the bibliography. According to B (viii), the dictionary is designed not only for the trained linguist but also for the educated non-specialist who may wish to use it. Still, there are features which, it seems to me, would make it difficult for the layman. For example, the standard Slovene word for 'through' is cez, but this does not occur as a dictionary entry. One must look rather under irez (88) where we find the definition, plus a statement that the literary form is tez. B has written elsewhere (XII Seminar Slovenskega Jezika, literature in kulture, ed. by H. Glusic, p. 14 [Ljubljana, 1976]) that he has found even more new stems, elements of word formation, and semantic characteristics which show the close relationship of Slovenian with the Baltic languages. He is to be congratulated on bringing these to the attention of the users of his dictionary. Unfortunately, the dictionary is marred by a large number of misprints. B himself complained to me, during my visits to Ljubljana, that whenever he would correct the galleys and then ask for a new set, new errors crept in as old errors were corrected. The dictionary is, nevertheless, a fundamental contribution to the field of Slavic etymology; it serves...

The article analyzes the grammatical, semantic and functional features of verbal nouns with the meaning of action in the Ukrainian language on the background of other Slavic languages. Research methods: quantitative formally-semantic analysis of the corpus of Ukrainian nomina actionis, obtained by the continuous sampling method from the largest Ukrainian-language dictionary; a linguistic experiment with native speakers aimed at finding out the perception of the aspectal properties of the nomina actionis. The ratio of nominal and verbal semantics in nomina actionis is the unique feature of the Ukrainian grammatical system.

The article presents formal, semantic, and pragmatic features of Slovenian subject impersonal reflexive constructions, e. g. Nekoč se je veliko delalo ‘Back in the day, one used to work a lot’. Constructions with unexpressed arbitrary agents should be distinguished from sentences in which the nominative agent has been omitted, but can be determined from the context. Subject impersonal reflexive constructions use the reflexive forms of non-reflexive verbs. In such constructions, the morpheme se is a grammaticalized element that does not express a reflexive action. The constructions under discussion can express habitual or iterative actions performed by a non-expressed human agent and can also have a deontic meaning. Reflexive constructions with arbitrary agents mainly involve verbs denoting conscious human actions and activities, which sets them apart from weather impersonals or subjectless constructions describing physiological states. Subject impersonals, characteristic of South Slavic and West Slavic languages, are parallel to those in which the arbitrary agent is expressed lexically (Nekoč so ljudje veliko delali ‘Back in the day, people used to work a lot’). We compare subject impersonals with other impersonal and passive constructions in Slovenian and, at the same time, contrast their features with similar constructions in other South Slavic languages and Russian.

The paper presents a short contrastive analysis of phraseological units in the Bulgarian and the Polish language, which have Biblical origin. The text is focused on non-predicative expressions (i.e., it deals with semantic, formal and stylistic features of expressions with no verbal component) and observes their variation of the meaning following as a context their contribution in Bulgarian and Polish resources. In this respect, the first part of the article represents the similarities between Bulgarian and Polish Biblical Phraseological Units. The units under observation here are grouped in pairs, depending on the general element they contain. Mainly, that is an onomastic element with symbolic meaning and it is a kind of reference to the Old or New Testament. In the second part of the present text, Biblical expressions share one and the same symbolic element, but they have different semantics and structure. The compared constructions are based on different aspects of the symbol and they have different connotative potential. That part has a main function to highlight that both – Bulgarian and Polish language, using the same Biblical element could make completely different phraseological units. Despite the genetic relations of the two Slavic languages, the cited constructions are formed by Bulgarian and Polish cultural and religious experience.

Artykuł omawia alternacje walencyjne, nie posiadające jawnego wykładnika w języku macedońskim. Wydaje się, że jest to ważna cecha typologiczna, która odróżnia macedoński od innych języków słowiańskich. W pracy przedstawiono ogólny opis tendencji labilności w odniesieniu do cech składniowych, semantycznych i dystrybucyjnych czasownika. Wykryto i przeanalizowano około 150 czasowników, wchodzących w labilność zachowującą przy alternacji patiensa i agensa. Czasowniki typu pierwszego przy zmianie perspektywy zachowują miejsce dla patiensa, ale w innej pozycji syntaktycznej (Toj sedna – Tie go sednaa. ‘On siedział – Posadzili go’); typu drugiego zaś zachowują tematyczne miejsce dla agensa (Taa odi po poleto – Taa go odi poleto ‘Idzie przez pole – Idzie w pole’). Czasowniki zostały poklasyfikowane zgodnie z kryteriami składniowymi i semantycznymi po to, aby wskazać zdarzenia, które dopuszczają tego typu alternacje walencyjne oraz dominujące korelacje semantyczne, zachodzące między parami czasowników.