Belarusian Language Research Articles

СОВЕТСКАЯ ПОЛИТИКА «КОРЕНИЗАЦИИ» И ЕЕ ВЛИЯНИЕ НА ЯЗЫКОВУЮ СИТУАЦИЮ В БЕЛАРУСИ

The state and functioning of languages in the state is influenced by the language policy, which is an integral part of the national policy in multinational states. The experience of language building in Belarus demonstrates a situation that is unique for the post-Soviet countries, when two state languages, Belarusian and Russian, are used in conditions of diglossia. However, this specific linguistic situation is the result of a fairly long period of the Belarusian language development and the fact that modern Belarusian territories were part of different states: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the USSR. The author analyzes the specific language situation in the Republic of Belarus and focuses on the historical analysis of the previous experience of language policy during the USSR period. The approaches and results of Belarusianization in the field of language policy are described in the article. The author considers the national and cultural policy in the BSSR as part of the Soviet policy of “indigenization”, but with goals and conditions specific to the Slavic peoples. This policy and its further transformation significantly influenced the functioning of Belarusian not only for all subsequent Soviet years, but also has a considerable impact today. In fact, the existence of two spelling norms of the modern Belarusian language and a mixed version of the Belarusian-Russian language, hinders the active development of the national language of Belarus. Despite the fact that both languages, Belarusian and Russian, have equal rights in the Republic of Belarus under the Constitution, both in official and in everyday communication, citizens of the country prefer Russian. At the same time, the Belarusian folk dialects and the variability of the Belarusian literary language have a negative impact on the further development and status of the national language.

Reading in the Belarusian language at teaching system of Chinese students

Reading in the Belarusian language at teaching system of Chinese students

Aforyzm i małe formy tekstowe: porównywalność i ogólność (w języku białoruskim, rosyjskim, polskim, angielskim)

W artykule omówiono stosunek aforyzmów i innych małych form tekstowych na materiale literackim i folklorystycznym w języku białoruskim, rosyjskim, polskim i angielskim. Określono miejsce aforyzmów w ogólnych klasyfikacjach małych form tekstowych, wzajemnych relacji aforyzmów i powiedzeń literackich, przysłów, tekstów jednozdaniowych, fraz stereotypowych, narodowych odmian dzieł literackich i małych gatunków folklorystycznych. Aforyzmy są przeciwstawiane wszelkim innym małym formom tekstowym jako szczególny rodzaj jednostek frazowych w oparciu o ich dwie cechy obligatoryjne – uogólnienie treści i autonomię dyskursywną.

"Historical dictionary of the Belarusian language": from idea to release

"Historical dictionary of the Belarusian language": from idea to release

Prospects for Russian-Belarusian bilingualism: the sociolinguistic aspect

This article is devoted to the topical issue of Russian‑Belarusian bilingualism in the post‑Soviet environment. Belarus is of particular interest not only because of the high level of russification at the time of the collapse of the USSR but also because of its close relations with Russia afterwards. Belarus is the only country in the post‑Soviet space that has legally secured the equal status of the Belarusian and Russian languages as official languages, which results in legally fixed bilingualism. However, the actual position of the two languages is not equal at all and the functional scope of the Belarusian language is still limited. The purpose of this work was to determine the current state of the language situation and to determine the prospects for bilingualism based on the language‑governing rules and the analysis of the education sector since it reacts most sensitively to to any changes in legislation pertaining to language policy and most effectively influences the formation of multilingual society. In addition, research hypotheseswere presented through the prism of political discourse, namely the rhetoric about bilingualism present in the official speeches of the President of the Republic of Belarus, A. Lukashenko).

Didactic role-playing games in teaching the Belarusian language as a foreign language

Didactic role-playing games in teaching the Belarusian language as a foreign language

“Нам балюча, а значыць – мы ёсць”: пратэстная лірыка Насты Кудасавай (2020–2021 гг.)

The purpose of this article is to analyze the role of poetry and poets within the ongoing Belarusian 2020 revolutionary protests through the prominent example of Nasta Kudasava’s protest poems written between August 2020 and April 2021. In order to carry out the aforementioned analysis, we contextualize the concept of protest poetry within literary history in general and Belarusian language history in particular and also examine several extracts from Kudasava’s poetry (both pre- and post -2020) from a technical, lyrical, and problematical point of view. Our findings concerning the poet’s images, rhetorical figures, and formal patterns of choice, as well as the changes that her treatment of social and political issues has undergone over the latest years, have revealed the evolution of new tendencies within her works (specifically, of socially engaged poetry which was not significantly present in her texts before). This fact confirms our hypotheses that socio-political changes directly affect the development of literature and poetry in particular, while poets take on the role of society’s spokespeople through their art.

Complementary teaching of the Belarusian language in the education of Slovak students

Complementary teaching of the Belarusian language in the education of Slovak students

Українсько-білоруське пограниччя: Білоруські впливи на говірки Українського Полісся

The present paper is devoted to the research on the Ukrainian northern supradialect or, more precisely, the issue of the influence of Belarusian language space on the structure of local subdialects within it. The paper aims to indicate and describe characteristic features of Ukrainian Polesian subdialects, yet only those that testify to common with South Belarusian dialects trends in the evolution of dialectal phenomena or that penetrated into their structure as a result of Belarusian influence. In connection with this, the research is largely confrontational. This is why comparative-historical and descriptive methods of analysis were taken up.

The Smolensk variant of Belarusianization in the 1920s

In 2021, the Smolensk historians Yevgeny Kodin and Olga Kobets published the first monograph in Russian historiography on the processes of Belarusianization in the RSFSR in the interwar period. In the book, on the example of the Smolensk region, the issue of extending the decisions of the 12th Congress of the Bolshevik Party (1923) on the korenization to the border regions of the Russian Federation with the Byelorussian SSR is touched upon, which is extremely relevant for the national policy of the first years of Soviet power. The authors drew on significant and valuable material from local archives and tried to find out whether the views of modern historians on the problem of the content and results of the Belarusianization policy correspond to the realities of the era. The monograph significantly corrects existing ideas about the practical implementation of the Belarusianization course and in particular, convincingly shows the tactics of the Smolensk authorities to interpret the instructions from Moscow on the introduction of the Belarusian language into the school system as secondary and temporary.

Design of Belarusian and Russian natural language interfaces for online help systems

O b j e c t i v e s. The main goal of the work is a research of the natural language user interfaces and the developmentof a prototype of such an interface. The prototype is a bilingual Russian and Belarusian question-and-answer dialogue system. The research of the natural language interfaces was conducted in terms of the use of natural language for interaction between a user and a computer system. The main problems here are the ambiguity of natural language and the difficulties in the design of natural language interfaces that meet user expectations.M e t ho d s. The main principles of modelling the natural language user interfaces are considered. As an intelligent system, it consists of a database, knowledge machine and a user interface. Speech recognition and speech synthesis components make natural language interfaces more convenient from the point of view of usability.R e s u l t s. The description of the prototype of a natural language interface for a question-and-answer intelligent system is presented. The model of the prototype includes speech-to-text and text-to-speech Belarusian and Russian subsystems, generation of responses in the form of the natural language and formal text.An additional component is natural Belarusian and Russian voice input. Some of the data, required for human voice recognition, are stored as knowledge in the knowledge base or created on the basis of existing knowledge. Another important component is Belarusian and Russian voice output. This component is the top required for making the natural language interface more user-friendly.Co n c l u s i o n. The article presents the research of natural language user interfaces, the result of which provides the development and description of the prototype of the natural language interface for the intelligent question- and-answer system.

Białoruskojęzyczne komentarze na forum internetowym Tut.by

An article on the characteristics of comments in the Belarusian language posted on the Tut.by forum. At the beginning of the article, the author examines the popularity of the Belarusian language among forum users by compiling the number of Belarusian and Russian-language comments under the most commented articles posted on the forum Tut.by. As a result of the analysis, it was proved that although the Russian language dominates the discussed forum, Belarusian-language comments are present under each of the selected articles. However, since the main goal of the article is to characterize Belarusian-language comments, searching for individual statements under articles seemed to be an ineffective way of collecting a sufficient amount of material. Therefore, it was decided to create a text corpus consisting of a sample of the last 50 entries of 13 Internet users who between January 1 - March 31 2019, posted at least one Belarusian-language post on the Tut.by forum. In this way, a set of texts was created consisting of 890 unique segments, on the basis of which further analysis was carried out. As a result of the research, it was found that Belarusian-language comments are very diverse in terms of their content and form. Although most of the Belarusian-language authors of these posts presented common attitudes, they participated in online discussions on various topics, and their comments differed greatly in terms of linguistic correctness and diligence, the level of emotionality, the way of verbalizing non-verbal signs and the culture of conversation. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that the variety of the Belarusian language researched on the Tut.by forum is very diverse, and the individual skills and preferences of each Internet user plays a decisive role in its form.

Negative constructions in theory and practice: Ukrainian-Belarusian parallels

In the article the material of monumental texts of the Ukrainian language of the 16th – the first half of the 17th century (business documents, artistic, polemical, chronicle, scientific and confessional literature) and the studied monuments of the Old Belarusian language are studied the diachronic aspect of the use of case forms (generic or accusative) in negative verb constructions; their functioning in modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages is analyzed.
 It has been revealed that in the monuments of the Ukrainian language of the specified period the accusative case in denial is inferior to the generic one. The use of certain syntactic models (parallel use of genitive and accusative forms in the pre- and postposition) was determined by the general style and place of writing the monuments. In studies of monuments of the Old Belarusian language in this position the genitive was fixed, and sometimes in negative constructions the accusative and the genitive were allowed at the same time.
 In the linguistics of the 20th – early 21st century philologists have repeatedly drawn attention to the peculiarities of the use of genitive and accusative cases in negative constructions both on the All-Slavic background and on the material of individual languages.
 Synchronously, it has been revealed that in the modern Ukrainian language the literary norm in negative constructions is the use of the genitive case instead of the accusative. However, there is no noticeable tendency to replace the accusative and the genitive in verbs with a negative participle not, as there are many cases of using the possessive case in literature and in everyday speech. On the other hand, there is no unanimity in the grammars of the modern Belarusian language on this issue: some scholars believe that both generic and possessive cases are possible in negative constructions, while others believe that only generic is possible. However, from a sample of analyzed works of Belarusian writers of the twentieth century, artistic and journalistic posts, as well as conversational style records, it can be argued that there are only a few cases of use of the accusative case, in particular in proverbs and sayings, and only the genitive is dominant in the negative constructions.

Syntactic functioning of verbal phraseological units with atypical structure

The question concerning the syntax role of verbal phraseological units with an atypical structure is considered to be one of the complex issues of the syntax of a simple sentence (in their structure, such units do not have a verb component which may reflect such categories as type, tense, person, number). The aim of the research is to analyze the main patterns of the syntax functioning of verbal phraseological units with atypical structure in one- and two-parts sentences of the Belarusian language. The methodological base consists of the works of leading local and foreign linguists in phraseology and syntax. The material for the study is based on the factual material of the reputable phraseological dictionary of Mr. Lepeshev. The main methods are description, comparison, analytical research method, use of elements of quantitative calculations. The article considers the use issues of verbal phraseological units with an atypical structure in two-part sentences with a subject reflecting a person, a concrete or abstract subject. Mostly verb phraseological units are used in full sentences, but they can also be used in incomplete contextual ones. The author substantiates the use patterns of verbal phraseological units with an atypical structure which are used as a simple complexified verbal predicate in a two-parts sentence. The article also names and indicates factors influencing the functioning of verbal phraseological units in the role of linkers or copular parts. Being close in meaning to an infinitive, such units in combination with predicatives play the role of the main member of one-part impersonal sentences. The atypical functions of such units are the functions of definition, complement and adverbial of purpose. The article conclusions can be applied in lectures and practical classes in linguistics and cultural studies, as well as in the preparation of phraseological dictionaries.

Results of the international project on publishing the works of Gertsel’ Shklyar

At late December 2017, in pursuance of the previously concluded international agreement on cooperation between Kostroma State University and the Centre for Research of Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, a three-year work plan was approved. It included a project aimed at systematisation, scientific interpretation and preparation for publication of the heritage of Gertsel Shklyar, a talented linguist who, in the mid-20th century, contributed a lot to Belarusian linguistics, Russian linguistics, hebraistics. In the course of the project, previously unknown facts of Gertsel’ Shklyar’s biography, summary of the results of his scientific activities during his work at the Belarusian Academy of Sciences (the 1930s) and Kostroma Pedagogic Institute (the 1940s–60s) were disclosed. The linguistic scientist worked actively in the field of Belarusian studies – he participated in the compilation of the Belarusian-Russian and Russian-Belarusian dictionaries, studied Polonisms in the Belarusian language, worked on amending the existing Belarusian-language spelling, on the creation of university textbooks on the modern Belarusian language. Together with Sof’ya Rokhkind, he created the USSR’s first “Yiddish-Russian Dictionary (Jewish-Russian Dictionary)ˮ. Research in the field of the Russian language was mainly dialectological. Gertsel’ Shklyar laid the foundations for the card index of Kostroma regional dictionary. The article examines the results of the international project, highlights the events dedicated to the presentation of the book of selected works by Gertsel’ Shklyar.

Interaction of Lithuanian and Belarusian Dialects in the Surroundings of Radun

The research focuses on the interaction of the Lithuanian and Belarusian languages in thesurroundings of Radun (Belarus, Voranava district, Lith. Rodūnia). Employing the language changemethodology, the paper presents a detailed analysis of the most prominent cases of phonetic interference oftwo – old and middle – generations of residents in both languages spoken by them.The data show that the oldest residents are expressing both languages using the Lithuanian articulatory base. Over time, the characteristic Lithuanian features begin to level: varies the pronunciation of a; in open endings, the long tense vowels i, ы are usually pronounced as é; unstressed vowels are reduced inconsistently, etc.As Lithuanian is for the middle-generation speakers, it already demonstrates essential changes, whichoccurred because they started expressing their Lithuanian using the Belarusian articulatory base. First of all, they usually lengthen stressed short vowels; they do no longer pronounce unstressed long vowels; they donot distinguish between acute – or circumflex-accented mixed i, u + R type diphthongs; the distinction between the falling and rising diphthongs ai, au, is made based on phonetic, not accentual, factors; the palatalised dental consonants t, d are replaced by the palatalised velar consonants k, g.

BORROWINGS FROM THE POLISH LANGUAGE IN THE BELARUSIAN SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY

This article examines interaction specifics of the Belarusian and Polish languages in scientific texts at the beginning of the 20th century. On the basis of scientific and educational, popular science texts and lexicographic materials, the characteristics of polonisms, their subject and thematic affiliation, as well as the peculiarities of their formal adaptation on the Belarusian linguistic basis are carried out. The work uses descriptive, contrastive and comparative historical methods, which were useful during the examination of polonisms in Belarusian language. The author establishes the dependence of the interacting nature of contacting languages on various intralingual and external factors, which predetermined the nature of the interlanguage relations of the Belarusian and Polish languages at the beginning of the 20th century. For all the lexical inequality of scientific texts, their linguistic unity was formed due to a common goal – the transmission of scientific information. In general, the analysis showed that when borrowings from the Polish language are used in the texts of Belarusian science, there is no consistency. Accordingly, it can be stated that the influence of the Polish language on the Belarusian scientific language is not characterized by depth, and the language of Belarusian science at the beginning of the 20th century was not oversaturated with polonisms. This was probably facilitated by the tendencies of the Belarusian linguistic and cultural revival, the dominant of which was primarily the orientation towards national identity and, accordingly, the limitation of foreign linguistic influences.

Russian as a Foreign Language Teaching in a Higher Educational Establishment of the Republic of Belarus in Conditions of Closely Related Bilingualism

The study relevance is caused by the special language situation in Belarus which is in close attention of modern linguists for several decades. Russian-Belarusian languages interaction is a special type of bilingualism which has specific features due to the common fate of the Belarusian and Russian people, genetic relationship, and language systems kinship. In Belarus the processes of generation and perception of the text in Russian language take place against a special psychological background of the Belarusian language system which creates the effect of the so-called unbalanced bilingualism. As a result one language system comes into contact with another causing interference. A serious problem in Belarus is the spontaneously russified version of the Belarusian language - Trasyanka. The goal of author is to identify the main problems of foreign students language adaptation in conditions of Belarusian-Russian bilingualism. Studying Russian in Belarus foreign students have to deal with texts in the Belarusian language, with colloquial speech and, of course, use words, terms, names in the Belarusian language. The author comes to the conclusion that foreign students do not experience any special communication difficulties from the Belarusian language unfamiliarity. The teacher of Russian as a foreign language, however, has a different, special task - to ensure a harmony among the culture of the language being studied (Russian), the culture of the host country (Belarus) and the national culture of the student.

Interaction of Non-derivative Vocabulary of Smolensk Dialect 
 and the Belarusian Language: Full Lexical Correspondences

Specific non-derivative nouns that are functioning in Smolensk dialect reveal a significant number of lexical parallels in the independent languageе structure of the contemporary Belarusian language. The analysis of these words is carried out in order to establish their status in two synchronous lexical and gram-
 matical systems for further clarification relating to the number of lexical parallels of different origins in Smolensk dialect. 
 The subject of the study is the volume of lexical meaning of specific nonderivative nouns recorded in independent, but at the same time contact-located language formations, in one of which they have a regional status (Smolensk dialect), and in the other one they are included in the codified form of the standard 
 language (the Belarusian language). The relevance of the study is explained by the complex history of the Russian-Belarusian borderland, which is reflected both in Smolensk dialect and in 
 the Belarusian language, which has been developed on the dialect basis. The common material and spiritual culture typical for the dialects of the Russian-Belarus-ian borderland is a marker revealing the specifics of the region described. Due to the common culture, these conditionally distant language units regularly coincide in the volume of lexical meaning and demonstrate a stable distribution within lexical and semantic groups in each language formation at the present stage of its functioning.

Linguistic Image of DOM ‘home’ in Wojciech Piotrowicz’s Autobiographical Prose

The aim of the article is to describe the concept of dom ‘home’ in Wojciech Piotrowicz’s idiolect by using the methodological assumptions of Lublin ethnolinguistics school. Research on which this paper is based consists of two main parts: we present the writer’s biography, which introduces a representative of the Polish intelligentsia in Lithuania, and an analysis of the concept of dom ‘home’. The presented biography emphasizes the origin and formation of the personality of the recognized writer and social and cultural activist, whose life is an example of the formation of the Polish intelligentsia in Lithuania. The subject of research is a textual data coming from his volume of memoirs, which contains the writer’s memories and reflections. The analysis of the dom ‘home’ concept focuses on two profiles: physical and symbolic, specific features were grouped onto facets. In the conclusions, we underline the specific character of home in Wojciech Piotrowicz’s autobiographical prose which has some differences comparing to home described in Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian languages by EUROJOS project.