Russian Lexemes Research Articles

Cultural Aspects of Malaysian English and Russian Medical Profession Names

The translation of medical profession names may challenge even the most experienced translator. Selecting the appropriate equivalents is not always evident: the English term dentist for instance may correspond to either стоматолог [ stəmɐtˈolək ] (“mouth expert”) or зубной врач [ zʊbnˈoj vrˈatɕ ] (“tooth doctor”) or дантист [dɐntˈist] (“dental hygienist”) in the Russian language. A physiotherapist can be translated as физиотерапевт [fɪzɪɐtɪrɐpˈevt] ; however a physiotherapist in Russia must necessarily hold a medical doctor degree, in contrast with the practice of most Anglo-Saxon countries. Although the compared terms are often considered as equivalents by bilingual dictionaries (e.g.: surgeon and хирург [xɪrˈurk]) (Buvalin and Lenart 2017); however, their denotations and connotations may significantly differ, thus their improper translation may lead to intercultural misunderstandings. In this paper, 17 pairs of English-Russian medical profession names were investigated – the English lexemes coming from the Malaysian variety of the English language – with two competing linguistic methods: the association experiment and a corpus linguistic approach. The authors aimed at identifying semantic dissimilarities between the Malaysian English and the Russian lexemes in a cross-cultural context, from the perspective of both the association experiment and corpus linguistic methods. Firstly, a questionnaire-based association experiment was conducted with 300 Russian and 50 Malaysian medical university students, followed by a contrastive corpus linguistic analysis relying on the Russian National Corpus and the NOW (News on the Web) corpus. Results of the cross-cultural investigation revealed substantial semantic differences between the English and Russian profession names, as well as confirmed the complementary character of the association experiment and the corpus linguistic methods. Keywords: medical profession names; association experiment; corpus linguistics; verbal consciousness; cross-cultural investigation

Peculiarities of the English Legal Text Discourse: The Issues of Interpretation and Translatability

The growth of international cooperation, trade, tourism and emigration arouses the interest of both linguists and legal experts in the theory and practice of legal translation. The existing difference in the laws of countries, basic features typical of Russian and English legal discourse should be taken into account when dealing with juridical texts. The issue of adequate transfer of the content of legal documents is of importance when translating from one language to another. To identify the basic features typical of the English juridical vocabulary and to offer a methodology for solving the problems occurring when translating juridical texts, the authors implement the methods of syntactic, vocabulary, comparative and comparative translation analysis. The studied material is certain lexemes (commonly used words, terminology, professionalisms, Latinisms, abbreviations and idioms), legal texts (court rulings, legal contracts, official business documents) taken from the authentic British and American legal sources as well as examples from the authors’ translation and teaching practices. The authors believe that a retrospective analysis of conditions contributing to Legal English historic development will facilitate sufficient comprehension of subject areas constituting legal discourse. The findings indicate that the difference between the Russian and English juridical lexemes is conditioned by both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors.

Lexical-semantic representation of periphery of the notional component of the concept “clemency” in the English and Russian languages

The goal of this work became the identification of similarities and differences of peripheral conceptual attributes of clemency in the English and Russian languages. The subject of this research is the semantics of English and Russian lexemes representing the notional component of the concept of clemency in the compared languages, placed in the core and on the periphery of the concept. The concept of clemency was selected due to insufficient study of its verbalization in comparative linguistics. On the materials of lexicographic sources, the author determines the composition of nuclear lexemes and their synonyms that are capable of reflecting peripheral conceptual attributes of clemency in the English and Russian languages. The scientific novelty of this research consists in the fact that it is first to establish similarities and differences of peripheral conceptual attributes of clemency in the English and Russian languages. It is determined that core of the concept in English language is binominal and represented by the lexemes clemency and pardon; while in Russian language it is monomial. In conclusion, the author reveals that on the periphery of the concept in question in the English language are the lexemes grace, oblivion, allowance, indulgence, leniency, which are the synonyms of nuclear lexemes; and in the Russian language, there are  fewer synonyms of nuclear lexeme – apology, mercy, grace, remission. Comparison of the composition of peripheral conceptual attributes of clemency in the English and Russian languages demonstrated that they differ for the most part. Thus, the peripheral conceptual attributes of clemency in the English language is the comprehension of forgiveness as leniency with regards to a human being who committed the transgression, as a punishment, but in mitigated form. In the Russian language, the understanding of forgiveness as condescension to the transgression and aiding the one who transgressed.

Русские лексические заимствования в южном диалекте башкирского языка

The issues of Russian lexical borrowings (rusisms) in the Bashkir language dialects and subdialects have not been addressed yet. Dictionaries and monographs on the Bashkir language dialects and subdialects describe specific dialectal loanwords without providing a dialectal analysis of loanwords and the specific features of their adaptation and functioning in the Bashkir language dialects and subdialects. Meanwhile, studying rusisms in dialects and subdialects can elucidate both the dialectal lexicology and the formation history of the lexical, phonetic, and grammatical features of a particular Turkic language. Investigating rusisms in dialects and subdialects of Turkic languages, including Bashkir, is also relevant for the Russian language dialectology: the chronology of individual borrowings. It is worth studying the Bashkir language southern dialect widespread in the southern regions of modern Bashkortostan, Bashkir-speaking regions of Orenburg, Samara, and Saratov regions of Russia. Historically located in the very center of the Orenburg province, this territory bordered the provincial city of Orenburg and by the late 18th and early 19th centuries became one of the administrative, political, economic, and trade centers. It was then that Russian loanwords and lexemes of European languages began to actively penetrate the Bashkir dialects. These borrowings constitute a considerable group, thematically related to household, administrative and managerial, military- marching, and agricultural spheres. All rusisms underwent adaptation to the norms of the Bashkir language Southern dialect, e.g., Russian lexemes with hard-row vowels in the southern dialect have front-row vowels. South Russian dialects are considered the dominant source of the Bashkir language southern dialect lexical borrowings.

К мансийскому происхождению русского диалектного слова нюрка ‘мелкая щука’, ‘мелкая рыба’

Introduction: in some Districts of the Sverdlovsk and Perm Oblasts, the words nyur, nyurka, nyurovka, nyrka and some others similar words with the meaning ‘small pike’ (sometimes ‘small fish’) are fixed. The etymological solutions earlier proposed for this lexical nest do not sufficiently take into account the form, semantics and areal of the Russian dialect words. In the article, version about the Mansi origin of the analyzed lexemes is suggested. Objective: to identify the origin of the Russian dialect words nyurka, nyur and others words with the meaning ‘small pike’ (sometimes ‘small fish’). Research materials: published monographs, articles and dictionaries, as well as unpublished manuscript monuments of the Mansi writing system of the late XVIII century. Results and novelty of the research: for the first time, a consistent version of the origin of the Russian dialect words nyurka, nyur and others words with the meaning ‘small pike’ (sometimes ‘small fish’) from the Mansi language is proposed. It is identified that some Russian lexemes can reflect the phonetics of the substrate Mansi dialects of the Western Urals. The results of the study introduce into scientific circulation the new data about the substrate Mansi dialects that existed in the Middle Urals, and about the vocalism of the first syllable in the Mansi dialects.

Connotation of the lexemes “dame” and “lady” from feminist perspective

The Russian lexemes « dame » and « lady » which were borrowed from European languages to designate wealthy, educated and high society women became assimilated in the Russian language and culture. The words gave rise to culture-oriented colocations (кaвaлерственaя дaмa/ chivalry dame), and developed new connotations, which the lexeme «женщинa»/ woman does not have. In addition to neutral and positive connotations (“истиннaя леди”/ true lady), the lexemes acquired negative connotations like “дaмa полусветa”/ demimondaine dame, which indicate to the woman’s inferior social status (полковaя дaмa/ regimental dame), highlight women’s weaknesses not inherent to men (aвтоледи/ auto lady), and stereotypical ideas of women’s low intellect (дaмский ромaн/ love story). The inherent and adherent connotations of the lexemes «дaмa»/ dame and «леди»/ lady revealed through analysis are based on traditional stereotypical ideas about women’s social roles and imply evaluation of the woman’s performance in traditionally male spheres. Thereby, acquisition of negative and ironic connotations by the lexemes is conditioned in society denying women’s new functions and roles from feminist perspective.

У ПОШУКАХ САКРАЛЬНИХ МОВНИХ КОДІВ ЗАГАЛЬНОЛЮДСЬКИХ ЦІННОСТЕЙ (НА МАТЕРІАЛАХ ЗАПОЗИЧЕНЬ РОСІЙСЬКОЇ, УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ТА РУСИНСЬКОЇ ЛЕКСИКИ)

The article emphasizes that borrowed lexis can both enrich the language, expanding and deepening the consciousness, and clog it, narrowing the conscious reflection of the world. The authors specify the criteria for attributing the loanwords as littering or enriching the language and analyze the functioning of certain Ukrainian, Russian and Rusinian lexemes in the Russian and Ukrainian languages. It is noted that the senses of the word are determined not by separate words, but their clusters (families of words, stable phrases, etc.), with individual lexemes being able to indirectly affect the senses of other words without changing their meanings. Different languages and dialects have individual lexemes or loanwords, which, when lost, can affect the dynamics of formation of general concepts in closely related languages. The authors investage the linguistic codes in different languages that function in different ways and can exist for long without people realizing their senses. Having determined the specificity of evoking images (lexical meanings) and emotional connections (senses) in closely related languages, the authors find out that the same universal human values rely on unconscious speech codes and can be transmitted to descendants by various means in different languages: through the etymology of word families in one languages or through set-expressions in others. The researchers substantiate the possibility and necessity of borrowing individual lexemes as elements of sacral language codes of universal human values that could enrich literary languages both in quantity and quality.

Chrematonyms in the Professional Discourse of the Nuclear and Space Industry

The article focuses on studying chrematonyms in nuclear and space industry professional discourse. The analysis of 734 Russian, English, Italian, French, German, Polish and Japanese lexemes nominating spacecraft, spaceships, nuclear reactors and nuclear research facilities resulted in discovering three common ways in the process of generating and functioning of chrematonyms in the professional discourse, including a lexico-semantic nomination (formed by means of onimization of appellatives, transonymization of personal and precedent names, toponyms, chrematonyms and cosmonims, deonimization); the word-formation considers the sound, syllabic and mixed abbreviation, as well as the formation of compound words; the syntactic method involves the formation of simple and complex substantive combinations of words. The authors conclude that chrematonyms as a class of onims have a specific linguistic meaning, affecting the semantic generation of the proper name in an inanimate object of material culture and emphasizing the unique and differential feature of the object and point to their specifically professional linguistic feature: motivation, derivative character, terminological unity, and frequency of usage. The research demonstrates the following special aspects of functioning of chrematonyms in the professional discourse: play on words, allusions and metaphors, ameliorative and deteriorative connotative meanings, which reflect non-typical processes for professional lexis and perform a peace-maintaining function of the language.

Специфика концепта «семья» в русской и китайской лингвокультурах (на примере пословиц о семье)

The purpose of the study is to identify the similari-ties and differences in the content of the family concept in Russian and Chinese cultures, which can be achieved by flashbacks, question-naires, cultural, comparative, and lexicographic analysis. The author carried out a compara-tive analysis of Russian and Chinese linguistic worldview based on the study of the cultural and historical background to the concept of family in both cultures and an empirical survey of contempo-rary bearers of Russian and Chinese linguistic cultures. Respondents were asked to express their agreement or disagreement with family prov-erbs in their native language. The study reveals that family is of great value to both culture bearers. Most respondents agree with the proverbs that come down to the fact that a person cannot live without a family, there is no happiness without a family. It is concluded that differences in the content of the family concept have slightly decreased. Thus, the Russian lexeme ‘family’ used to refer not only to blood ties but also to spiritual kinship and belong-ing to the same social group while blood relation-ship was the only thing to identify a person as one’s own, a member of the family in Chinese culture. In present-day Chinese and Russian linguistic con-sciousness, family is defined identically as a group of (close) relatives living together. The difference is that the cult of the elders is proclaimed and filial piety is treated as a crucial element in Chinese cul-ture while the cult of children is peculiar to Russian culture.

СРАВНИТЕЛЬНО-СОПОСТАВИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ ЯДЕРНЫХ ЛЕКСЕМ КОНЦЕПТА ВОЗДУХ В РУССКОМ И ФРАНЦУЗСКОМ ЯЗЫКАХ

The article provides a comparative analysis of the nuclear lexemes of the concept AIR/ВОЗДУХ in the Russian and French languages. Similarities and differences between the French and Russian lexemes are identified. The findings allow the authors to conclude that the semantic filling of the lexemes “воздух” and “air”” coincides in almost all their meanings: “mixture of gases forming the Earth’s atmosphere”, “inspiratory environment of living beings”, “free space over the Earth”, “environment”. The distinctive feature of the nuclear lexeme “воздух” in the Russian language is the meaning “veil covering the Eucharistic cup”. In the French language, the nuclear lexeme “air” is distinguished by the meaning “gas motion”.

Вепсская свадебная терминология в этимологическом и лингвогеографическом аспектах (вепсское vs. русское)

The relevance and novelty of the study is based on the material of the “Linguistic Atlas of the Vepsian Language” (St. Petersburg, 2019), an etymological and linguo-geographical analysis of terms important from the point of view of spiritual culture that characterize the group of wedding vocabulary. The terms in question (designations of a wedding, bride and groom) fit both in the cultural background and in the language processes that were reflected in the formation of the dialectal areas of the Veps language. The results of a comparative analysis indicate the impact of the Russian language on a significant group of Veps dialects, which led to the supplantation and replacement of the main terms of the wedding ceremony with Russian lexemes ( wedding, bridegroom, bride ). The study emphasizes the peculiarity of the eastern (Belozersky) dialects (the periphery of the Veps language range), which retained their own terms for the names of the analyzed concepts. It is shown that these dialects are characterized by the conservation of archaic characters, the presence of rare (in this case, sai) and etymologically darkened (oluh) lexical items, which so far have not been able to detect etymons in related languages. The authors believe that this fact, coupled with other features of dialects, may indicate traces of the substrate, the origins of which have yet to be clarified.

Peculiarity of verbalization of family values in russian and kazakh paremias

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the verbalization of family values in the Russian and Kazakh paremias. As a result of the semantic analysis, common features and national-cultural differences are revealed. It was determined that in Russian and Kazakh proverbs the family is an important part of the people’s spiritual culture, which represents the moral priorities of peoples in such lexical-semantic groups as «The value of marriage and family; sacredness of marriage bonds», «Woman is the keeper of the family hearth», «Authority and honoring of parents», etc. These groups, in the opinion of the author of the article, embody the traditional family values of both Kazakhs and Russians. The peculiarity is found in the groups «Knowledge of the pedigree», «Big shanyrak», which are distinguished only on the basis of the analysis of the Kazakh paremias. Differences are also manifested at the level of Kazakh and Russian lexemes with national-cultural symbolic meaning, such as shanyrak, hut, courtyard, besik, akzhaulyk, domostroi, zhetі ata, aruakh, etc.

Лексическая репрезентация образа Китая в российском публицистическом дискурсе

The question of formation of language image of China in the Russian mass media is considered. The relevance of the study is due to the current political context, in which the creation of a positive image of a country for its residents and for representatives of other cultures is one of the tasks of domestic and foreign policy. The material for the study were the Russian lexemes for China, PRC, Celestial, Celestial Empire, Celestial Oecumene, which are found in publicistic texts extracted from the National corpus of the Russian language, the newspapers “Коммерсантъ” and “Аргументы и факты.” Through the discourse analysis the meanings associated with these proper names actualized in the contexts are identified. On the basis of the revealed pragmatic information, a dictionary entry is compiled in accordance with the principles of lexicographical description of synonymic series presented in the New Explanatory Dictionary of Synonyms of the Russian Language edited by Yu. D. Apresyan. It is noted that the ideas of the Moscow Semantic School (hereinafter - MSS) are very popular in China. It is shown that the integral dictionary description of synonymic series can be applied to proper names, which is not represented in either Russian or Chinese linguistics. The author comes to the conclusion that the image of China as a world leader with specific socio-cultural and political characteristics is formed in the Russian information space.

Northern Russian Etymologies: порочка, пёрыш, пёрко

This article puts forward etymological interpretations of several Northern Russian lexemes: порочка ‘a vessel in the form of a birch bark cylinder with a wooden bottom and a cover for the storage and transportation of milk, cottage cheese, flour, etc.’, ‘a scoop’, ‘a big reel of thread’, ‘a bunt’, etc., пёрыш ‘a winch, a hoist’, пёрко ‘a spindle, a bobbin of the spinning wheel’. According to the author, the source of these lexemes is the Finnic word family with the meaning of spinning and round forms: Fin. py o r a , py o ri a , Kar. p uo r a , Veps. p o ruda and others. To solve this etymological problem, the author refers to denotatively similar Finnic word families and explicates the logic of their semantic organisation. The discovered principles of semantic organisation of these word families indicate that very probably there were derivatives in the Finnic word family py o r a , whose semantics coincides with the semantics of etymologised Northern Russian lexemes. (These derivatives either have not survived or are not recorded in the modern word family). The author explains the logic of the emergence of all the word meanings considered. In addition to semantic organisation, the author considers the structural organisation of the supposed loanwords studying the possibilities of the formal aspect of the word-formation process in the donor language and the possibilities of word-formation adaptation in Russian. Besides, the article considers phonetic adaptation describing possible reasons for the discrepancy in the position of vowels in the etymon and in loanword порочка . The author assumes that this can be explained by the early nature of borrowing (prior to the е > ’о shift in Old Russian). At the same time, the author concedes that lexemes with a back vowel in the source language may also exist.

КОНТРАСТИВНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ ЛЕКСЕМЫ «ОРУЖИЕ» И ЕЁ ПЕРЕВОДНЫХ СООТВЕТСТВИЙ В АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

The article presents an attempt of a contrastive analysis of the lexeme “weapon” and its translation correspondences in English with the aim to determine the closest match. The basic material of the analysis is contrastive pairs, for which the indexes of denotative, connotative and functional identity of lexemes are identified. The material of the study is the Russian and the English explanatory dictionaries. As a result of the research, the authors come to the conclusion that the closest correspondence of the Russian lexeme “weapon” in English is the lexeme “weapon”.

Анализ переводов романа Дж. Остин "Sense and Sensibility" на русский язык

The purpose of the study is to analyze two Russian titles of J. Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility translated by Irina G. Gurova (1988) and Alla Yu. Frolova (2013). The meanings of the lexemes sense and sensibility in English (in the 18–19th centuries and nowadays) are compared with the meanings of their corresponding translations in the modern Russian language. The most important meanings of the Russian lexemes are identified by using associative databases: Russian regional associative dictionary-thesaurus EVRAS (Institute of Linguistics, RAS) and Russian regional associative database SIBAS (Institute of Linguistics, RAS; Institute of Philology, SB RAS; Novosibirsk State University). In the conclusion «Разум и чувство» [razum i chuvstvo] (i.e. Reason and Feeling) by Alla Yu. Frolova is argued to be the best relevant translation of the novel title. The author of the article also suggests her own possible Russian versions of the novel title, not only taking into account the opposition of the rational and irrational components, but also reflecting the alliteration that takes place in the English original. The analysis is a part of a larger research based on studying the full-text versions of J. Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility done by Russian and French translators.

The Lexeme вызов in the Contemporary Russian Language: The Extension of Semantic Structure

This article studies the extension of the semantic structure of the Russian lexeme вызов influenced by the English lexeme challenge . Based on explanatory Russian and English dictionaries, the author carries out componential analysis of lexical and semantic variants of the two lexemes. The aim of the analysis is to identify the reasons behind the emergence of a new lexical and semantic variant in the Russian language as related to the semantics of challenge . The comparison demonstrates that the Russian and English lexical units denominate the situation of language activity between two communicants connected by causative relations. Moreover, a new lexical and sematic variant is identified in the structure of lexeme challenge reflecting a special character of a causative situation where the causator is an inanimate object task , which induces an animate object to initiate a certain activity, pursuing a special goal meant to test their abilities and achieve a successful result. Due to shared lexical and semantic variants in the meanings of the two words, the semantic structure of the word вызов extends. During the componential analysis of вызов , the author detects new unique differential semes, such as “personal resource”, “newness / topicality”, “positive attitude” characteristic of the semantic structure of the lexeme challenge , which testifies to the linguocultural influence of the English word. Additionally, the seme “positive attitude” does not recur on a regular basis but is sporadic which is determined by the asymmetry of linguistic worldviews. The fact that new semantic components of lexeme вызов are actualised is verified by corpus-based research. The change of causative relations in the semantic structure leads a native speaker to adopt a new frame of reference which is not typical of Russian mentality, testing the person’s limit of ability facing new problems.

Russian Lexemes in Slovene Lexicography in the second half of the 19th century

Russian Lexemes in Slovene Lexicography in the second half of the 19th century

К этимологической интерпретации севернорусских слов со значением ‘врать, обманывать’ (влг. колы́жить, арх. древúть, влг. обрязáнить, новг. чмурúть и др.)

The article is devoted to the search for the etymological interpretation of some words with the semantics of lies and deceit. Material for the study were the Russian dialectal lexemes functioning mainly in the Russian North (Vologda, Arkhangelsk and Novgorod dialects). In some cases the author refers to unpublished field records of a card file of the Dictionary of dialects of the Russian North, stored at the Department of Russian Language, General Linguistics and Speech Communication, Ural Federal University. Interpreted words were not previously considered in the etymological literature or have disputable interpretation that ensures the relevance and novelty of the research. Among the analyzed lexemes are dialect words kolyzhit’ ‘to lie’, drevit’ ‘to talk nonsense, to lie’, obryazanit’ ‘to deceive, to cheat’, chmurit’ ‘to pretend, to deceive’, gnezdit’ ‘to lie’, oturit’ ‘to cheat’, each of which is the subject of a separate part of the article. These words are considered as a part of the enclosing etymological-derivational nests. The analysis involves a typological semantic and derivational parallels, the author also refers to the motivational models of nomination, that contributes to the reliability of the results.

ANALYSIS OF MEANING OF THE TOLERANCE, ТОЛЕРАНТНОСТЬ AND ТЕРПИМОСТЬ LEXEMES (IN THE ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES)

Цель. Настоящее исследование представляет собой сопоставительный анализ лексем tolerance в английском языке и толерантность и терпимость в русском. Сравниваются как словарные, так и контекстуальные значения данных лексем на материале данных языковых корпусов. Метод и методология проведения работы. В работе используется метод словарных дефиниций, метод сплошной выборки, сравнение и сопоставление, интерпретация, анализ, классификация. Результаты. В результате проведения исследования выявляются такие словарные значения лексемы tolerance, как 1) стойкость / выносливость (endurance), 2) позволение / допущение (permission), 3) терпимость / снисходительность (forebearance) и 4) допустимое отклонение (an allowable amount of variation); лексемы толерантность: 1) стойкость / переносимость (в медицине и физиологии), 2) терпимость / снисходительность; и лексемы терпимость: 1) выносимость (как качество объекта), 2) снисходительность / широта взглядов. Однако при анализе контекстов употреблений слов толерантность и терпимость выявляются также значения позволение / допущение и стойкость / выносливость, не указанные в словарях. Данный факт может служить указанием на изменение значений слов вследствие влияния английского языка. Из-за неопределенности значения лексемы толерантность в русском языке у адресантов иногда возникают сложности с ее коннотацией. Область применения результатов. Результаты данного исследования могут найти широкое применение в области теории и практики межкультурной коммуникации, а также теории и практики перевода и лексикологии.