Russian Nouns Research Articles

Struktura imennoj gruppy v bezartiklevom jazyke [Structure of the Noun Phrase in an articleless language] by Ekaterina A. Lyutikova

Reviewed by: Struktura imennoj gruppy v bezartiklevom jazyke [Structure of the Noun Phrase in an articleless language] by Ekaterina A. Lyutikova Nerea Madariaga1 Ekaterina A. Lyutikova. Struktura imennoj gruppy v bezartiklevom jazyke [Structure of the Noun Phrase in an articleless language]. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul'tury, 2018. 438 pp. This book represents a milestone in an academic life largely dedicated to the formal and comparative-typological study of the noun phrase in diverse natural languages. As Professor Lyutikova acknowledges in the introduction, this book is a compilation of many of the data and results of her productive and fruitful career, paying special attention to those phenomena related to the nominal domain, recently gathered together in her post-doctoral (habilitation) thesis.2 In this work, the author argues in favor of a unified micro-parametric account for the differences between NPs in languages with articles and articleless languages. More specifically, she provides arguments in favor of a lexical parametrization of the D category (cf. the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture), in the sense that articleless languages do have a real, albeit silent, D head, whereas in languages with articles D is lexically realized. Her hypothesis is grounded in certain ideas that are well-established in the field, such as the categorial status and semantic interpretation of NPs and the universality of the syntax-semantic interface (the syntactic representation of the semantic types). The book is organized according to the following structure. There is a brief introduction. Then, the main chapters of the book (chapters 1 to 4) follow, each dedicated to one "big" topic concerning the nominal domain in formal syntax. These chapters acquaint the reader with the author's arguments in favor of a unified account of D in all natural languages, despite the absence of overt articles in some of them. In addition to the partial conclusions given at [End Page 227] the end of each chapter, there is a final short conclusion at the end, followed by a list of abbreviations, references, and languages mentioned in the book. In the Introduction (9–21), the author defines two ways of examining linguistic variation, the typological and the generative frameworks, highlighting the differences between the two approaches and arguing in favor of the notion of parameter as a way to account for the linguistic diversity, restricting it at the same time. The global cross-linguistic situation and distribution of articleless languages vs. languages with articles is described, together with the most relevant hypotheses on the topic: (A) Szabolcsi's (1987) DP-hypothesis that every NP has an extended functional projection realized as D and (B) Bošković's (2008) proposal that articleless languages lack the D category and have only NP. Throughout the subsequent chapters, Lyutikova pursues the former hypothesis, showing that even articleless languages do project a DP-level the same as languages with articles. Chapter 1 (23–125) deals with the structure of DP. The author shows that certain properties of the DP-layer in languages with articles are also met in articleless languages. First she explains the arguments supporting hypothesis (B) above, based on Left Branch Extraction, semantic types, and the "adjectival" nature of potential D-elements in articleless languages and immediately rejects them in favor of her own hypothesis (A). Further, she offers extensive arguments in favor of hypothesis (A), based on the landing position of elements undergoing inversion, the interpretation of possessives according to their position, the distribution of whole DPs vs. smaller phrases (NP/QP) in articleless languages, and the "barrier" properties of DPs, as compared to "penetrability" effects of smaller NPs, in accordance with Pereltsvaig's (2006) hypothesis on Small Nominals. These effects are illustrated with data that range from island and extraction properties in Russian idioms to properties of argumental completive clauses in Ossetian, another articleless language. For example, rarer combinations of light verbs plus deverbal nouns in Russian (e.g., zaslužit′ prava 'deserve rights') behave as DPs in languages with articles, evidencing a rich functional structure in Russian nominal phrases, whereas other more frequent or natural combinations show the properties of smaller NPs (e.g., imet′ prava 'have rights'). In chapter 2 (127–92), Lyutikova offers a detailed analysis of the...

Features of the adaptationof educational migrants in the bilingual environment

The authors of the article examine the most significant issues that are related to the peculiarities of the manifestation of interference in the closely related languages – Russian and Ukrainian. Despite the fact that official Ukrainian Studies usually consider Ukraine a single-level and monolingual state, it must be admitted that the Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism is a system-forming feature of the linguistic situation in most Ukrainian regions. The authors describe and analyze the types of difficulties that are caused by the peculiarities of interlingual interference of closely related languages, and give linguistic and methodical recommendations for overcoming such issues. Interlingual interference covers all language levels and is especially pronounced at the phonetic level since there are significant differences in the systems of vocalism and consonantism. At the phonetic level, interference appears at the early stage of developing listening and pronunciation skills. At the grammatical level, there are differences between similar Russian and Ukrainian nouns in their gender and number. Another difficulty lies in the fact that some lexical units in these two languages sound the same but have different meanings. The inability to distinguish such words causes multiple errors. Differences in the characteristics of closely related linguistic systems are also observed in speech etiquette, which is especially important when teaching a language to educational migrants. One of the possible props for overcoming interference is an active learner’s vocabulary, which should become an assistant in mastering a language. The authors hope that the recommendations outlined in the article will help to overcome the arising difficulties and make the process of teaching foreign students a second non-native language easier and more successful.

Спортивная метафора в текстах газетной печати ХV Международного конкурса имени П. И. Чайковского

The article presents the analysis of the examples of metaphor of sport in classical music. The material of the above-mentioned phenomenon has been extracted from the press of The XV International Tchaikovsky Competition. The purpose is to describe the examples of sports terminology used as a metaphor in classical music competitions context. The studied material is divided into six lexical-thematic groups. The analysis focuses on Russian nouns, however, the article is complemented with examples of adjectives and verbs. The analyzed material shows that sports terminology can be applied successfully in depicting musical events such as The XV International Tchaikovsky Competition.

The neural correlates of case and inflection in the processing of morphologically complex words: An fMRI study of Russian nouns

Chapter 14 introduces a non-singular terminal sliding mode funnel control for servo systems with unknown input saturation. A smooth and affine function is used to approximate the input saturation dynamics. A funnel constraint variable is utilized in constructing the non-singular terminal sliding mode control (NTSMC) to make the tracking error fall within a prescribed bound. Neural network (NN) is also used to cope with other unknown system dynamics. The effectiveness is demonstrated by simulation results.

Agentive (para)synthetic compounds in Russian: a quantitative study of rival constructions

The paper compares two rival word-formation constructions giving rise to compound agent nouns in Russian, i.e., (para)synthetic compounds formed with the agentive suffixes -ec and -tel’, such as basnopisec ‘fable writer’ and bytopisatel’ ‘everyday-life writer’. To understand what makes these constructions different from one another, compounds in -ec and -tel’ are analyzed based on a number of formal and semantic criteria, i.e., the part of speech and semantic role of the non-verbal element of the compound, the transitivity and formal aspect of the verbal base of the compound, the animacy of the compound’s referent, and the semantics of the compound. The study is supported by statistical analyses, i.e., conditional inference trees and random forests, which help discriminate the behavior of rival constructions and determine which parameters are more relevant for the comparison. To understand whether diachronic and/or stylistic factors also affect the survival of rival constructions, the data are checked in the Russian National Corpus, which allows retrieving information about the texts in which compounds occur, such as their creation date and textual genre. Finally, the productivity of rival word-formation constructions in modern Russian is discussed both in terms of diachronic changes and in terms of restrictions that the two constructions are subject to. The analyses carried out demonstrate that the two constructions show significant differences regarding their semantics, but also their diachronic and stylistic distribution, as well as their productivity, which prevents one construction from completely ousting the other in modern Russian.

Less is more: why all paradigms are defective, and why that is a good thing

AbstractOnly a fraction of lexemes are encountered in all their paradigm forms in any corpus or even in the lifetime of any speaker. This raises a question as to how it is that native speakers confidently produce and comprehend word forms that they have never witnessed. We present the results of an experiment using a recurrent neural network computational learning model. In particular, we compare the model’s production of unencountered forms using two types of training data: full paradigms vs. single word forms for Russian nouns, verbs, and adjectives. In the long run, the model displays better performance when exposed to the more naturalistic training on single word forms, even though the other training data is much larger as it includes full paradigms for each and every word. We discuss why “defective” paradigms may be better for human learners as well.

What is Difficult about Grammatical Gender? Evidence from Heritage Russian

The paper examines the role of lexical, morphological, and discourse-referential factors in gender assignment with animate nouns in heritage Russian in order to explore the extent to which these different interfaces are challenging in heritage language acquisition. The analysis of concordant and discordant agreement patterns with nouns representing each type of gender categorization mechanism points to unequal difficulty associated with different types of gender allocation strategies. In particular, heritage speakers converge with baseline speakers in rating possible and impossible agreement combinations in the presence of fixed and transparent lexical and morphological gender categorization cues; however, they display non-target-like judgments of unmarked and underspecified forms characterized by variable agreement behavior (i.e., hybrid nouns and common gender nouns). Problems with forms whose gender reference is disambiguated at the level of discourse point to the syntax-discourse interface as a locus of systematic difficulty for heritage language speakers.

A Three-Dimensional Model of the Affect Structure Based on Russian Data

The well-known modern dimensional models of affect include two or three dimensions. They are typically based on self-reports using English emotion terms. It remains unclear to what extent these models can be applied to different cultures and languages. The present study is aimed at finding the dimensions underlying the descriptions of emotional states in Russian and suggests a structural model of affect based on these findings. At the first stage, a comprehensive list of Russian nouns denoting emotional states was compiled. It comprised 330 words and was reduced to a list of 56 words. At the second stage, participants rated their emotional states using this list. The exploratory factor analysis yielded three dimensions that underlay participant descriptions of the emotional states – negative affect with low activation, positive affect with high activation, and tension. This model is compared to other structural models of affect and its special features are discussed. This model can be used for developing Russian-based measures for the assessment of mood.

Взаимодействие эмоциональных и лингвистических факторов в процессе переработки лексической информации (на материале имен существительных русского языка)

Взаимодействие эмоциональных и лингвистических факторов в процессе переработки лексической информации (на материале имен существительных русского языка)

Сопоставительный анализ статистических мер на примере частеречных преференций сочетаемости существительных

Применение квантитативных методов к корпусному материалу позволяет исследователям количественно оценить получаемые данные. Наряду с наиболее часто используемыми мерами для вычисления силы связанности в рамках словосочетаний, такими как MI , t -score или log -likelihood , существуют и иные коэффициенты, которые реже упоминаются в исследованиях, посвященных автоматическому выделению коллокаций. В статье представлен обзор некоторых из данных метрик, в том числе обсуждаются их основные характеристики. Производится их сравнение на материале биграмм для некоторых высокочастотных русских существительных.

Morphosyntax of Gender in Russian Sex-Differentiable Nouns

Morphosyntax of Gender in Russian Sex-Differentiable Nouns

Согласуемые и субстантивированные прилагательные в русских конструкциях с малыми числительными: экспериментальное исследование

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.

Зоолексика в семантическом аспекте (на примере отзоонимных существительных)

The article is devoted to semantic analysis zoonymic vocabulary of the Russian language. The paper presents definitions of terms zoonym and zoolexis . The characteristic of Russian nouns derived from zoonyms is given from the point of view of grammatical semantics. In accordance with the nature of grammatical semantics of nouns derived from zoonyms their semantic classes are distinguished. The focus is on the description of the whole semantic groups of nouns derived from zoonyms with a particular meaning. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that nouns derived from zoonyms with the meaning of a particular item represent a considerable variety among all nouns derived from zoonyms (383 of 489 recorded in derivational dictionary) and are an important part of zoonymic vocabulary in nominative and communicative aspect. On the basis of definition and contextual analysis of lexical units the authors divided them into groups. It is shown that the semantic grouping of nouns derived from zoonyms with the specific meaning depend on belonging to a lexico-grammatical category of animate or inanimate nouns, as lexical representatives of each category form different semantic groups that have certain characteristics. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that for the first time the Russian nouns derived from zoonyms and naming animals fully analysed from the point of view of semantics.

Способы и средства выражения времени в предложно-падежной системе русского языка

Способы и средства выражения времени в предложно-падежной системе русского языка

Perceptual Experience Norms for 506 Russian Nouns: Modality Rating, Spatial Localization, Manipulability, Imageability and Other Variables.

A number of new psycholinguistic variables has been proposed during the last years within embodied cognition framework: modality experience rating (i.e., relationship between words and images of a particular perceptive modality-visual, auditory, haptic etc.), manipulability (the necessity for an object to interact with human hands in order to perform its function), vertical spatial localization. However, it is not clear how these new variables are related to each other and to such traditional variables as imageability, AoA and word frequency. In this article, normative data on the modality (visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory, and gustatory) ratings, vertical spatial localization of the object, manipulability, imageability, age of acquisition, and subjective frequency for 506 Russian nouns are presented. Strongest correlations were observed between olfactory and gustatory modalities (.81), visual modality and imageability (.78), haptic modality and manipulability (.7). Other modalities also significantly correlate with imageability: olfactory (.35), gustatory (.24), and haptic (.67). Factor analysis divided variables into four groups where visual and haptic modality ratings were combined with imageability, manipulability and AoA (the first factor); word length, frequency and AoA formed the second factor; olfactory modality was united with gustatory (the third factor); spatial localization only is included in the fourth factor. Present norms of imageability and AoA are consistent with previous as correlation analysis has revealed. The complete database can be downloaded from supplementary material.

O175 High-density ERPS for working memory for faces, words, and figures in young and elder healthy volunteers

Objectives We aimed at studying brain electrical activity underlying the changes in working memory encoding for different kinds of visual stimuli, related to healthy aging. Methods The participants were young healthy adults (10 female and 12 male), aged 20–30 years and elder healthy adults (12 female and 12 male), aged 50–70 years. All participants performed three delayed match-to-sample visual tasks. The stimuli were monochrome photographs of unfamiliar faces, patterns composed of 8 cubes, and 5-letter Russian abstract nouns. Participants had to memorize the first stimulus in a pair and compare it to the second stimulus presented with 2000 ms delay. 128-channel EEG was recorded with 500 Hz digitization rate. We analyzed the visual response elicited by the first stimulus in a pair and the following slow potential (CNV). Results The task-specific age-related differences ( p 0.05 ) were found in N170 component. Its amplitude was reduced for geometric patterns, and enhanced for faces and words in Elder compared to Young group. The differences were task-specific in their topography in 450–900 ms time window (LPP) and in early CNV. The non-specific age-related amplitude reduction ( p 0.05 ) in elders was in P100 and P300 components, and the non-specific amplitude increase was in N280 and CNV in the central region. Discussion Brain activity during visual item encoding and maintenance showed task-specific and non-specific differences between elder and young healthy participants, depending on the latency of the recorded components of evoked activity. Conclusions The non-specific increased electrical brain activity recorded from the scalp surface in Elder group can be a manifestation of general compensatory processes taking place in the certain brain structures in healthy aging. Significance The results may have a prognostic value for healthy aging vs. age-related memory problems.

Neural Correlates of Morphology Acquisition through a Statistical Learning Paradigm.

The neural basis of statistical learning as it occurs over time was explored with stimuli drawn from a natural language (Russian nouns). The input reflected the “rules” for marking categories of gendered nouns, without making participants explicitly aware of the nature of what they were to learn. Participants were scanned while listening to a series of gender-marked nouns during four sequential scans, and were tested for their learning immediately after each scan. Although participants were not told the nature of the learning task, they exhibited learning after their initial exposure to the stimuli. Independent component analysis of the brain data revealed five task-related sub-networks. Unlike prior statistical learning studies of word segmentation, this morphological learning task robustly activated the inferior frontal gyrus during the learning period. This region was represented in multiple independent components, suggesting it functions as a network hub for this type of learning. Moreover, the results suggest that subnetworks activated by statistical learning are driven by the nature of the input, rather than reflecting a general statistical learning system.

«ROSIISKO-UKRAINSKYI SLOVNYK SKLADNOI LEKSYKY» BY S. KARAVANSKYI AS THE STAGE ON THE WAY TO NATIONAL RENAISSANCE

The article considers the structure peculiarities of lexicographical study by S. Karavanskyi. By means of general scientific and descriptive methods the article analyses the word, collocation and phraseme models formed in the interpretation part of the dictionary entry according to the Ukrainian language laws, i. e. the Ukrainian equivalents given to the Russian nouns with the meaning of process ending in -ание, -ение, -ка, to active and passive participles ending in -щий, -щийся, -(в)ший, -вшийся, -мый, to certain nouns, verbs, adjectives (in particular, the ones with the suffix -очн- and components -видный, -образный, -подобный), to pronouns and collocations with them (phrasemes). The investigation is to contribute to the scholars’ comprehensive approach to the issue of the Ukrainian word revival as the abundant dictionary material is the basis for further development of the Ukrainian language in general which will in practice allow the user to distinguish between the indigenous language models and the awkward calques “cultivated” under various historical circumstances.

Parafoveal processing of inflectional morphology on Russian nouns

ABSTRACTThe present study investigated whether inflectional morphology on Russian nouns is processed parafoveally during silent reading. The boundary-change paradigm [Rayner, K. (1975). The perceptual span and peripheral cues in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 65–81] was used to examine parafoveal processing of nominal case markings of Russian nouns. The results yielded preview cost for morphologically related preview in gaze duration (vs. an identical baseline) and in total time (TT) (vs. a non-word baseline) and preview benefit in regressions out of the target word. The contribution of the study is two-fold. First this is the first demonstration that bound nominal inflectional morphemes are processed parafoveally in a language with linear concatenated morphology (Russian). Second the observed preview effects suggest that parafoveal preview of a morphologically related word was processed fully in the parafovea and interfered with the integration of the target word into the syntactic structure of the sentence.

Creativity in translation through the lens of contact linguistics: a multilingual corpus of A Clockwork Orange

ABSTRACT​​​​Existing studies on the translation of Nadsat – the invented language in the novella A Clockwork Orange – do not provide an in-depth examination of Nadsat as a result of language contact between English and Russian, and ignore the role that translators play in linguistic innovation, as well as the motivating factors behind their creativity. This study addresses this conspicuous gap by examining a multilingual corpus of A Clockwork Orange from a language contact and language change perspective, and creating for the first time a link between adaptation, as understood in contact linguistics, and creativity in translation. The focus is on how Russian-derived nouns in the English version have been rendered in four versions of Nadsat (French, German, Greek, and Spanish), and how these differ from naturally occurring Russian loan nouns in these languages, in terms of gender assignment and inflectional suffixes. Results suggest that the level of creativity that translators demonstrate is not simply an indication of their talent, but rather a result of an interplay of factors related to translation, and that concepts from the field of language contact are particularly effective in reframing the way in which creativity is viewed in translation studies.