Fictional Texts Research Articles

Lexical indicators of exaggeration and understatement of the time of the English language (based on the material of literary texts)

The subject of the study is the exaggeration and understatement of the phenomenon in the modern English art text. The object of the study are nouns that act as a means of depicting an exaggerated and understated time continuum. The author examines in detail the semantics of such lexemes as second, minute, moment, year, hour, day, age and their changes within the framework of combinations with other lexical units, during which time intervals are stretched or narrowed. Special attention is paid to the presence of dictionary and author's phrases in the fiction text of the fiction genre, their quantitative calculation and analysis of the frequency of use. The novelty of the research lies in the search for new non-dictionary and author's phrases that are able to reflect time in terms of its exaggeration and understatement. Such an image of time affects the description of the hero, their actions, the characteristics of not only places, but also specific characters. A special flow of time in the context of a fiction genre literary text is caused by a different flow of the time continuum. The main conclusions of the study are the identification of a high frequency of the use of non-dictionary phrases for exaggeration and understatement of time, as well as a change in the meaning of dictionary phrases that are enclosed in the context of a dicteme that allows to expand the semantics of the proposed vocabulary combination of lexemes.

Модальность достоверности как модусная категория коммуникативного уровня (на материале английского языка)

The aim of the study is to clarify the communicative specificity of certainty as a particular modus meaning of the category of modality on the material of the English language. With the development of linguistic thought and the accumulation of theoretical information about modality, the ideas about its categorical belonging have undergone significant changes. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the approach to the modality of certainty as a particular modus meaning within the category of modality on the communicative level. Modality is attributed to different types of categories, such as grammatical or syntactical and semantic or functional-semantic ones, to the conceptual category. During last decades, the idea about necessity of assigning modality to the communicative category has been sounding more and more persistently. In this article, we present the analysis of modern researchers’ views on the communicative category and the modality of certainty. The received results allow considering the modality of certainty within the limits of the modus category of modality of the communicative level. The modality of certainty serves to subjectively qualify a message in terms of assessing the extent to which it corresponds to objective reality in the interests of the speaker. This conclusion was illustrated in the article by examples from English-language fiction texts.

Old slavicisms in modern discourse practices

The Old Slavic language is one of the sources of borrowings that entered the Ukrainian language system. Many scientific investigations describe the stylistic functions of old slavonicisms in the texts of classical and modern fiction.
 The article analyzes the usage of elements learned from the Old Slavic language in various discourses.
 Old Slavic elements are an organic part of the lexical composition of religious discourse texts, in particular, preaching discourse addressed to a mass audience. In the works of this genre, lexical units that have counterparts in the Ukrainian language are attested, but the authors also widely use book forms. Many lexemes learned from the Old Slavic language retain their connection with the source language, but have undergone assimilation processes, especially at the morphological level.
 We observe variants of Church Slavonicisms and their Ukrainian equivalents in the texts: древо (tree) – дерево (tree), прихід (coming) – пришестя (coming), родитися (be born) – рождатися (be born).
 The lexemes, which include elements borrowed from the Old Slavic language (for example, with the components blago-), have an evaluative function, which causes a wide range of their compatibility and use in different styles.
 Lexical units with the suffix -тель entered the official business discourse, they are the names of persons by activity, some of which are official names of professions: учитель (teacher), хранитель (keeper), as well as the lexeme вихователь (educator), which was formed on Ukrainian basis, with the help of an Old Slavic word-forming affix. Lexemes to denote persons with the suffix -тель are used in modern legal practice: управитель (manager), довіритель (principal), засідатель (assessor).
 In everyday discourse, the analyzed vocabulary primarily expresses realia related to the religious worldview. It is used in prayer appeals to Saints, discourse formulas of warning, and rituals. Household discourse widely attests to the creation of derivatives from Old Slavic lexemes.

The magazine Monos y Monadas from Rosario: literary illustrations and political vignettes

The text deals with the participation of Ricardo Warecki and other artists in the second period of the magazine Monos y Monadas, published in Rosario (Argentina) between June 1934 and January 1936, from an articulation that takes into account its graphic-journalistic proposal and its political position. At first, the general aspects that shape the project and its transformations are examined, to then consider the interventions of Ricardo Warecki, which range from illustrations for literary fiction texts to vignettes and political cartoons. Our hypothesis holds that, while the images for tales and short stories allude to timeless themes and styles of the interwar period, the satirical cartoons allow us to glimpse the political affinities of the magazine.

Fictional Concept and Peculiarities of its Functioning in the Text

The article attempts to present and clarify a fictional concept, its distinctive properties and ways of its functioning in a literary text. Being considered as the main unit of the conceptual analysis of a fiction work, the concept expresses the conceptual meanings of the text, realizing the function of reflecting the individual author's world picture and the information embedded in it. The relevance of the article is confirmed by the prevalence of conceptual analysis in the field of many linguistic sciences, which generates additional study of the essential units of this analysis fictional concepts. This presupposes the main purpose of the article, which consists in identifying the specific features of a fictional concept found in a literary work, as well as in considering the features of its implementation in the text. The consideration of concepts in fiction texts made it possible to identify their distinctive features: imagery, evaluativeness, emotiveness, associativity, symbolism and dynamic character. Another specific feature of a fictional concept is its contextual determinism, which is based on the dependence of the concept on the type of context (linguistic and extralinguistic). Moreover, it became possible to identify a vivid feature of fictional concept that differentiates it from other cognitive concepts the ability to reflect an individual author's fictional world picture. This property is manifested in the expression of the conceptual meanings of the text by fictional concepts. Analysis of fictional concepts can be applied while analyzing and interpreting literary texts and building their conceptual spheres.

Types of Interlingual Equivalents of Phraseological Units and Metaphors in Literary Translation

In the following research, the types of interlingual phraseological equivalents, similes, and some metaphors in the novels of Turgenev Rudin and A Nest of the Gentry are studied from the perspective of their structure, semantics, and origin; attention is paid to differences related to the specifics of realia and lacunae translation (when reproduced in Slovak and English). We focus on biblical and ancient phraseology, aphorisms, catchphrases, allusions, reminiscences, and similes, which are translated in different ways. Based on the theory of equivalence in general and the translation of idioms in the fiction text, and the principle of structural-semantic modeling and variability of phraseological units, analogs and partial equivalents are analyzed from the point of existing lexical-grammatical and stylistic differences and formal-semantic transformations. The latter is a sign of the specific idiostyle and individual writer’s manner of Turgenev. When the original phraseological unit is translated without noticeable emotional and expressive connotations with the help of metaphors or a free word combination, or when, on the contrary, a free word combination or metaphor is replaced by a phraseological equivalent, various cases of transfer, reproduction of figurative and expressive means, and literary and lexical tropes are distinguished. In the meantime, the original phraseological unit may correspond to a comparative phrase during translation.

Translation of prose fiction texts: An exploratory study

Prose fiction can be defined as a form of writing which uses the natural flow of speech and follows the standards and conventions of academic writing and create a sense of appreciation through language style. Having this in mind, the author believes that inclusion of words which have equivalences in the target language when unneeded for translation makes a negative impact on both language style of the translated version and acquisition of the target language. Inspired by this conviction, this study addressed two questions. First, “Does inclusion of words that exist in the original language of a prose fiction text when unneeded for translation negatively impact language style of the translated version?” Second, “Does inclusion of words that exist in the original language of a prose fiction text when unneeded for translation negatively impacts acquisition of the target language?” For data collection methods, the author designed a questionnaire involving all three categories of respondents in this study: EFL university students, EFL instructors, and avid readers. Furthermore, the author conducted a semi-structured interview involving instructors and avid readers. The findings reveal that most of the subjects asserted that including words which have equivalent expressions in the target language when unneeded for translation would negatively impact language style of the translated version and acquisition of the target language. In light of this study’s findings, translators of prose fiction texts are advised to avoid including any words which have equivalents in the target language when unneeded as this may negatively impact language style and language acquisition.

The Pragmatics of Fiction: Literature, Stage and Screen Discourse

The Pragmatics of Fiction: Literature, Stage and Screen Discourse

Репрезентация концепта КОМАР в эвенской языковой картине мира

The research is aimed at the complete description of the concept MOSQUITO in the Even language picture of the world. The scientific novelty consists in the description of the concept MOSQUITO in the Evens study with the linguocultural aspect. As a result, it is revealed that the concept MOSQUITO in the ethnic language consciousness is a part of macronomial field of the summer season. The key lexemes-representatives кулин and куличан date back to the Tunguso-Manchurian root кули- and have the general definition ‘insect’. The derivation field of the concept is represented by a small set of verb lexemes. The figurative content of the concept MOSQUITO is identified in the speech of dialect speakers, in the texts of fiction and folklore discourses and is represented with the comparative constructions formalized by the formants -мдас, -гчин, -гичин, the adverb урэчин, the metaphors and methonymic transfers. It is substantiated that the anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, vital, ornithological and subject features are the prevailing figurative conceptual characteristics. Value and assessment components expressed by the lexical units with expressive assessment in the Even language show the world perception and negative attitude of the native speakers towards the nature phenomena MOSQUITO.

Strange Forms

Strange Forms

TV series as disseminators of emerging vocabulary: Non-codified expressions in the TV Corpus

Abstract This study presents a method for identifying words that appear in corpus data earlier than their first date of attestation in dictionaries. We demonstrate the application of this method based on a large diachronic corpus, the TV Corpus, and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Combining automatic extraction of candidate terms from the TV Corpus with comprehensive manual analysis and verification, the method identifies 32 words that were used in TV series before their first attestation in the OED. We present a detailed discussion of these words, analysing their distribution across decades and genres of the TV Corpus, their origins, semantic domains and word-formation processes. We also present extracts with their first uses in the TV Corpus and analyse how the words were presented to the large and anonymous mass audience. Our study shows that the method we present is suitable for identifying early attestations of words in large corpora, even though in the case of the TV Corpus, a great deal of manual analysis and verification is needed. In addition, we argue that TV series and other types of fictional texts are an important resource for studying the coinage and spread of terms, due to their function and the fact that they address a mass audience.

A New Focus on Cityscapes in Late Medieval German Literature: Rudolf von Ems and Heinrich Kaufringer

Historians have studied the medieval city from many different perspectives already, and even literary historians have endeavoured to identify the evidence in fictional texts pertaining to urban spaces and figures. In many cases, however, the cities as they emerge before our eyes are rather imaginary or dream-like, and lack in historical specificity. This situation changed, as this article demonstrates, with the case of Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart (ca. 1220) and the verse narratives by Heinrich Kaufringer (ca. 1400). This study examines the data we can cull from both sides and presents it as the crucial indicator for the emergence of a new literary discourse dedicated to the world of late medieval cities. We begin to discover, though not yet in any consistent way, the formation of urban protagonists and of narrative contexts that are predicated on urban settings.

Possibilities of Creating Positive and Negative Emotional Fields in a Fictional Text (based the the 20th century Georgian Brief Fictional Prose)

The only tool for the author to share the feelings and express their spiritual world to the readers is linguistic means; Emotion is transformed in language which, at the same time, represents the principal focus for linguistics i.e. the ways how and for what purpose does the linguistic unit of language and speech denote emotion. The goal of the manuscript is to observe brief fictional prose, in particular, to show the linguistic possibilities of creating a positive and negative emotional field, which are characteristic for this type of texts. The research analysis has revealed that there are two main ways to create a positive or negative emotional mood in the reader: 1. The writer himself offers an assessment of the character's condition or circumstances by using appropriate emotional language means; 2. The writer presents the external world seen by the character, characterized by emotional-evaluative lexical units. It has been revealed that adjectives and verbs are the most frequently used in creating an emotional field; Depending on the context, the noun as the key word of the idea acquires an emotional load. An especially interesting feature was found to be the emotional interjection, as it expresses the characters' mood, feelings and emotions and is most distinguished by high emotional expressiveness; There predominates interjections connected with sadness, pain, surprise. There are also many religious words and phrases serving as interjections. There are the cases when the contrast and superiority of the positive emotions against the negatively painted situation causes emotion and, sometimes, the sudden, unexpected ending of the literary text is characterized by sharp emotionality. Emotionally colored lexical units appear mainly in two ways while creating the emotional field: 1. One word in a sentence or the same part of speech is characterized by more emotionality; 2. Several different parts of speech create an emotional context.

Literary Cinematography as a Narrative Strategy in a Fiction Text (E. Canetti “Voices of Marrakech”)

The work of the Austrian writer, Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti (1905—1994) is studied in the aspect of literary cinematography, indicating the synthesis of literature and cinema, in particular, in the choice of means for implementing audiovisuality in a literary text. The phenomenon under study is considered on the material of the book “Voices of Marrakesh. Notes after a Journey” (“Die Stimmen von Marrakesch. Aufzeichnungen nach einer Reise”), the composition of which uses the montage principle, which combines fourteen chapters into a single whole. An attempt was made to identify the originality of Canetti’s idiostyle from the perspective of literary cinematography, which determines the novelty and relevance of the study. The authors proceed from the fact that literary cinematography can be considered as a narrative strategy that includes not only communication with the reader, but also “auto-communication” (Yu. M. Lotman). The question is raised about the significance of the acoustic element (“acoustic mask”) in creating the image of a foreign culture, linguistic means of realizing cinematography are revealed. The methodological basis of this article is the research of domestic and foreign scientists concerning both the narrative nature of a literary text and literary cinematography.

Particular features of a semiotic approach in transmedia franchises study

The article is devoted to the revealing of semiotic approach specificity in the study of media franchises as the results of transmedia storytelling. The transmedia franchises’ research needs a certain revision of some semiotic notions. In particular, the present article deals with the study of iconic signs’ functioning in the media franchises. The classic definition of iconic sign proposed by Ch. S. Peirce and based on some similarity of icon and its object, seems to contradict to the fictional text characteristics as “denotation without denotate” made by G. Gennette, which means that signs of a fiction work don’t have referents in the extratextual reality. In the article the attempt was made to eliminate this collision, using the understanding of the iconic sign by Umberto Eco, on the one hand, and the principle of “minimal departure” by M.-L. Ryan, on the other. The article concludes that the products of fiction are often nothing more than a result of combination of existing objects or of their parts that creates the illusion of a realism of the fictional world’ characters and locations and retains the credibility of the audience members. The article also deals with the specificity of the notion “semiosis” in the transmedia franchises study. In the case of a fictional world that is constantly expanding and detailing thanks to transmedia storytelling, we are dealing with a specific, transmedia semiosis, in which each new work of the franchise is a kind of interpretant for the other texts included in it.

Возможности Национального корпуса русского языка для определения закономерностей функционирования русских причастий

The Internet is a source of quantitative information for quantitative morphological research. This article introduces the possibilities for using the National Corpus of the Russian Language to define the quantitative indicators of Russian participles. This approach made it possible to correlate the frequency and patterns of participles based on the search options provided by the Corpus. The research featured participial contexts extracted by continuous sampling from Russian fiction. The methodology included the quantitative-morphological analysis, comparative-comparative method, and descriptive-analytical method. Internet search proved to be a reliable source of linguistic material suitable for identifying the usage frequency of a certain participial form and its speech patterns. The method may be used to profile participial patterns in fiction texts.

CONVERGENCE OF STYLISTIC DEVICES AS A CATEGORY OF REDUNDANCY

The article considers the linguistic phenomenon of redundancy in a fiction text as an essential factor that ensures an adequate interpretation of information by the addressee. Particular attention is paid to the convergence of stylistic devices, which through multiple stylistic techniques highlights the most significant elements of the text representing the cognitive principle of foregrounding. The functional significance of convergence in a fiction text has been analyzed, and the cognitive function of this linguistic phenomenon has been discussed.

Certain Concealments: Poe, Hawthorne, and Early Nineteenth-Century Abortion

Certain Concealments: Poe, Hawthorne, and Early Nineteenth-Century Abortion

Phraseology of French Literature

This article explores the phraseology of French literature, which are unique phrases that reflect the cultural and historical aspects of France. The study focuses on analyzing and categorizing the most important phraseology in French literature, highlighting their linguistic and cultural significance. The research methods used in this study include a review of fiction texts and an analysis of the language structure and syntax of phraseology. The results section provides a complete list of the most widely used phraseology in French literature in combination with its meaning and cultural contexts. The discussion section examines the linguistic and cultural consequences of phraseology and their importance in modern French literature. The article concludes with suggestions for further research on the topic

Die formale und funktionale Entwicklung vonbitte

AbstractThe markerbitteplays a crucial role in Contemporary German, especially in lay linguistic discourse on politeness (= first order politeness). This is in contrast to a research gap regarding the evolution and use of this element. Based on corpus data, the present study aims to trace the formal and functional development ofbitte‘please’. The analysis is based on a randomized sample of verbalbitten‘to ask for’, nominalBitte‘request’ and syntactically reducedbitte‘please’ extracted from fictional texts of the DTA and the DWDS core corpora covering a time span from the 17th to the 21st century. Contrary to previously proposed scenarios, the data suggest that syntactically reducedbittedeveloped in the late 18th century from an external modifier that primarily preceded imperative requests. As an internal modifier, the marker has been successively integrated syntactically and graphemically since the 19th century. From a pragmatic perspective,bittehas evolved from a deference marker. In Contemporary German, it can be described as a directive marker rather than a context-independent politeness marker.