The paper deals with the Russian and Greek verbs denoting the horizontal position of a person or an object in space. A comparative analysis of the Russian and Church Slavonic positional stative verb лежать/лежати with its Greek counterparts has been carried out in the diachronic perspective by means of the linguistic-textual method. The research is based on the material of six Church Slavonic and Russian translations as well as on four Modern Greek translations (editions) of the Gospel, in which 44 relevant contexts have been identified; besides additional material from some other Bible books has been used. Historical and comparative research has shown that the Greek language doesn’t possess lexical means of expressing a horizontal position in space. In Ancient Greek, the stative verb κεῖμαι was used in this function, in case spatial concretization of position was relevant, it used its prefixed derivatives. In Modern Greek this verb becomes obsolete and in most cases is replaced by the grammatical forms of the corresponding causatives and autocausatives or by abstract existential verbs. On the contrary, in Church Slavonic and Russian throughout the period under consideration, the position of a person or an object has played an important role in space conceptualization, finding its lexical manifestation in the positional stative verbs, widely used even when the concretization of the position in combination with a certain actant is redundant. On the other hand, the preservation of the stative semantics leads to a low derivative potential of the verb лежать in combination with spatial prefixes due to the meaning of finiteness (resultativity) which they developed. Consequently, the semantics of Greek prefixes has to be conveyed by additional (lexical and syntactic) means. Generally, the results of the work have revealed significant and deep differences in the conceptualization of the positional state in Greek and Russian, which has to be taken into account when developing nationally/culturally oriented methods of teaching a second (foreign) language.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the basic common and distinctive features of the orthography of Alhamiado and Judesmo.
Spanish manuscripts in Arabic and Hebrew scripts are known as the Aljamiado and Judesmo texts. The former were written by the Spanish Muslims during and after the Reconquista, while the Judesmo texts were written by Spanish Jews, for the most part, after the expulsion in 1492. Both types of texts are written in Semitic alphabets, but their orthography differs significantly.
In both systems, special notations were developed to indicate Spanish consonants which do not exist in Arabic and Hebrew, using the signs tashdid (^ω) in Alhamiado and rafa (ﬞ) in Judesmo. The latter also used combinations with double yod ( י ) <y> to represent Spanish palatal consonants.
However, in the vowel sound transmission system, the discrepancies are much greater in Alhamiado and Judesmo. These differences are primarily due to the different ways in which vowels are rendered in the two systems. Alhamiado is based on the vowel system developed in the Arabic Qur’anic literature. While in Judesmo, for this purpose the letters of the Hebrew alphabet were adapted, so they denoted semi-consonant sounds as in the Yiddish spelling system.
In addition, a special notation was developed in Alhamiado for the sound denoted by the Latin ‘e’. However, both Alhamiado and Judesmo use a semiconsonant at the beginning of a word with the frontal vowel ʼalif (|) <ʼ> in Alhamiado and aleph (ʪ) <ʼ> in Judesmo. Diphthongs and gapes also use the dividing vowel. In general, the vowel transmission system in Alhamiado is more precise than in Judesmo.

The article presents the results of a morpho-syntactic analysis of the most common verb constructions denoting the functional-semantic concept ʻhuman ageʼ in the Yakut language. The subject matter of the study is set expressions in Yakut containing verbs and participles. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of knowledge about the functionalsemantic concept PERSON’S AGE in Yakut linguistics. Scientific novelty of the study is in paying special attention not only to morphological forms and grammatical features, but also to semantics. It was shown that in expressing the functional-semantic concept PERSON’S AGE in the Yakut language, predicative constructions are used, including two types of participles: with the affix of possession -laah and with the affix of the past tense of the verb -byt. Constructions with -laah have a universal meaning denoting any age of a person. In the reproduction of the grammatical environment of predicates with the affix -byt, the following lexical-semantic groups of actants serving as subjects or objects of action were identified: borbui ʻkneesʼand meii (өй) ʻbrainʼ are used exclusively to describe the age of young, strong, intelligent people, while the names of tissues composed of cornified cells (battakh ʻhairʼ, bytik ʻbeard, mustacheʼ, tiis ʻteethʼ) are used exclusively to describe the age of older people. Further, it has been shown that in constructions with complex izafet the verbs of qualitative change of state are combined with a name in the dead genitive case (GEN) -n, in constructions with simple izafet the verbs of physical influence on an object operate with a name in the accusative case (ACC) -n. The ‘meteorological’ lexeme haar is recorded in two types of verb constructions: with the verbs үkten ʻto comeʼ—the onset of the year; and with the verbs tuһerbit/uullarbyt ʻmeltedʼ—living through the year.

In recent years, in political linguistics, intercultural communication, sociology and other humanities, ideologemes have been widely studied. In many studies, they are often regarded as a worldview setting, expressed in a linguistic form, as a cognitive-pragmatic tool to promote ideology, and as an effective way to influence public consciousness in political communication. In any public political speech, ideologemes are a means of categorizing the world and translating value coordinates – a certain axiological model in the public mind. Ideologemes usually convey the main ideological and value related orientations of a society. In crucial moments, ideologemes can be a tool for reshaping the public opinion and forming the “right” attitude on the part of the speaker. They are also widely used in various subcultures that try to stand out. In other words, ideologemes help form axiological categories, whose analysis is necessary when describing the mentality of a particular society and its accepted behavior patterns. This article focuses on the ideologemes of the Spanish King Felipe VI, who, like his predecessor Juan Carlos I, is the embodiment of the traditional Spanish mentality. We have analyzed the King’s speeches not only from the point of view of their content, ideologically and politically speaking, but also within the pragmatic framework of the selected speeches, looking at the socio-political context and the addressee. The analysis has shown that the frequent use of ideologemes helps the leader promote the ideas of national unity, justice, sacrifice, international cooperation, etc. Due to the Catalonian separatism, the national unity narrative is widely used by the monarch and plays a very important role in modern Spain. With the help of ideologemes, taking into account the multicultural Spanish society, which was deeply fractured, the King conveys ideas about (a) the political foundations of the state, (b) basic values, (c) the national character, and (d) the current socio-political situation in Spain. On the international stage, the main functions of ideologemes are (a) to proclaim the need for international cooperation, (b) to create a positive political image of Spain as a reliable partner, and (c) to declare commitment to the basic principles of democracy.

Corpora-based language studies is a widespread practice in modern linguistics. In our study, we address so-called mass literature (or paraliterature) via a corpus of texts. The standardization of mass literature allows us to describe its genres by applying literary formulas. In brief, a formula serves for the embodiment of cultural themes and stereotypes in a universal form. While mass literature is a common subject of literary and cultural studies, from a linguistic point of view, literary formulas have not been studied well enough. We suggest that differences between the microgenres of paraliterature may be in syntax as well as in the vocabulary. Our work is based on the mass literature corpora and provides analysis of verb constructions characteristic of microgenres (love story, detective story, science fiction novel, and fantasy). In order to identify the distinctive features of mass literature microgenres, we have conducted a series of machine learning experiments. As a dataset, we compiled a corpus of 1,200 texts belonging to four microgenres. In our previous studies we showed that statistical features (text length, sentence length, and parts of speech frequencies) were insufficient for successful classification. The usage of lexical features has improved the quality of machine learning, however, the classifier based on syntactic features has shown the best results. 81 constructions have been selected as the most important features of syntactic-based machine learning. A verb construction consists of a “verb + dependencies”. We consider several types of dependencies: arguments (subject, direct and indirect objects) and adjuncts (subordinate clause and adverbial classifier). The constructions are described in terms of the fullness of the verb valencies. Several types of constructions are distinguished: complete, incomplete (with omissions of direct or indirect complements), and extended (with adjuncts). Specific examples of verb constructions in each of the microgenres have been analyzed and described. Based on the similarity of the construction profile, romance novels and detective stories show the predominance of verbs and direct speech constructions, whereas science fiction novels and fantasy demonstrate the prevalence of full constructions. Possible non-textual explanations for our observations are also provided. The method proposed in the study can be used for the investigation of various kinds of syntactic features, for instance, those associated with the author’s, temporal or genre specificities.

The authors substantiate the use of the semiotic approach in applied research as adequate to the integrative nature of speech activity and clarify the concept conflictogenicity at the level of three components of a linguistic sign according to G. Frege: name, denotation, and especially designatum, which does not imply the existence of absolutely identical concepts in the minds of different people. Using the example of an expert opinion, the implementation of the semiotic approach in the situation of conflict designatum, as the most difficult element of semantics for language analysis, as well as the symbolic nature of the “controversial” text are demonstrated. The article highlights the differences between the interpretation of the text as “controversial” and “conflictogenic”.

This work has been carried out by the members of the Laboratory of Speech and Multimodal Interfaces of the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences within an interdisciplinary research project aimed at the creation of an automatic Russian sign language translation system. The paper presents the design of a Russian sign language digital database for a specific subject area, namely, «The first visit to doctor».
Our database is meant to be used first of all a dataset for training neural network-based systems of automatic translation from Russian sign language. But also, it can be of interest for linguistics of sign languages in general since the approach elucidates solution of a number of distorting phenomena typical for continuous sign language tracking, such as epenthesis, assimilation, reduction, and hold deletion.
The principal difference between the presented video data and other datasets developed for similar purposes is the use of continuous sign utterances and elements of Russian sign language proper instead of the so-called “signed Russian” (that is, the visual form of the Russian spoken language), popular in deaf schooling.
One of the most challenging problems, dealt with in the paper, is an automatic segmentation of sign speech into separate meaningful units with clearly defined boundaries. Its solution is hampered by signs’ deformations in continuous speech. In this paper, the segmentation is carried out within the framework of the movement-hold model. This approach allows extraction of their functional core as well as annotation of possible changes likely to appear in different signs’ segments. Accordingly, each utterance was subdivided into segments of motion and hold, and the resulting sign schemes were then entered into a separate directory containing information about the main parameters of each hold, including the possibilities of change due to immediate environment. The result of this work is a full decomposition of the signs, forming the database which can find its application in different statistical models of Russian Sign Language.
Among other linguistic peculiarities of the database should be noted lexical variability of signs, mouthing and code switching between Russian sign language and “signed Russian”. Also, our signers learned Russian sign language in different regions of Russia, thus the collected data is potentially a source for research in dialectal variability of Russian sign language.

Personification belongs to one of the fairly frequently used figurative devices, but it still has to be explored. In particular, this refers to Mikhail Lermontov’s prose. Along with that, the identification and objectification of the author’s style is important for literary criticism and translation studies. Within the broad frame of the term, personification can be interpreted as giving an inanimate object or a purely abstract thing the characteristics of an animate being, endowed with feeling and life. The present paper focuses on the description and functional analysis of personification in Lermontovian socio-psychological prose. The database built for this scrutiny contains three Lermontov’s novels written at different periods of his literary life: “Vadim” (1832–1834), “Princess Ligovskaya” (1836–1837) and “A Hero of Our Time”. Because of its brevity, the essay “The Caucasian” (1841) serves as a source of additional illustrative material. Adescriptive and functional analysis employs semantic, contextual and quantitative methods. A unit of observation is the “key lexical item” that, in conjunction with the referent, allows us to identify and categorize personification. The paper describes the main structural and semantic features of personification and investigates its principal functions in Lermontov’s texts. In particular, it has been shown that examples of personification in the novel make a kind of network designed to create a literary space focused on Nature and Man as an integral element of the earthly world. Furthermore, the current study demonstrates that personification accomplishes five basic functions in Lermontov’s prose: figurative, aesthetic, ludic, intertextual, and compositional. The undertaken study contributes to systematizing numerous examples of personification in Lermontov’s prose, and emphasizes the importance of further research aimed to clarify the impact of figurative devices on the internal architectonics of literary texts.

The present research investigates collocation learning strategies in the process of foreign language teaching. The paper aims at analyzing whether the process of effective collocation retention is determined by learners’ cognitive effort made at the moment of receiving information about a collocation in various input conditions: decontextualized (in dictionaries), enriched or enhanced (in corpora). Enrichment is viewed as an increase in frequency of the target feature while enhancement consists in a more conspicuous representation of the feature by typographical means.
It is assumed that processing enriched and enhanced corpus data requires higher cognitive effort and, consequently, provides stronger incidental retention compared to analyzing decontextualized dictionary data. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a longitudinal laboratory experiment with repeated measures.
The research focuses on the German language. The experiment included the following stages: (0) a pre-test in order to determine the students’ collocation competence; (1) an immediate test targeted at finding out which information about collocations is perceived easier; (2) a post-test to determine the type of input providing stronger long-term involuntary collocation retention; (3) comparison of the immediate test and post-test results. In analyzing experimental data statistical methods have been used: the Kruskal—Wallis and the Mann—Whitney tests for nonparametric data, as well as the Cohen’s d effect size test.
The research demonstrates that mental processing of enriched and enhanced corpus data, requiring a higher cognitive effort, provides better incidental collocation retention than processing of decontextualized dictionary data and has a long-term effect.

The purpose of the article is to study the representation of the initial function of laughter in Yakut folklore texts. The range of research tasks was determined by the semantics of laughter and its functioning in Yakut texts. Folklore and ethnographic sources which served as the material for this study reflect the unique qualities of the Yakut laughing discourse. Special attention was paid to the actualization of the archaic laughter in the Yakut ritual and ceremonial culture (in particular, in the collective rituals Ayyyyyty ataaryy tuoma (farewell ceremony for the goddess Ayyysyt) and Dyalyng ylyytyn tuoma (evoking sexual passion). The author highlights the elements of the laughing culture widely used in the military epic discourse (songs-squabbles of heroes, songs of bloodshed ilbis yryata, songs-curses of heroes kyrys yryata)—abusive language, swearing, profanity, banter. Within the framework of this article, the peculiarities of functioning of laughter, considered as one of the most important components of the rite of passage—initiation—are investigated. The author argues that in the folklore world (fairy tales, legends of nomoh, the olonkho epic), laughter seems to be an analogue of psychological initiation, in which the life-affirming power of laughter finds actualization, purifying and protecting, aimed at distinguishing the living and the dead world. Therefore, the paper also includes the issues of self-identification, specificity of mental landscape, and the definition of marginality in the Yakut cultural space.

The issue of studying gender stereotypes in different cultures stems from the need to outline current trends in the variability of normative mental representation of men and women. A cognitive-communicative approach makes it possible to interpret conceptual changes in group language consciousness. A stereotype is understood both as a format of knowledge with a prototypical organization and as a cognitive scheme that structures a conceptual system. As part of the study a questionnaire was conducted and over 2,000 reactions about typically male (1,064) and female (1,053) characteristics were collected. The ranking of conceptual-thematic groups and their components determining the meaning of language categories is based on lexical representation of gender characteristics. The research methodology combines conceptual and definitional analyses of lexical units denoting stereotypical male and female qualities, as well as cognitive modeling of prototypical organization of the concepts under study. The aim of the research is to model a structure of basic gender concepts in their group interpretation. The prototypical core of the concept МУЖЧИНА (MAN) consists of traditional masculine characteristics (responsibility, strength, courage, bravery), while the core of the concept ЖЕНЩИНА (WOMAN) includes traditional feminine qualities (emotionality, caretaking, kindness). The pre-core zone of the concept МУЖЧИНА (MAN) is mainly expressed by orientation to achievement; public image; dedication to moral norms and principles. Intellect, family values and sociability are peripheral. The pre-core zone of the concept ЖЕНЩИНА (WOMAN) is characterized by career orientation; morality; communicativeness. Family values, expression of emotions, overcoming intelligence-based discrimination are peripheral, a woman’s appearance is the least frequent. Along with typical gender qualities, a transitional (metagender) zone can be distinguished, where traditional lexico-semantic characteristics of masculinity and femininity are being re-coded. Thus, gender categorization in the Russian speakers’ language consciousness can be defined as a binary model based on core prototypical characteristics. However, dynamic processes of gender neutralization competing with the most representative characteristics of basic gender concepts are observed at the boundary of concept zones.