During the Middle Ages on the Eastern Orthodox Church territories there existed an encyclopedia book, entitled the Palaea Interpretata that was extremely popular and highly respected. The current paper studies one of the Biblical sources of The Palaea Interpretata - namely, the collection of selected psalms, entitled “David’s Prophesies” (давидъ же прорицаше). The discussion is focused on the compiler’s placing of the collection in The Palaea , in the part dedicated to David (i.e. after the excerpts from the First and Second Books of Samuel and before the First Book of Kings). David’s Prophesies belonged to the original content of The Palaea Interpretata . They had one major goal - to represent the Old Testament as a prototype of the New Testament and to prove the superiority of the Christian doctrine over the non-Christian ones. The Compiler of The Palaea Interpretata chose various psalms or parts of psalms, dividing them into twenty five orations with respective titles. To trace the editing performed over the Psalter text the current article draws a parallel with the text of seven psalters from the 11^th-16^th centuries. It establishes the greatest resemblance with the Bychkov Psalter of the 11^th century, which reflects the Preslav version of the Psalter translation. At the same time, it becomes obvious that “David’ Prophesies” of The Palaea Interpretata have also retained many of the peculiarities of the primary translation of the Psalter as reflected in Sinai Glagolitic Psalter. The Glagolitic traces are to be found in the very text of “David’s Prophesies” of The Palaea Interpretata , which obviously derive from the psalter, serving as their source and protograph. The source was of relatively old origin; it contained traces of Glagolitic letters, and reflected the Psalter’s primary translation into Old Bulgarian by Cyril and Methodius, which had been edited in Preslav.

The paper deals with certain troparia found in several Church Slavonic manuscripts as a part of the Great and Holy Friday Antiphons which don’t respond to the described Greek versions of the text. Troparia which appear in the penultimate place of each of the 15 Antiphons are devoted to the Mother of God and could be attributed to the Stavrotheotokion type. The Stavrotheotokia appear regularly almost in all East Slavonic manuscripts up to Patriarch Nikon book correction of the 17^th century, while in the South Slavonic tradition they appear regularly only in two early Serbian manuscripts, in the most of the Antiphons in two early Bulgarian manuscripts and in one Antiphon in another Bulgarian manuscript. In the 14^th century after the Mount Athos book correction the Stavrotheotokia disappear completely from the South Slavonic manuscript tradition. The goal of our study was a scientific critical edition of the Stavrotheotokia troparia based on 13 East and South Slavonic manuscripts (Triodion and Pentecostarion, Pentecostarion, Lent and Pentecost Sticherarium) of 11^th - 14^th centuries as well as their textological analysis. Based on the results of the textological analysis we distinguish two versions of the text: the first one is present in East Slavonic manuscripts and Zagreb Triodion, the second one - in two Serbian Triodia, and their compiled type - in the Orbele Triodion. Although no Greek correspondence to these texts have been found so far, the textual evidences argue for the Byzantine origin of a certain text. The outstanding poetic characteristics of certain troparia as well as their remarkable correspondence with the whole poetical structure of the Antiphons cause us to believe that unlike the Theotokia which are included in the Antiphons in the modern Greek and Slavic tradition, the Stavrotheotokia were the part of the initial text of the hymn. Since two versions of the Church Slavonic text are not located on a certain territory, the translation of these texts into Church Slavonic was probably made in the South Slavic area and later transferred to the East Slavonic tradition.

The study is focused on an American mathematician’s idiolect by analysis of the protagonist’s direct speech in the film A Beautiful Mind. The ideal scientist’s generalized image followed by the stylization of his idiolect contains the research capacity: this modelled language personality refers not only and not so much to its prototype, but to the stereotype of a mathematician’s idiolect circulated to American English speakers. The study was done by the methodology based on counting the word frequency by using software TextSTAT and comparing the results with the word frequency in the Corpus of Contemporary American English to assess the degree of deviation of the mathematician’s stylized lexicon from an average American English native speaker’s lexicon objectively. The associative semantic analysis of the studied personality’s main metonymic characteristic expressed by the phrase “A Beautiful Mind” located the associative semantic fields of the concept MIND in the native English speakers’ mass consciousness and set the main directions to research the associative semantic fields of the American mathematician’s general lexicon as follows: “Cognition”, “Mental condition” and “Eccentricity”. The further research is focused on the scientist’s vocabulary which is directly related to his professional activity. The structuring the field “Professional communication” (terms, professional slang, jargonisms, nomenclature), studying the quantitative ratios of these vocabulary groups and their contextual links revealed the specific scientific interests, isolation in a team and deviant language behavior. The analysis of the field “Cognition” indicated several nouns and verbs ( work , time , number , to work , to win , to lose and others ) as its semantic center. The research of their contextual links showed that the language personality’s main value is a dedicated cognitive process consisting in numerical solutions of problems to determine the causal relationships of reality. The solutions are not only thought, but imagined; feelings are also involved in the cognitive process. Multiplicity of solution makes choice important. The associative semantic fields structuring the mathematician’s lexicon are interrelated. There are lexical units ( love , bicycle ) that carry information in the intersections of the fields implicitly. Such lexical units form symbols which connect the series of heterogeneous concepts in the studied language personality’s mind.

This article considers a method that helps to evaluate the level of similarity of a word in the language consciousness of the French language speakers from four different francophone regions (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada). To illustrate the approach the word vie (life) has been chosen as it belongs to the nucleus of the language consciousness of French speakers, according to the results of the associative experiment that was made in 2008 and 2009 via Internet with the aid of google-questionnaires. To assess similarity in understanding the word vie (life) by French speakers from the chosen regions we use the semantic closeness index finding formula proposed by D. Yu. Prosovetsky. Originally the formula was applied to the calculation of the semantic closeness of two different words. In this research the formula has been adapted to the analysis of one word-stimulus presented in the associative fields of the regions considered. To apply this formula one needs first to count the number of similar words that appear in associative fields of the chosen word pairwise. Six pairs are addressed (France-Belgium, France-Canada, France-Switzerland, Belgium-Canada, Belgium-Switzerland, Canada-Switzerland). After that, the doubled number of similar words in one pair of countries is divided by the sum of the total number of reactions of the two given fields. The calculations conducted in this article pairwise for the word vie (life) present the following numbers of the index of semantic closeness: pairs Belgium-Switzerland, Switzerland-Canada, France-Switzerland 0,09 each; the highest index belongs to the pairs of France-Canada and Belgium-Canada 0,12 each; the pair France-Belgium occupies the intermediary position with the result of 0,1. The calculations illustrate that the associative fields of the word vie in the four considered regions (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada) include similar elements, however, the exact agreement is not observed.

An associative experiment, widely used in recent years in psycholinguistic studies, allows for an in-depth study of the semantics of a word by considering logical relationships in associative fields. In addition, the results of such an experiment provide “access” to the speakers’ language consciousness and enable the researcher to describe its structure. At the same time, the “construction” of associative-verbal models makes it possible to understand and study the systematic character of the individual speaker’s world view and language consciousness of the speakers of a certain language and culture. All this determines the relevance of the associative-verbal models and specific lexemes analysis. The study of the speaking personality - Homo Loquens - is connected with the analysis of an individual world view explicated in language consciousness and actually existing in the form of verbal images - word associations. This article discusses the results of a free associative experiment with participation of the native German speakers (as a result of this experiment, 137 different associative reactions were received with the total number of associative reactions 305; the analysis focused on both types of responses - primary and secondary word associations). The subject matter of the study is the verb haben , forming the centre in the sphere “possession” and its synonyms ( gehören , verfügen , besitzen , gebieten ). The synonyms were identified through a lexicographical analysis with the help of five dictionaries of synonyms and the Contemporary German language corpora dwds.de. The analysis is based on a systematic approach that allows us to reveal the structure of senses and meanings in the mental lexicon and the interconnectedness of associative fields of synonymous stimulus words. The lexicographical, corpus and associative types of analysis reveal the following: 1) a negligible number of respondents' refusals to respond; 2) associating with a “paradigmatic” type in regard to the semantic structure of the stimulus word and associative response; 3) a high degree of uniqueness of “syntagmatic” associations; 4) “possession” is associated with such reactions as Geld , Gut , Güter , Macht , Testament , Freunde , nichts .

The present article deals with the stylistic functioning of legal vocabulary in the second volume of Marcel Proust’s novel “In Search of Lost Time” (“À la recherche du temps perdu”) “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” (“À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs”). The current interest in the problem lies in the fact that, as far as we know, though Marcel Proust’s texts have been studied from different viewpoints, no research has been done on the author’s use of stylistic figures based on legal vocabulary. It would be reasonable to examine in detail how Marcel Proust resorts to the legal vocabulary from the point of view of stylistics at the end of the first and at the beginning of the second part of the second volume of his novel. What we are aiming at is revealing, classification, and stylistic analysis of such figures. We use the methods of semantic, linguistic and contextual analyses. We have verified the meaning of the legal terms under study in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, in the general vocabulary Thesaurus as well as in the dictionaries of legal terms; we have consulted the Internet to check their usage in contemporary French. We have also found out, wherever it was possible, what other stylistic figures those based on legal vocabulary correlate to. Our analysis shows that Marcel Proust employs general legal vocabulary (“article de loi”, “compétence et juridiction”, “coutumier”, “police particulière”) as well as legal vocabulary from different branches of Law, namelyConstitutional Law (“Chambre”), Criminal Law (“geôlier”, “prison”, “voleur”), International Law (“chef d’État pendant les toasts officiels”, “exterritorialité”) and Financial Law (“livre de comptes”, “avance”, “solde créditeur”, “débit”) in order to describe different domains of life (such as relations in high society, those among the bourgeoisie as well as relations between friends and those of a teenager in love). “Legal” similes and metaphors can be combined with those from other domains of life, particularly with stylistic figures referring to art (namely, one of La Fontaine’s fables), medicine and war. This narrative technique makes the author’s text more expressive. More detailed analysis of such figures, as well as the fact of establishing their textual connections within all Marcel Proust’s texts, will contribute to revealing the specificity of the author’s language and style.

The article focuses on the study of military metaphors which are relevant to the modern Russian and French political (specifically presidential) discourse. In modern linguistics there are two main approaches to studying metaphors: semantic (where metaphor is regarded as a linguistic phenomenon) and cognitive, where it is interpreted as a certain way of constructing the reality. The methodological basis of our research is the theory of metaphorical modeling, which is a synthesis of structural, semantic and cognitive approaches. This article represents a comparative analysis of military metaphors (which are archetypal for political communication) used in the speeches of four presidents of Russia and France of the early 21^st century - D. A. Medvedev, N. Sarkozy, V. V. Putin and F. Hollande, and based on the corpora of texts that are examples of political discourse monologues (inaugural, congratulatory, welcoming speeches, etc.). In this study, military metaphors are nominations in which there are signs of military action in the form of opposition to an «enemy» and the use of weapons. The analysis took into account substantive and verbal structural metaphors realizing the conceptual model «Russian / French reality - the ongoing war»; the study also considered extralinguistic factors that influenced the creation of political texts. Text selection took into consideration the degree of importance and relevance of the domestic and foreign policy issues covered in them. The analysis showed that the frequency of military metaphors usage is not identical not only in the speech of different politicians, but also in the discourse of different societies, and demonstrated individual and national specificity of the military metaphors functioning in the political leaders discourse, which was directly related to the topical “agenda” for a country. Thus, it turned out that the French presidents resort to «militant» (in metaphorical terms) discourse more than the two Russian heads of state; the greatest frequency of military metaphors is demonstrated in F. Hollande’s speeches.

The article is devoted to the study of creativity in younger students. The focus is on the impact of Southeast Asian languages and cultures on the development of creativity in younger Russian students learning Chinese, as well as on the impact of the educational environment on creative performance of schoolchildren. The paper presents the results of a three-year longitudinal study (2013-2016), implemented on the basis of the MBU to «Children’s Art School No. 7» and MBOU Secondary School No. 49, Chita, obtained by using the battery of the P. Torrens creativity test and the E. Tunic creative characteristics test. The empirical study involved 135 people: 105 pupils (3 groups of 35 pupils each) aged 9 to 11 years and 30 teachers, including 15 teachers of MBU DO «Children’s Art School No. 7» and 15 teachers of MBOU SOSH №49 (with in-depth study of English). The experimental group was represented by pupils of the foreign language studio learning Chinese. The control groups included 70 schoolchildren - students of the departments of theatrical and choreographic art (35 people at either department) who do not learn Chinese. The results indicate a statistically significant dependence of the elaboration and originality of the tasks performed by children (P. Torrens test) on their studies in the foreign language studio (Chinese language). The data obtained show a link between the educational environment and the creativity indicators of younger schoolchildren learning Chinese. The results of the study show that learning Chinese contributes to the development of creativity in children of primary school age. The language increases the intonational semantic distinction in speech, it facilitates the creation of an ambivalent context, which contributes to the development of susceptibility to the new even at the early school age. Learning Chinese has an increased effect on the ability to propose new ideas that are different from standard ones, it also contributes to constructive and inventive human activity. With considerable probability, it can be argued that the creativity of younger schoolchildren is formed mainly under the influence of their mastering the ideographic writing of the Chinese language.

The article discusses a comparative analysis of the area of language consciousness of Russian and Chinese students related to the names of the days of the week. Language consciousness is defined as a concept establishing a relationship between word meanings and its individual senses, on the one hand, and external (social) and internal (mental) factors of language functioning, on the other hand. In Vygotskian psychology it is not only meaning, but also an individual sense that make up the sign content. Every sign has two aspects - a social and an individual ones. Every sign is an instrument of both interaction with the world and its emotional experiencing ( переживание , perezhivanie ). The experiment conducted involved 104 Russian and 100 Chinese students. The analysis of the material was based on the authors’ method of semantic- and thematic grouping of associations with their subsequent analysis. The study showed an increase in the reactions of the “leisure” group, starting on Friday. At the same time the reactions of the “study / work” group do not disappear, so apparently, every day is not just a weekday or a day off, it is filled with various activities that retain their personal significance. The representation of the day of the week reflects a part of a person’s life with its activities, experiences, relationships, etc. The name of the day of the week in the student’s language consciousness is meaningful and emotionally coloured, not just time related. Russian and Chinese students showed little difference in their language consciousness, cultural specificity being manifested to a small extent only. The names of the days of the week accumulate a student’s emotionally relevant personal experience, i.e. a general idea of the activities usually performed during a particular day of the week. It is important that all the days of the week are different and the corresponding representations cannot be reduced to some common content. There is no such thing as a “day of the week in general” in the student’s language consciousness.

The research question of the paper is at the crossroads of the most important disciplinary areas of modern linguistics: cognitive linguistics, linguistic conceptology, and ethno-linguistics. The paper considers the specificity of the child’s language consciousness as a carrier of a certain culture. Mother-child communication is a complex communicative cognitive process, as a result of which a subtle “cultural adjustment” of the process of perception and conceptualization of the world by a child takes place. The article is focused on the analysis of verbal communication in bilingual families on the pragma-communicative level. The purpose of the study is to identify significant functions of the two languages (Russian and Tuvan) in Tuvan mother’s communication with her child. A systematic, functional and semantic as well as a pragmatic approaches in the study will help us understand such phenomena as language, culture, and ethnolinguistic identification and will allow us to see the impact of bilingualism on the process of perception and conceptualization of the world by a child in communication with its mother. The research is based on traditional methods: observation of the language material, comparison, description with elements of componential and contextual analysis. The empirical material for the study includes video- and audio recording corpus made during 2017-2018 in Tuvan bilingual families living on the territory of the Republic of Tuva. The following speech situations which reflect the characteristic of the Tuvan-Russian bilingual speech behavior in natural communication between mother and child are analyzed: the pragmatic training situation, the pragmatic ban situation and others. Analysis of video materials and personal observations of speech communication practices in bilingual families who speak Tuvan and Russian languages allows us to state the presence of a specific distribution of languages in various communication situations.

The article describes the first stage of the realization of a complex psycholinguistic associative experiment in French and Russian. The aim of this experiment is to identify associative fields of words describing the attitude of young people towards multiculturalism, academic mobility and internationalization of higher education in target cities - Novosibirsk and Tomsk in Siberia (Russia), Montpellier and Bordeaux in France. The associative experiment will supplement sociological and other studies and will allow us to show the respondents’ naive views on various words describing certain aspects of students’ life. Associative experiments are considered to be a reliable method to identify conscious and unconscious meanings of words. Thus, the “language consciousness of the individual” (a concept introduced by Moscow School of Psycholinguistics, describing the language of an individual or a community from a psycholinguistic point of view) becomes visible to the external observer. The analysis of the most stable and repetitive reactions of a large number of participants makes it possible to infer the collective opinion. After processing the results of the experiment, a fragment of the associative network modeling the lexicon of French and Russian students in this subject area will be obtained.

The article discusses the results of an experiment aimed to clarify the impact that explaining a context in which a word is used may have on the degree and nature of its understanding in second language acquisition. The underlying hypothesis is that the quality of comprehension of the meaning of abstract words of a foreign language by bilinguals will vary depending on the way these words are represented. To test the hypothesis a free associative experiment consisting of two parts was conducted. 12 stimuli in English with abstract meaning were presented to subjects (4^th-year students with Russian-English bilingualism). The first group of participants (a total of 33 people) was given vocabulary explanation of these words; the second group (35 people in total) was given sentences in which the same words are used in a simulated situation of using them in accordance with their dictionary definition. The authors come to the conclusion that informants’ acquaintance with a concrete situation of using abstract words does not help them to “internalize” these words, and also increases the number of emotional associations indicating that these words are part of their personal experience of cognition and communication. However, an equal number of reactions associated with the stimulus by their semantics, and not by the evoken emotion, in both parts of the experiment means that both dictionary interpretation and description of a specific situation realize the semantic potential of a word significantly and allow us to correctly interpret its meaning.