The aim of this article consists in reviewing the basic areas of studying language scales in pragmatics; several prospects of their investigation are discussed. Presently, language scales are the object of intensive research in semantics and pragmatics, from linguistic, logical, psycholinguistic, and neuro-linguistic perspectives. We are interested mainly in pragmatics (although the area of semantics is also considered) and concentrate on linguistic rather than logical, psycholinguistic, or neuro-linguistic aspects. The article continues the series of publications intending to review and systematize pragmatic investigation in basic topical areas. An interest in studying linguistic scales in pragmatics has increased primarily due to the works of H. P. Grice, L. Horn, G. Gazdar, and S. Levinson. An important class of general pragmatic principles of communication was introduced by H. P. Grice and then was elaborated on greater detail in neo-gricean pragmatics. This class of principles specifies quantity characteristics of communication, and can be defined in terms of scales. Language scales give rise to a special class of implicatures called “scalar implicatures”. In many cases, it is necessary for a speaker to choose some position on a scale. Scalar implicature appears as a result of this choice. Each position potentially generates a certain set of implications. This pragmatic phenomenon is intensively studied in linguistics, logic, and experimental investigations. The literature in the area is ample; the article draws only a general picture of the area. The article proposes: 1) to elicit a system of potential language scales for a concrete language; 2) to consider individual / situational scales; 3) to consider dynamics of scales in speech (in accordance with basic ideas of dynamic semantics). The proposed areas of practical application are the following: stylistic analysis and studying an author’s style, modelling of reasoning and communication (particularly in dialogue systems), constructing formal ontologies of different subject areas.

The purpose of the article is to identify the features of the expression of temporal future tense semantics in various types of subordinate clauses of complex sentences, which so far have not received adequate coverage in linguistic literature. Analyzed are utterances with complex sentences containing direct speech, obtained with the random sampling method from the German fictional and publicistic texts. The total volume of the analyzed material makes up 1089 linguistic units with future tense semantics. In spite of dependent character of predication in the subordinate clause, the explication of future tense semantics in it is very heterogeneous. The most frequent types of subordinate clauses with future-oriented meaning in both analyzed discourses are conditional clauses, attribute, object, and subject clauses as well as subordinate clauses of time and purpose. The diverse repertoire of linguistic means, among which are not only grammatical ones (for example, Präsens, Futur I, Perfekt, Konditionalis I, Präteritum Konjunktiv), but also lexical and grammatical (for example, modal verb constructions), allows of formal and semantic variation, revealing a certain sensitivity in relation to discursive characteristics of the utterance. The most significant explicators of future tense semantics in the subordinate clause are the grammatical forms Präsens and Futur I. Präsens is characterized by high frequency in all types of subordinate clauses and “neutrality” against Futur I, which has limitations when used, for example, in conditional clauses, subordinate clauses of time and purpose, in view of their future time orientation. Futur I can also serve to focus attention on the upcoming action, which contributes to frequency of its use in dependent predication. The semantics of perfect forms, modal verbs , their functional synonyms and conjunctive forms also reveals certain combination preferences by expressing future tense semantics in a subordinate clause.

The article raises issues related to written fixation of the oral Mennonite language called Plautdietsch. The Mennonites - members of one of the Protestant churches, established first in Holland and northern Germany - changed their place of residence over the centuries. The Mennonite language emerged in Prussia and later in Ukraine, where their large colonies had lived. Being a striking feature of this specific ethno-confessional community, Plautdietsch was and still is used almost exclusively in oral communication and does not have any established written standard. The phonology of Plautdietsch may be identified, in general, as Low German, although there is a number of significant phonological features are not characteristic of Low German area. Now the Plautdietsch native speakers live all over the world: in Canada, Germany, Russia, in particular, in Siberia, where their own, yet unstable, written standard of the language is being formed. One of the main problems concerning its fixation is caused by the complicated vocalism and high instability observed in the pronunciation of many vowels and diphthongs, the main source of difficulties preventing elaboration of the means for writing. In this paper, we focus on these unstable features of the vocal system. It provides a brief overview of currently available written samples of Plautdietsch, produced in Canada, Germany, and Russia. Some of them are based on the Latin alphabet and norms of the German spelling. Others, on the contrary, depart from it, using specific letter combinations, unknown earlier, introducing geminates (double consonants), refusing to spell nouns with a capital letter or to use umlauts (for technical convenience). Developments and tentative approaches of some Germanists from Russia who introduced their own ways of writing Plautdietsch in their research papers are presented. As an illustration, the samples of such a graphic system, elaborated by the linguist from Novosibirsk I. A. Kanakin (1940-2018), are given. They were not published and are kept in the personal archive of the author of the article. Our own principle of writing is presented too, and this as a part of the project implementation - compiling and publishing a small handbook for reading in this language, which is addressed to children, whose native language is Plautdietsch and who study literary German at school. Taking this into account, the most appropriate ad-hoc solution seems to use a form of writing that is close to German spelling and is accepted today in Germany.

The article is concerned with voskhishcheniye ‘delight’ as a language-specific word in order to show its specific conceptual configuration in the Russian language consciousness. In this regard, the National Corpus seems to be most appropriate since a conceptual configuration of the analyzed emotional concept is not given in a “finished” form in any single utterance, but may be reconstructed only on the sum total of all possible utterances. It can be manifested in many different ways: distribution, predisposition to be associated with some emotional attitudes, concepts, propositional and metaphoric models. According to the available data, voskhishcheniye ‘delight’ is related, in its most manifestations, to many different concepts like gratitude , adoration , fascination , sympathy , mistrust , pity , fear , envy , that allow us to reconstruct some basic delight-situations as a delight- adoration , delight- approval , delight- surprise , delight- gratitude , delight- envy , etc. As such, the delight-emotion is caused not by an event itself, but what the subject thinks about it. In this perspective, voskhishcheniye is not only an emotional but also a mental state that causes a corresponding emotional reaction. The propositional model, built on the National Corpus, includes information that predicates associated with voskhishcheniye ‘delight’ vary according to the position in a syntactic structure of a proposition. As a semantic object voskhishcheniye ‘delight’ is felt, expressed, shown, delivered, caused, excited, anticipated, divided, given out, performed; as a semantic subject it worries, delivers gladness, covers your eyes. In a metaphoric mapping voskhishcheniye ‘delight’ is redefined over the categorical boundaries in terms of propositional models more appropriately applied to power, aquatic substance, honey or fire. By analogy with power it embraces and seizes; by analogy with an aquatic substance, it overfills and overflows; by analogy with fire it flames up and goes out, etc. And there are no other auxiliary objects more appropriate to characterize voskhishcheniye ‘delight’ in Russian except just power, aquatic substance, honey and fire, since native speakers don’t consider expressions like sweetest-smelling delight , awash with delight or to be smothered by delight as metaphoric ones , but rather take them for the authentic characteristic of voskhishcheniye ‘delight’.

Active distribution of lexemes derived from combining attributive phrases in one word - in particular, using the - k ( а ) suffix - is often associated with their stylistic markedness and expressive tone. Often, however, set - k ( a )-formations function as stylistically neutral: open letter - otrkrytka , student’s record book - zachyotka . The derivative model is active both in colloquial speech and terminology. -K ( а ) - nominates are described in literature (see the works by Isachenko, Kapanadze, Yanko-Trinitskaya, Vinokur, Lopatin, Zemskaya, Osipova, Veprevoi, Ustimenko) as the result of semantic condensation, lexico-syntactic inclusion, lexical ellipticism, univerbation, compression (and are called univerbs, compressives, sometimes distinguishing these types). Due to their tendency to relate to several referents, - k ( a )-words tend towards polysemic functioning. The study explores mono- and polyreferenciality of univerbs, their polysemous nature, and young Russian native speakers’ understanding / treatment of mono- and polysemic - k ( a ) - lexemes. The article examines 32 relatively active (relevant at least in one meaning) derivational models with affixal - k ( а ) selected from several sources: the Internet; Contemporary Reverse Russian language dictionary; research, including dictionaries of compressives. Chosen were mainly derivatives from attributive combinations motivated by word-sign (adjective or participle) but without a strict distinction between univerbs and condensates. The informants (the students of HSE Lyceum, Moscow) were given a list that included 3 fillers to measure reliability and identify excessive speech creativity which might induce informants to interpret an uncommon word as known. Control group consisted of adults with technical and humanities background (12 people). The study objectives were to determine the prevalence and marginality of univerbs, as well as poly-and monoreferential lexemes; to identify the use of dominant and non-actualized values; to show similarities and differences of adolescent and adult usage of compressives and their functioning. Selected lexemes were interpreted differently in everyday and professional speech, in urban usage and regiolects, in neutral colloquial speech and slangs. According to the analysis of the Internet and the Russian National Corpus newspaper sub-corpus, the selected lexemes are, in most cases, polysemic. Monosemic univerbs are rare. However, multireferencial lexemes have dominant meanings that may change with time. According to the informants’ self-evaluation, almost all respondents know the common lexeme kommunalka , sometimes in two meanings. Almost no one, at the same time, knows the specialised term boevka even in its dominant meaning. Typical context for the proposed words was asked to test whether informants’ self-evaluation alligns with general speech practice. Fillers shhipkovka and dobrotka expectedly produced no contexts, and the most natural potential formation pripaska was put in context by 9 informants. Globalka and boevka are commonly disappearing in live speech regardless of the respondents’ age (this is consistent with their self-assessment), while ochka and durka are dominant in the proposed set of lexemes. Based on the data collected, there are 9 monoreferential lexemes distinguished by their context formation ability ( nastolka , voenka , bezlimitka , durka , globalka , zabroshka , lichka , minusovka , vkusnyashka ), none of which are derived from the respondents’ answers. As for contextual usage and suggested synonyms, there are 23 polyreferencial lexemes. Informants’ individual response to fillers and unfamiliar existing words is similar: when trying to interpret the meaning, their internal form (something motivated by an adjective or participle) is reconstructed. Contexts of use, synonyms and producing base are not specified in these cases. Overall, the fillers differ significantly from the existing words in the sample: reactions to them are rare even in the interpretations’ graph. Therefore, the general results of the study of existing words may be said not to be inspired by informants’ desire to cooperate or their excessive creativity.

The article aims to analyze the validity of Internet confession texts used as a source of training data set for designing computer classifier of Internet texts in Russian according to their emotional tonality. Thus, the classifier, backed by Lövheim’s emotional cube model, is expected to detect eight classes of emotions represented in the text or to assign the text to the emotionally neutral class. The first and one of the most important stages of the classifier creation is the training data set selection. The training data set in Machine Learning is the actual dataset used to train the model for performing various actions. The internet text genres that are traditionally used in sentiment analysis to train two or three tonalities classifiers are twits, films and market reviews, blogs and financial reports. The novelty of our project consists in designing multiclass classifier that requires a new non-trivial training data. As such, we have chosen the texts from public group Overheard in Russian social network VKontakte. As all texts show similarities, we united them under the genre name “Internet confession”. To feature the genre, we applied the method of narrative semiotics describing six positions forming the deep narrative structure of “Internet confession”: Addresser - a person aware of her/his separateness from the society; Addressee - society / public opinion; Subject - a narrator describing his / her emotional state; Object - the person’s self-image; Helper - the person’s frankness; Adversary - the person’s shame. The above mentioned genre features determine its primary advantage - a qualitative one - to be especially focused on the emotionality while more traditional sources of textual data are based on such categories as expressivity (twits) or axiological estimations (all sorts of reviews). The structural analysis of texts under discussion has also demonstrated several advantages due to the technological basis of the Overheard project: the text hashtagging prevents the researcher from submitting the whole collection to the crowdsourcing assessment; its size is optimal for assessment by experts; despite their hyperbolized emotionality, the texts of Internet confession genre share the stylistic features typical of different types of personal internet discourse. However, the narrative character of all Internet confession texts implies some restrictions in their use within sentiment analysis project.

The paper is concerned with a study of the changing content and style of non-canonical Christian religious preaching in the digital age. Special attention is paid to the analysis of modern rhetoric Christian preachers practice in their Internet channels, forums and blogs. It is shown that the content of the Internet sermon is largely determined by the Internet users themselves and the topics of their appeals. The fundamental characteristics of the content of the Internet sermon are: 1) focus on the individual, their private goals and objectives, not just on theological problems; 2) rethinking the phenomenon of the neighbour; 3) a shift from the Hesychast tradition of preaching the importance of inner spiritual concentration to the preaching of religious interactivity. The observed stylistic features of the digital preaching can be summarised as follows: 1) moving away from simple answers to the rhetoric of new questions addressed to the audience; 2) empathy, co-participation with a person in his/her life conflicts and experiences; 3) desire to share religious information, not to impose it; 4) resorting to various rhetorical techniques to reach different audiences; 5) a tendency to use slang, sometimes even irrespective of the audience’s language preferences and expectations. It should be pointed out that the Orthodox Internet sermon in the Russian Internet space has a dual and contradictory nature. On the one hand, this phenomenon can be regarded as positive for the Orthodox preaching in general, since it is a means of spreading Christian ideas in the social groups that do not constitute a core of parishioners of Orthodox churches, for example, schoolchildren, students, representatives of technical professions, etc. On the other hand, the effectiveness of such preaching is still unclear. Lack of reliable statistics as well as the results of the survey related to the Orthodox Internet preaching gives us no opportunity to judge about effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the phenomenon at this stage of its development.

Forensic authorship analysis is a frequently used technique to identify the real author of an arguable document. Often enough, under study are interrogation minutes. This kind of text is difficult for examination because of its stylistic and genre characteristics: formal phrases and structure as well as different author and compiler of the document. The above features restrict the use of some levels of language analysis. This issue, however, is poorly covered in specialist literature, with only a few articles related to it. The current paper describes the main discursive features of interrogation minutes used in authorship expertise. First we look at conventional techniques of authorship expertise and discuss their limitations. Special attention is given to the analysis of the interrogation minutes genre characteristics and their influence on the whole set of identifiers. The analysis of several conventional interrogation minutes techniques singled out two central tendencies in the authorship attribution: an identification features selection with new identifiers being added. The aim of the article is to propose a solution to the problem. Our technique is based on the methods of The Federal Ministry of the Interior, but it also takes into account genre charecteristics of the interrogation minutes. A new classification of identifiers has been developed. Additional features are offered to improve the attribution accuracy. These are clarifications, which are classified according to the semantic type of the object. In the article clarifications are divided into six types and a few subtypes and are also divided into low and high informative ones. The analysis of clarification is illustrated with the example of three different interrogation minutes. The concluding part of the article is concerned with the techniques of the interrogation minutes used in authorship expertise description, materials requirements and the steps of the analysis.

The article presents the results of a comprehensive socio-psychological study, including qualitative and quantitative methods. The role of cultural factor in the formation of adaptation mechanisms in foreign students studying in Russian Universities is demonstrated. The number of international students is one of the indicators of how successful an institution is on the world market of educational services. The international character of modern education can be ob served in the increase of academic mobility and the growth of the number of international students. Most often, people manage to adapt to a new socio-cultural environment by modifying their stereotypes and behavioural patterns, yet, they may remain internally alienated from the social environment. An increasing number of international students in Russia and the need to create a favourable educational environment for them motivates researchers to study the peculiarities of how such students adapt to radically new living and learning conditions. Successful adaptation ensures fast integration into the learning process and an overall improvement of the quality of education for those young people. The results of the current study will hopefully contribute to the identification of coping strategies, adaptation features, and anticipatory mechanisms depending on their cultural backgrounds. The respondents were representatives of a polychronic, polyactive and high-context culture (students from Arab countries, n = 64) and representatives of low-context and polychronic cultures (students from India, n = 73); all of them studying in Russia from one to three years. The Arabic-speaking students were found to adapt to the learning process easier than their Indian counterparts: they were more involved in a group’s activity, and situational anticipatory competence was better developed with them. At the same time, the Indian students were found to be more eager to seek social support; also it was extremely difficult for them to predict situations associated with time and interpersonal communication.

The article describes the national cultural specificity of the system of length measures in the Yakut language, both physical and figurative. The issue under study is transformation of the imaginary space model and its evolution in the national worldview. On the basis of mythological and folklore sources, historical and cultural ideas and linguistic material of the Sakha people peculiarities of defining close and far worlds, short vs. long distances involved in the representations of the concepts “center” and “periphery” are discussed. The object of the study was the two segments of the Yakut world: the close (familiar) space of tyelbe (it is mastered, explored and exploited), embracing the topological reality of the tiergen ‘yard’ (house’s, yurta’s, urasa’s), hay fields, hunting grounds, on one hand, and undeveloped Yakut alien distant world, a dark forest, sandy deserts, marshlands, cemeteries, abandoned houses, gorges, caves, on the other. These two segments represent their completely different characteristics as well as different ways of measuring space and time, length or distance. Special attention is paid to the specificity of their cultural and linguistic modifications, reflecting the complex history of relations between man and the world mastered by him. These illustrate the evolution of human landscape consciousness, its development from natural geographic realities to socio-cultural ones, including sacral space objects. In addition to the actual geographic reality, in terms of this study, the concepts of surreal space are considered - Etүgen terde, Nyүken tygege, Olүү cherkechyeh, mythological images of the distant dark periphery - mainly denoting demonic territories. The purpose of the study being to propose a new approach to describing man -- world relationship, predetermines the interdisciplinary nature of the article, which clearly outlines a wide range of issues of modern Yakut scholar ethnolinguistics, geo-poetics, ethno-cognitive science, folk culture, etc.

Switching from the source language to the target language is an essential and crucial element of the translation process which to a large extent determines the effectiveness of cross-cultural communication in translation. We propose that such switching be viewed as the switching of linguocultural codes, thus allowing us to stress the importance of viewing translation as a contact of two linguocultures. The process of linguocultural code-switching is based on a number of mechanisms, mental processes and operations, one of which being access to and retrieval of linguistic means used to describe a particular fragment of reality in the target linguoculture. It is assumed that effective language retrieval depends on the “distinctness” of linguistic knowledge based on the stimulus-response connection between con- ceptual information and its linguistic manifestation. We believe that a mental structure for translator’s linguistic and cultural knowledge should be viewed as a frame. We identified a number of characteristics of the frame suggesting that it can ensure the above-mentioned distinctness of linguistic knowledge. These characteristics include the ability of frame structures to form a ‘vision’ of a fragment of reality in a linguoculture, integrate conceptual and linguistic knowledge into a unified single system, facilitate the integration of information into memory structures, create favour-able conditions for the activation and retrieval of linguistic knowledge, create framework for probabilistic forecasting. A comparison of these characteristics with the mechanisms and processes of linguocultural switching has shown that frame-based knowledge can increase their speed and effectiveness, especially in translation from L1 to L2 which is known to be most challenging. It is also hypothesised that the development and use of a frame knowledge base can be made more effective due to reliance on metalinguistic awareness. It provides better language competence, indispensable for a translator, distinctness of linguistic and cultural knowledge, better understanding of norm and usage, translation skills development and the ability to code-switch; it also stimulates creative thinking which allows for a more effective search and use of linguistic means. The author draws a conclusion that development of frame-based knowledge about a foreign language should be made systematic and be part of translator’s professional competence taken into account by curricula for trainee translators.

The article discusses the results of the associative experiment aimed at the comparative analysis of some science names in the language consciousness of Russian and Chinese students. These three areas are united around the names of the days of the week, the names of professions and the names of scientific disciplines. Language consciousness is defined as a concept fixing the relationship between changes in meanings and personal senses of words, on the one hand, and external (social) and internal (mental) factors of language functioning, on the other hand. The experiment involved 104 Russian and 100 Chinese students. The analysis of the material was based on the authors’ method of se-mantic-thematic grouping of associations with their subsequent analysis. As the analysis and comparison of the reac-tions of Chinese and Russian students to the same stimuli complexes showed, all of them are influenced by both inter-nal and external factors. Images of the language consciousness are formed under the influence of socio-cultural factors (school curriculum and educational system in general) and emotional-personal factors (evaluation of these sciences as interesting, complicated, etc.). The images of the language consciousness behind the names of sciences “consist” of knowledge about the objects of these sciences (however, often distorted and even incorrect), about the ways of acquir-ing knowledge and about the place where this cognition process takes place. The images of the language conscious-ness of Chinese students comprise a substantial evaluative component, reflecting the difficulty of the sciences and al-most non-existent in the language consciousness of Russian students. We emphasize that all these ideas do not go beyond the ordinary ones and have almost nothing to do with the actual situation. This state of affairs takes place, of course, because our participants are not professionally engaged in these types of activities, although they have an “ex-ternal” view of them obtained through school education.