Nº 4 (2025)

The paper attempts to describe the functions of a Russian particle chai in the dialect of Krasnaya Luka village in Lyskovo district, Nizhny Novgorod region, that belongs to East Middle Russian dialects with okanye (Vladimir-Volga group). The data includes 8 hours of interviews with older inhabitants, from which 102 contexts with the particle chai were allocated. In the linguistic literature the particle is underrepresented, and its functions have not been fully researched yet. In our research we propose the following parameters of meaning: 1) the awareness of the addressee, 2) epistemic modality, 3) cause, 4) consequence, 5) continuation and development of the topic, 6) use in imperative context. In the study the exact Fisher’s test was applied and showed the statistical significance of the first three (most frequent) parameters for the presence of the particle in a statement. Since the particle is present not only in the dialects, but also in modern standard Russian, we decided to compare its usage in the dialect under research and in the National Russian Corpus since 1950. The main difference turned out to be the construction chai ne plus noun phrase in the corpus, that was not attested in the dialect, and also the fact that the particle is more frequent in interrogative and modal contexts.

In this article we consider borrowings from the Chinese language, reflected in Russian explanatory dictionaries, primarily academic ones. There aren’t many of those (ginseng, funchose, etc.), but there are many more Sinicisms that came into the Russian language through other, intermediary languages (ketchup, typhoon), for some words the etymology (the way of borrowing) is not fully clear (tea). Recently the semantics of borrowings have changed significantly. In the past the borrowings from Chinese were mostly political exoticisms (Kuomintang, Taiping), lately they included names of health-improving sports (wushu, kung fu, qigong) and spiritual practices (dao, yin, yang). Some of the Sinicisms have been fully absorbed by the Russian language, became polysemantic and have numerous derivatives (tea), while others have expanded their semantics and have ceased to be exoticisms (Hongweibing, Dazibao). However, some of the borrowings are not included in explanatory dictionaries, although they are widely used in everyday speech (wok, funchoza). Their codification in explanatory dictionaries lags behind their verbal use. Since the writing systems of the Chinese and Russian languages are completely different, the peculiarity of Chinese borrowings is the initial variety of spelling variants (kung fu, kungfu, kung-fu, ku-fu, konfu) of their first recording in spelling dictionaries.

Orthoepic dictionaries often support old variant of stress in word forms in phraseological units, which already isn’t used in the same word forms in free phrases. For example, v treh vodáh, not v treh vódah, kakimi sud’bámi, not kakimi súd’bami. However, 5 experiments with speakers of standard pronunciation show that accentuation of many word forms in phraseological units differs from recommendations given by the dictionaries. Accentuation of these word forms becomes the same as accentuation in free phrases, or there is accentuation variability in speech of people from different age groups, or sometimes “special” stress preserved. Many word forms in phraseological units reflect the same accentuation processes as these word forms in free phrases. These processes should be reflected in orthoepic dictionaries with permissible elder and younger variants of pronunciation. At the same time stress variants of pronunciation in words from old church Slavonic language, proper names, historicisms, archaisms in phraseological units are explained by incompetence of speakers, so these variants should be forbidden by orthoepic dictionaries. Depending on the pronunciation variants the studied phraseological units were divided into 8 groups presented in the article.

The article describes the history of a phraseme, Sing (Mother) Turnip, which has not yet found a satisfactory solution. The use of dialectal, ethnolinguistic and some other words made it possible to reconstruct the folk picture of the world, which reflects the national-cultural and historical consciousness of the Russian people. The phraseological unit Sing (Mother) Turnip contains a special cultural meaning associated with agrarian holidays, an indispensable obligatory part of which is a ritual. One of them is the wish for a harvest on Maslenitsa and some other Slavic holidays, when actions were accompanied by the singing of ritual songs, in the magical power of which the Russian people believed. This expression was used as a figurative expression “about a difficult, hopeless situation”. There was also a tradition of performing Maslenitsa dances and harvest calling dances, accompanied by songs of erotic content, which strengthened the productive function of a dance. Some of those folklore songs contained obscene language. So, we can see the other meaning of the phraseological unit Sing (Mother) Turnip — ‘no matter what you do, no matter what you ask — it won’t help’, which V. I. Dahl associated with an obscene song about a turnip.

Current article considers specific features of author’s comprehension of the ideologeme pochva (‘soil’) in Ivan S. Aksakov’s journalism. Journalistic texts constituted the majority in the Russian standard language of the 19^th century; ideologemes’ semantics was determined with author’s point of view in texts of that type. Thus, in case of words’ history in 19^th century consideration the analysis of works belonged to different social-political direction is required. One is the main direction of the 19^th-century public discussion was Slavophilism. Slavophiles’ works have not been researched thoroughly by linguists. The research is held on the material of Ivan S. Aksakov’s journalistic texts, because this author has designed a particular social-political conception on the base of senior slavophiles’ theoretical views as a part of the public discussion’s context. The analysis of the ideologeme’s pochva usage in Aksakov’s texts shows the meaning ‘the deepest point, the consistent development is based on’. The contextual environment of the word we consider includes vocabulary the political metaphor «ground-soil» is represented with. It actualizes religious and social-political components of meaning simultaneously, and elements of the direct meaning. The semantic specific of the word pochva in Ivan S. Aksakov’s journalism has been caused by influence of the word Boden and contextual semantic interaction of words. Words’ organization in contexts is influenced by slavophiles’ perception of the German philosophy tradition. In this way the research can complement the word’s pochva semantic history in 19^th century brought forward by Viktor V. Vinogradov, and denote the word’s terrain influence’s lack in it.