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Вопросы филологии и журналистики
The article deals with the current tendency towards an increase in Russian speakers’ verbalized metalinguistic reflection on language and culture contact, generated by growing exposure to global English and the influx of Anglicisms. Of crucial importance to cross-cultural research are metalinguistic commentaries, in which lay speakers register their negative attitude to those borrowings from English which reflect cultural norms and values clashing with the system of traditional Russian cultural norms and values. This is defined as a "linguacultural clash" or "linguacultural conflict"; its negatively marked metalinguistic interpretation is seen as part of speakers' "linguistic self-defense".
The paper discusses certain aspects of Indo-Uralic reconstruction, focusing on a comparison of our theoretical expectations from the comparison of Indo-European and Uralic basic lexicon with the actual results of lexicostatistical analysis.
Following pioneering ideas of Bojan Čop, this paper offers a brief sketch of a theory of the origin of Proto-Indo-European ablaut in the light of Indo-Uralic comparison. Starting from the assumption that Proto-Indo-Uralic phonotactics and morphophonology were essentially preserved in Proto-Uralic, but significantly changed in Proto-Indo-European, we trace the origin of Proto-Indo-European ablaut paradigms (mobile and acrostatic paradigms of root nouns, hysterokinetic, proterokinetic, amphikinetic and acrostatic paradigms of suffixed nouns). Each of these paradigms can be derived by a set of simple rules from the proposed Proto-Indo-Uralic reconstruction that is itself based on the conventional Proto-Uralic reconstruction.
In the paper, the classes of labile verbs (verbs which can be transitive or intransitive without any formal changes) are analyzed on the data of European and North Caucasian languages. The main conclusion is that there is a semantic difference between classes of labile verbs in the two language groups under analysis. In European languages, predicates with low semantic transitivity are labile (for instance, motion verbs and phasal verbs), while in Caucasian languages, lability is more characteristic of verbs with high semantic transitivity (verbs of destruction and similar verb classes).
Students' internet usage attracts the attention of many researchers in different countries. Differences in internet penetration in diverse countries lead us to ask about the interaction of medium and culture in this process. In this paper we present an analysis based on a sample of 825 students from 18 Russian universities and discuss findings on particularities of students' ICT usage. On the background of the findings of the study, based on data collected in 2008-2009 year during a project "A сross-cultural study of the new learning culture formation in Germany and Russia", we discuss the problem of plagiarism in Russia, the availability of ICT features in Russian universities and an evaluation of the attractiveness of different categories of ICT usage and gender specifics in the use of ICT.
The distractive effects on attentional task performance in different paradigms are analyzed in this paper. I demonstrate how distractors may negatively affect (interference effect), positively (redundancy effect) or neutrally (null effect). Distractor effects described in literature are classified in accordance with their hypothetical source. The general rule of the theory is also introduced. It contains the formal prediction of the particular distractor effect, based on entropy and redundancy measures from the mathematical theory of communication (Shannon, 1948). Single- vs dual-process frameworks are considered for hypothetical mechanisms which underpin the distractor effects. Distractor profiles (DPs) are also introduced for the formalization and simple visualization of experimental data concerning the distractor effects. Typical shapes of DPs and their interpretations are discussed with examples from three frequently cited experiments. Finally, the paper introduces hierarchical hypothesis that states the level-fashion modulating interrelations between distractor effects of different classes.
The results of cross-cultural research of implicit theories of innovativeness among students and teachers, representatives of three ethnocultural groups: Russians, the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingushs) and Tuvinians (N=804) are presented. Intergroup differences in implicit theories of innovativeness are revealed: the ‘individual’ theories of innovativeness prevail among Russians and among the students, the ‘social’ theories of innovativeness are more expressed among respondents from the North Caucasus, Tuva and among the teachers. Using the structural equations modeling the universal model of values impact on implicit theories of innovativeness and attitudes towards innovations is constructed. Values of the Openness to changes and individual theories of innovativeness promote the positive relation to innovations. Results of research have shown that implicit theories of innovativeness differ in different cultures, and values make different impact on the attitudes towards innovations and innovative experience in different cultures.