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This pioneering volume explores the Arctic as an important and highly endangered archive of knowledge about natural as well as human history of the anthropocene.

Focusing on the Arctic as an archive means to investigate it not only as a place of human history and memory – of Arctic exploring, ›conquering‹ and colonizing –, but to take into account also the specific environmental conditions of the circumpolar region: ice and permafrost. These have allowed a huge natural archive to emerge, offering rich sources for natural scientists and historians alike.

Examining the debate on the notion of (›natural‹) archive, the cultural semantics and historicity of the meaning of concepts like ›warm‹, ›cold‹, ›freezing‹ and ›melting‹ as well as various works of literature, art and science on Arctic topics, this volume brings together literary scholars, historians of knowledge and philosophy, art historians, media theorists and archivologists.

The volume is devoted to the typology of the category of number in the world's languages.

The book‘s main objective is developing academic writing and speaking skills, namely teaching students to write a proposal of their research and to orally present its conception. The book is mainly intended for undergraduate and graduate students of the faculty of law of Higher School of Economics. ―Project Proposal Guide: How to Write and Present (Law Disciplines)‖ is divided into three parts. The first part is theoretical and explains characteristics of the genre of project proposal. The second part ―Writing a project proposal‖ contains eight chapters, each devoted to a particular part of an academic paper (abstract, introduction, literature review etc.). The third part ―Oral presentation of a project proposal‖ consists of two units devoted to PowerPoint and poster presentations, correspondingly. The book is also provided with additional materials: a questionnaire that enables students to evaluate their level of academic skills development and samples of projects‘ chapters with analysis.

The book can be used both in class and individually.

Language policy and usage in the post-communist region have continually attracted wide political, media, and expert attention since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. How are these issues politicized in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine? This study presents a cross-cultural qualitative and quantitative analysis of publications in leading Russian-language blogs and news websites of these three post-Soviet states during the period of 2004–2017. The most notable difference observed between Ukraine and the two Baltic countries is that many Russian-writing users in Ukraine’s internet tend to support the position that the state language, i.e. Ukrainian, is discriminated against and needs special protection by the state, whereas the majority of the Russian-speaking commentators on selected Estonian and Latvian news websites advocate for introducing Russian as a second state language. Despite attempts of Ukraine’s government to Ukrainize public space, the position of Ukrainian is still perceived, even by many Russian-writing commentators and bloggers, as being ‘precarious’ and ‘vulnerable’. This became especially visible in debates after the Revolution of Dignity, when the number of supporters of the introduction of Russian as second state language significantly decreased. In the Russian-language sector of Estonian and Latvian news websites and blogs, in contrast, the majority of online users continually reproduce the image of ‘victims’ of nation-building. They often claim that their political, as well as economic rights, are significantly limited in comparison to ethnic Estonians and Latvians. The results of Maksimovtsova’s research illustrate that, notwithstanding differences between the Estonian as well as Latvian cases, on the one hand, and Ukraine, on the other, there is an ongoing process of convergence of debates in Ukraine to those held in the other two countries analyzed in terms of an increased degree of ‘discursive decommunization’ and ‘derussification’.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the gapping dataset for Russian that consists of 7.5k sentences with gapping (as well as 15k relevant negative sentences) and comprises data from various genres: news, fiction, social media and technical texts. The dataset was prepared for the Automatic Gapping Resolution Shared Task for Russian (AGRR-2019) - a competition aimed at stimulating the development of NLP tools and methods for processing of ellipsis. In this paper, we pay special attention to the gapping resolution methods that were introduced within the shared task as well as an alternative test set that illustrates that our corpus is a diverse and representative subset of Russian language gapping sufficient for effective utilization of machine learning techniques.

The goals of research on conceptual metaphor in discourse are at present remarkably multifaceted, from describing specific social, pragmatic, rhetorical, aesthetic, and discursive functions in real discourse data, through assessing metaphor entrenchment in the cultural and conceptual system, to identification methods as well as criteria for metaphorical mapping description and classification. The volume the reader is about to explore provides a broad panorama of perspectives tackling diverse aspects of metaphor analysis, including a wide range of topics such as the levels of source domain knowledge configuration, new Metaphor analysis in discourse. Introduction 7 target domain knowledge, conscious usage, metaphor identification procedures, communicative functions, linguistic metaphor, visual modes of metaphorical expression, corpus processing, trans-modal metaphor, among others. One of the assets of this collective work consists in showing how the scrutiny of metaphorical connections in multimodal discourse reveals the conceptual nature of metaphorical thinking. The book is organized in three parts, each one focussing on certain aspects of metaphor analysis in discourse. The first part emphasizes the description and characterization of metaphorical knowledge. The chapters offer a view on knowledge configurations like image schemas, frames, scenarios and domains that configure particular kinds of discourse and knowledge. The second part puts the stress on communicative aspects, particularly on the analysis of author/speaker intentionality and the tools to measure intention and effect in metaphor usage. Finally, the third block in the volume delves into the intricacies of disclosing metaphorical codes in non-linguistic modes of semiosis, be it cartoons, film, or other visual media.

Proceedings of Third Workshop "Computational linguistics and language science"

The volume includes chapters devoted to various aspects of Caucasian languages.

This book examines the function and development of the cult of saints in Coptic Egypt, focusing primarily on the material provided by the texts forming the Coptic hagiographical tradition of the early Christian martyr Philotheus of Antioch, and more specifically, the Martyrdom of St Philotheus of Antioch (Pierpont Morgan M583). This Martyrdom is a reflection of a once flourishing cult which is attested in Egypt by rich textual and material evidence. This text enjoyed great popularity not only in Egypt, but also in other countries of the Christian East, since his dossier includes texts in Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Arabic.

This book is an investigation into the grammar of Mehweb (Dargwa, East Caucasian also known as Nakh-Daghestanian) based on several years of team fieldwork. Mehweb is spoken in one village community in Daghestan, Russia, with a population of some 800 people, In many ways, Mehweb is a typical East Caucasian language: it has a rich inventory of consonants; an extensive system of spatial forms in nouns and converbs and volitional forms in verbs; pervasive gender-number agreement; and ergative alignment in case marking and in gender agreement. It is also a typical language of the Dargwa branch, with symmetrical verb inflection in the imperfective and perfective paradigm and extensive use of spatial encoding for experiencers. Although Mehweb is clearly close to the northern varieties of Dargwa, it has been long isolated from the main body of Dargwa varieties by speakers of Avar and Lak. As a result of both independent internal evolution and contact with its neighbours, Mehweb developed some deviant properties, including accusatively aligned egophoric agreement, a split in the feminine class, and the typologically rare grammatical categories of verificative and apprehensive. But most importantly, Mehweb is where our friends live.

The Russian Formalists’ opposition between story (“a phenomenon relating to the material”) and plot (“a phenomenon of style”) presents the latter as the aspect of the work that not only organizes “the totality of events,” but also organizes them intentionally in order to increase readerly tension. The recombination of story events into a plot (with its interruptions, retardations, and decoys) makes possible the emancipation of the narrator and the reader, and even the author, from “what happened in actuality.” This division between “the material of life” and its “artistic deformation and decomposition” is the basis for the Formalist theory of narrative

This book consists of previously unpublished manuscripts by Vygotsky found in the first systematic study of Vygotsky’s family archive. The notebooks and scientific diaries gathered in this volume represent all periods of Vygotsky’s scientific life, beginning with the earliest manuscript, entitled The tragicomedy of strivings (1912), and ending with his last note, entitled Pro domo sua (1934), written shortly before his death. The notes reveal unknown aspects of the eminent psychologist’s personality, show his aspirations and interests, and allow us to gain insights into the development of his thinking and its internal dynamics. Several texts reflect the plans that Vygotsky was unable to realize during his lifetime, such as the creation of a theory of emotions and a theory of consciousness, others reveal Vygotsky’s involvement in activities that were previously unknown, and still others provide outlines of papers and lectures. The notes are presented in chronological order, preceded by brief introductions and accompanied by an extensive set of notes. The result is a book that allows us to obtain a much deeper understanding of Vygotsky’s innovative ideas. 

The given book is aimed at bachelor students for Law facultywhoo need to create a project proposal for their Final paaper. Inthis book students will find recommendations for writinf research proposals and samples of papers with detailed analysis , exercises and theoretical framework. The students will be able to present the results of their scintific studies either in oral or wriiten form.

Linguists have long classified languages according to the ways in which their intransitive subjects, transitive subjects, and direct objects align with respect to case marking and/or agreement. The two main divisions are known as the (nominative–)accusative and ergative(–absolutive) alignments.  Under an accusative alignment pattern, the intransitive subject (abbreviated here as S) and the transitive subject (A: for agent, or agent-like argument) are encoded the same way (nominative), while the transitive direct object (O) is encoded separately (accusative). Under an ergative alignment pattern, on the other hand, S and O have identical encoding (absolutive) while A has its own separate case (ergative); see Comrie (1978); Dixon (1979; 1994); Manning (1996); Aldridge (2008); McGregor (2009); among others. These alignments can be expressed not only through case marking but also through agreement; S and A may determine the same agreement, in contrast to O, or S and O may license the same agreement, in contrast to A.

The book comprises study materials for learning English. It aims at developing students' communication skills which are necessary for using English in every day life and professional activities. The book provides learners with extra opportunities for developing their listening, pronunciation, vocabulary and speaking skills through the use of authentic video content selected in accordance with the requirements of the ESL course.

The resource book is a collection of twelve lessons based on a selection of TED talks about different aspects of modern life. The selected TED talks not only enhance the learners’ English language proficiency but also develop the learners’ professional competencies and expand their outlook.  All the lessons have a regular structure and include exercises for developing vocabulary, listening, reading, speaking, note-taking and writing skills. A quick test has been developed for each lesson checking the student’s assimilation of the material.  Through authentic models of effective communication, students build fluency to achieve academic and personal success. The resource book can be used both for classroom activities and for independent work. 

The book is devoted to qualifying parts of speech: adjective and adverb.

Background

Protocols for intraoperative language mapping with direct electrical stimulation (DES) often include various language tasks triggering both nouns and verbs in sentences. Such protocols are not readily available for navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS), where only single word object naming is generally used. Here, we present the development, norming, and standardization of the verb and noun test for peri-operative testing (VAN-POP) that measures language skills more extensively.

Methods

The VAN-POP tests noun and verb retrieval in sentence context. Items are marked and balanced for several linguistic factors known to influence word retrieval. The VAN-POP was administered in English, German, and Dutch under conditions that are used for nTMS and DES paradigms. For each language, 30 speakers were tested.

Results

At least 50 items per task per language were named fluently and reached a high naming agreement.

Conclusion

The protocol proved to be suitable for pre- and intraoperative language mapping with nTMS and DES.

Purpose: The current study investigates how individual differences in cochlear implant (CI) users’ sensitivity to word–nonword differences, reflecting lexical uncertainty, relate to their reliance on sentential context for lexical access in processing continuous speech. 

Method: Fifteen CI users and 14 normal-hearing (NH) controls participated in an auditory lexical decision task (Experiment 1) and a visual-world paradigm task (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 tested participants’ reliance on lexical statistics, and Experiment 2 studied how sentential context affects the time course and patterns of lexical competition leading to lexical access.

Results: In Experiment 1, CI users had lower accuracy scores and longer reaction times than NH listeners, particularly for nonwords. In Experiment 2, CI users’ lexical competition patterns were, on average, similar to those of NH listeners, but the patterns of individual CI users varied greatly. Individual CI users’ word–nonword sensitivity (Experiment 1) explained differences in the reliance on sentential context to resolve lexical competition, whereas clinical speech perception scores explained competition with phonologically related words.

Conclusions: The general analysis of CI users’ lexical competition patterns showed merely quantitative differences with NH listeners in the time course of lexical competition, but our additional analysis revealed more qualitative differences in CI users’ strategies to process speech. Individuals’ word–nonword sensitivity explained different parts of individual variability than clinical speech perception scores. These results stress, particularly for heterogeneous clinical populations such as CI users, the importance of investigating individual differences in addition to group averages, as they can be informative for clinical rehabilitation.

Heritage Spanish speakers and adult immigrant bilinguals listened to wh-questions with the differential object marker a (quién/a quién ‘who/whoACC’) while their eye movements across four referent pictures were tracked. The heritage speakers were less accurate than the adult immigrants in their verbal responses to the questions, leaving objects unmarked for case at a rate of 18%, but eye movement data suggested that the two groups were similar in their comprehension, with both starting to look at the target picture at the same point in the question and identifying the target sooner with a quién ‘whoACC’ than with quién ‘who’ questions.

This study examines perfectionism in the English language teaching profession in Russia. The aims are threefold: 1) to use latent profile analysis (LPA) to classify English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers into different types of perfectionists; 2) to compare different types of perfectionists using depression-anxiety-stress indicators (DASS); 3) to study the link between perfectionism and the perception of one’s professional teaching activity. We used convenience sampling by collecting data from 117 English teachers (5% males, 95% females; age range 20-64; M= 39; SD=12) with the Short Almost Perfect Scale (SAPS) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21). LPA was conducted to determine the optimal number of types of individuals based on their SAPS profile. Three distinct classes of perfectionists were found (adaptive, maladaptive, non-perfectionists). 27% of the respondents fell into the category of maladaptive perfectionists with high scores on both the Standards and Discrepancy subscales. Teachers with higher Standards tend to be more aware of their perfectionism. Teachers who are less satisfied with their English proficiency tend to be more stressed at work. However, the results of the study did not indicate significant differences between the perfectionist types on anxiety, depression, and stress. The findings suggest the need to develop these scales further for measuring perfectionism in the teaching profession and in EFL teaching particularly.

This paper focuses on referential coherence, which is seen as a crucial attribute of effective academic writing. Findings are reported from a corpus study of Russian students’ research proposals. The learners’ use of anaphoric expressions is compared with a reference corpus, which comprises research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. It was hypothesised that learners use anaphora less frequently than professional writers and face some difficulties when using anaphoric expressions. The results of the analysis partly confirmed the hypothesis and allowed the identification of particular problems connected with the students’ use of anaphoric expressions, which were then classified into several groups. Examples of exercises aimed at dealing with the identified problems are also provided. It is hoped that the reported findings, as well as the author’s suggested reasons for the problems and possible ways of dealing with them, will be useful for EAP practitioners, researchers, and students writing their research papers in English.

The Chukchi-speaking population is distributed within three regions of the Russian Federation—Chukotka, Kamchatka, and Yakutia. Because of the lack of regular transportation between these regions and different attitudes toward the Chukchi from the local authorities, Chukchi-speaking communities in these regions have become isolated from one another and have been developing independently. This article observes the dynamics of language shift in all Chukchi-speaking areas through the analysis of the data of the Russian Censuses (1897–2015), literature sources, and personal observations. The figures in this article illustrate the distribution of Chukchi-speaking communities within their historical and modern homeland, Chukchi vernacular zones, the participation in traditional economic activities, and contacts with other languages.

This research examines the degree to which stated proficiency levels for L2 Russian curricular materials align with frequency-based corpora data and reflects a comparative analysis of four contemporary L2 Russian textbooks published in the United States that target students at the Intermediate/Advanced threshold.  In particular, the researchers compiled a corpus comprised of lexical items from the aforementioned textbooks and compared them with the 5,000 general vocabulary frequency lists by Sharoff, Umanskaya, and Wilson (2013) and fiction and mass media lists by Lyashevskaya and Sharoff (2009).  Findings suggest that the curricular design of the textbooks reflects a conscious effort on the part of the authors to introduce and recycle vocabulary at the stated level; however, a careful review of frequency data reveals insufficient overlap at the 3,000-5,000-word band and a considerable number of vocabulary items that exceed the range associated with the target proficiency.  Findings likewise underscore the value of frequency measures as an objective method for selecting vocabulary that elicits both level-appropriate and domain-specific discourse, which, in turn, assists textbook designers with making data-driven decisions regarding the content of foreign language textbooks with a communicative emphasis.

This study examines the design and implementation of an online academic writing tutor offered to novice L2 writers. The tutor was designed to raise students’ genre awareness with regard to writing undergraduate research proposals, a largely underexplored genre. Two discipline-specific corpora of international research articles and student proposals were used to inform the design of the tutor and develop online materials. The tutor provides explicit guidance on the rhetorical organization of student proposals, extensive language support, various types of genre-based online activities, and a supplementary module on APA format references. Quantitative and qualitative data from 21 Russian EFL students and 10 in-service EAP teachers who pilot tested the tool showed that participants valued the online genre content for its usefulness and comprehensibility and rated highly the tool’s usability and pedagogical effectiveness. The tutor’s subsequent use by 38 novice EFL writers in an academic writing course suggests that students found it useful for promoting their genre awareness and related writing skills and appreciated the tool’s technological affordances as compared to print genre materials. Pedagogical considerations for designing and implementing online tools to support genre instruction are discussed.    

This article attempts to outline the current impact that genetics is having on the fields of archaeology and historical linguistics across the Eurasian continent. It positions the relationship between all three disciplines by reviewing the earlier history of their interactions. In the area of archaeology, there has been a long history of research into the subject of human migration. We briefly review the application of such techniques as craniometry, pigmentation, dermatoglyphics, classical markers and the retrospective reconstruction of population movements from the modern DNA of human populations. We then turn to the revolution created by the application of ancient DNA in three separate areas: Early Man dispersals and legacies, the spread of agriculture and the massive expansion of populations during the Early Bronze Age. Examples are provided of how aDNA is impacting on the study of the origin and dispersals of ethno-linguistic groups. In addition to human migrations, genetics is also impacting on the reconstruction of past lifeways and examples are drawn from research on palaeodiet, palaeopathology and palaeodemography. Genetics is also contributing to major issues of historical linguistics involving the origins and dispersals of the major Eurasian language families. It provides evidence that helps distinguish between instances involving significant migration from those effected by language shift with a minimal genetic trail. Two cases, the Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Altaic homelands are reviewed along with some of the methodological problems of synchronizing genetic and linguistic evidence.

The article focuses on cases when the length of the constituent is relevant for Russian syntax and leads to ungrammaticality or partial acceptability of some structures. The list of phenomena under consideration includes ‘one-word restrictions’; differences between complement clauses of matrix verbs in indicative vs. imperative,  include constructions with ‘predicatives’, special properties of nominalizations, structures with short embedded clauses, and so on. I show that the ‘length restrictions’ are in fact of different nature: some are related to discourse factors (deictic / non-deictic semantics, discourse coherence, imperative addressee orientation), while others are related to parsing needs (grammatical units are typically shorter than lexical ones, main clauses are more explicit than embedded ones). Another feature of length restrictions is that they are never holistic / integral: the particular rule usually holds for a particular type of structure, not for the whole domain of syntax (this is what makes our data different from purely syntactic restrictions, such as c-command requirements and island restrictions, which often cover a broad set of constructions and grammatical contexts).

The paper discusses the linguistic architecture of conflicts occuring in present-day social media. It addresses both the sociology of a conflicts as well as the linguistic means used by the two parties to obtain a communicative victory.

In Russian, there are many ways to address a person by name. For instance, a man called Aleksandr may be addressed as Aleksandr, Aleksandr Ivanovič, Saša, Sašen′ka, Saška, Sanja, etc. This study aims at analyzing the use of various strategies of naming the listener throughout the last two centuries. It uses the data from the Russian National Corpus to establish the direction of change in address patterns and combines a statistical approach with a manual inspection of selected examples.

Voice onset time (VOT) is a parameter which distinguishes the way consonants are articulated . This parameter is widely used in acoustic phonetics. In particular, there are many studies of it in the languages of the world. This paper presents an analysis of VOT in the Abaza language (Northwest Caucasian). We measured the VOT of plain consonants and ejectives, extracted annotated values and performed mixed effects regression showing the influence of  the place of articulation and phonation type on VOT values.

Phasal polarity (PhP) is a cross-linguistic category which includes such values as ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ, ɴᴏᴛ ʏᴇᴛ, sᴛɪʟʟ and ɴᴏ ʟᴏɴɢᴇʀ. This paper discusses morphologically bound markers of phasal polarity in Abaza, a polysynthetic Northwest Caucasian language. We show that the Abaza PhP affixes ‑χ’a ‘already’, -s (+ negation) ‘not yet’, -rḳʷa ‘still’ and -χ (+ negation) ‘no longer’ are partly incorporated into the TAM system and that for at least some of them it is unclear whether they belong to the domain of phasal polarity or the phasal domain in a narrow sense (i.e. including values ʙᴇɢɪɴ, ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴜᴇ, etc.). We also present some preliminary data concerning the obligatoriness of Abaza PhP markers and their frequencies in texts.

The Prosodic model of phonology (Brentari 1998) implies that all signs in any sign language have prosodic and inherent features. This dichotomy (movement feature vs. all other features) occurs to some extent in all phonological theories. The idea derives from Liddell & Johnson’s (1994) Movement-Hold model, where they proposed that movements can be in most cases derived from the knowledge of holds and their relative order, and that it is sufficient to describe in-detail only holds. Therefore, when it comes to describing phonemic inventories of a particular sign language, researchers focus on the building of separate phonemic inventories for each of the inherent features (or for features of holds) (Channon & Hulst 2011), namely handshape, location, and orientation (e.g. van der Kooij (2002) for Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) – only handshapes inventory, Nyst (2007) for Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) – handshapes and locations inventories, etc.). This research focuses on handshapes inventory for Russian Sign Language (RSL). First, I automatically extract positions without movement (i.e. holds) using an algorithm developed on the basis of Börstell’s (2018) script. Then I manually annotate holds for the handshapes with respect to Hamburg Notation System (HamNoSys; Hanke 2004) and describe resulting phonetic handshapes inventory for RSL, comparing this data with other sign languages. The last but not the least, the enventory of phonemic hanshapes for RSL is derived from the phonetic one under van der Kooij’s (2002) model of phonology.

This paper aims at describing the syntactic and semantic properties of gradable predicates in Russian Sign Language (RSL). Property signs in RSL, such as big or beautiful, generally behave similarly to stative predicates. However, their compatibility with the degree modifiers and aspectual markers shows that they significantly differ from other stative verbs. Thus, they can be categorized as a separate adjective class. In addition to that, adjective class in RSL is not homogeneous. Property signs of age and size form the core of this syntactic category.

While spoken languages primarily make use of the acoustic-auditory modality, sign languages use visual-gestural modality. This results in structural differences between those languages. Sign language properties are especially intriguing due to three domains used to convey linguistic information: simultaneity, iconicity and use of space (Meier 2012). The main purpose of my research is to define modality-specific strategies of marking overlapping events in Russian Sign Language (RSL), e.g. simultaneous production of two predicates. I will show what types of syntactic constructions are used to mark simultaneity and what are the criteria for fully-simultaneous production of predicates.

This paper describes different types of questions in Rutul (Lezgic, East Caucasian). Data analyzed in the work were collected during fieldwork in the Kina village (Rutul district, Republic of Dagestan, Russia) from 2016 to 2019. I provide a description of the interrogative markers and their positions in the sentence, word order, and the possibility of constituent fronting.

This paper discusses the syntactic properties of the general perfective converb in Rutul. It can head either an independent predication or a subordinate clause. Clausal relations tests applied to the converb suggest that, when combined with another clause, it may be either coordinate or subordinate. Furthermore, the general covnerb may either fall or not to fall within the scope of main clause illocutionary force and tense operators. I suggest that the converb may have different syntactic size in different constructions: it is a CP when used independently, but, when combined with another clause, it is either a CP or an AspP.

This paper presents a description of the NP in Kina Rutul (Lezgic, East Caucasian). The research combines corpus study and elicitation. The description provides a list of possible noun modifiers, types of syntactic relations between the head and its dependents, and the order of modifiers within a NP. I provide evidence for analyzing the Rutul numeral ‘one’ as an indefinite article and analyze various types of discontinuous noun phrases, which appear to lose phrasal properties.

While different researchers agree that the acquisition of Russian nominal cases proceeds somewhat sequentially, there is no consensus about the exact order of case acquisition in the literature on L1 acquisition (see Ceitlin, 2000; Gvozdev, 1981, 2007; Gagarina & Voeikova, 2009). Besides, accumulated longitudinal data are sparse and disparate, coming from children of different ages, socio-economic statuses, and language acquisition backgrounds. We adopt a psycholinguistic approach to examine acquisition of Russian nominal case inflections by Russian monolingual children (2-5 years old). The goal of the study is twofold: it sets out 1) to examine at what age children learn to generalize rules of noun case usage, and 2) to identify the order of acquisition of Russian oblique case inflections. Children perform a picture-based sentence completion task in which they have to finish the sentence by naming real or nonexisting objects in the pictures. Five sentence frames are constructed to bias the children’s responses towards the use of a noun form in one of the five oblique Russian cases, across three declensions plus plural forms. Data collection is in progress, but interim results show that monolingual Russian-speaking children learn to generalize morphological rules to novel nouns by the age of 2 and that nouns in the plural form are acquired later in language development compared to singular forms. Within the singular forms, 3rd declension cases, especially the instrumental case, present most difficulty. Additionally, 2-3-year-old children tend to substitute oblique cases with the nominative case forms. The results corroborate some of the previous findings and add additional insights into the acquisition of Russian case.

EFL methodology has always recognized the importance of giving student learners of foreign languages regular and quick feedback on student speech production, both written and oral, but over the past two decades there appeared various tools ensuring the provision of automated instant feedback. The presented paper offers such a tool that focuses on measuring text complexity, which will hopefully translate into reasonable feedback about the level of language proficiency when taking into account those text features that are significant for Russian learners of English. The application provides students with advice on how to improve the weaker aspects of the evaluated essay and underlines the relevant linguistic features of the text - for example, the number of adjectival clauses. We point out what text features are more relevant for the assessment of the essays written in English by Russian students. We analyzed 3440 texts from Russian ErrorAnnotated English Learner Corpus, and for each of them we calculated the text criteria values. Then we used the methods of machine learning and statistical analysis to predict the grade that could be received for the essay.

This paper focus on periphrastic nominalization — a construction which has nominal external syntax and which is used to express complement clauses. In this paper we examine the morphological and syntactic properties of this construction and compare those properties with those of typical nominalizations. In particular, a classification of nominalization into processes and results is used as the basis for comparison. As it is a crucial point regarding the contrast between a word and a construction, we also discuss whether the periphrastic nominalization shows signs of grammaticalization.

This paper deals with the productive morphological causative r(ə)- in Abaza (Northwest Caucasian), a highly polysynthetic ergative language. We discuss the causativization process in Abaza as well as the semantic properties of the construction and elaborate an analysis of the event structure of the Abaza morphological causatives based on the scope of adverbials.

This paper describes a group of derivational verbal suffixes in Abaza, a polysynthetic language belonging to the Northwest Caucasian family. For each suffix I propose a short description of its most remarkable features. In particular, I discuss the polysemy of the refactive and assertive markers and their interaction with the event structure of the verb. Other suffixes such as the putative and inferential markers are interesting due to their peculiar morphological behavior. The diversity of the discussed affixes is tentatively explained by the different pathways of their morphological and semantic development.

The paper focuses on the syntax of noun phrases in Chukchi (Chukokto-Kamchatkan). In Chukchi, structure of noun phrases is drastically different dependent on the case of  its head in several respects: we discuss expression of number, incorporation of adnominal dependents and order of constituent. We suggest several order hierarchies, which can partially explain the observed facts.

A data analysis tool of the Corpus of Russian Poetry (a part of the Russian National Corpus) is designed for quantitative research in various areas of versology and linguistics aspects of poetic texts. The core part, a statistic database of the corpus, includes annotation at the level of texts, verses, words as well as patterns of words, letters and stress. The tool allows a user to study certain properties (e. g. rhyming patterns, lexical co-occurrence) taken alone and in their interaction, both in the whole corpus and in subcorpora. Besides that, it facilitates contrastive studies of two chosen subcorpora and a few case studies demonstrating applicable methods and potential for further research in the field of the Digital literary studies.