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

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

The title of the book refers to the sociological survey, conducted by the "Public opinion" Fund in 2000. It is focused on the representation of Internet as a complex phenomenon in modern Russia. First, the Internet is considered as part of the media system that not only rapidly developing, but also significantly transforming the system as a whole. Second, it contains the analysis of main online markets in Russia. Thirdly, the Internet is analyzed in political, social and cultural contexts.

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 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"

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. 

This paper focuses on the cognitive foundation of the semantics of English adjectives that denote mental and moral characteristics of human beings. Research into these adjectives seems a challenging task because they denote abstract qualities that cannot be perceived through vision, hearing, or touch; and here a question arises: How are abstract qualities interpreted in English encoded through adjectives? To answer it, this study follows the idea of two-level semantics, i.e. word semantics is treated as a two-level phenomenon that comprises the semantic (external) level and the conceptual (deep) one. This study is the first to address adjectival semantics from this perspective. Here a novel approach to revealing the cognitive foundation of adjectives is introduced: given that adjectives originated from old syncretic items and a word cognitive model forms at the moment of word creation, cognitive models underlying adjectives' semantics are unearthed via analysis of their etymological data. Our contribution is two-fold. First, the approach has revealed that the image schema CONTAINER guides semantics of an array of various adjectives independent of their morphemic structure or date of origin. The examples demonstrate that abstract human qualities are interpreted via the following container features: boundary, container substance, size, hardness/softness of a container shell, etc. The semantics of affixed or compound adjectives appear to stem from the integration of concepts represented by an affix and a root or two roots, respectively. Second, the findings show that the value given to every container feature appears to predetermine the evaluation conveyed by an adjective. Container features tend to possess ambivalent value, realizing the positive or negative one due to the interaction with a frame in which the CONTAINER is incorporated, therefore the same polysemantic adjective may develop both positive and negative meanings. To reveal the whole inventory of cognitive models that govern adjectival semantics in English, further research needs to be conducted.

Abstract. The article represents the analysis of individual styles of summary writing with the aim to describe them, and verify the methods of their defining (diagnosis). The purpose of the paper is to determine the scientific status, and also to substantiate the pragmatic function of individual summary writing styles in order to improve the quality of students’ preparation for this type of written activity in the process of learning foreign languages. The main goal of the authors is to prove that the individual style of summary writing is conditioned by socio- cultural and personal factors that influence the ability to perceive and process the source text and generate a secondary text – a summary. Materials and methods. As a methodological basis, the authors rely on the learner- centered and intercultural approaches to teaching. The solution of research problems was ensured through the use of a set of interrelated methods: theoretical (analysis of literature, of available domestic and foreign experience), general scientific (classification, differentiation, comparison, generalization), as well as empirical (experimental work, content analysis of activity products – summaries, statistical data processing). The material for research is summaries which are regarded as products of written speech by Russian- speaking and English- speaking students of an economics university. Results. The research identifies and characterizes lingvocognitive styles of summary writing specific for English and Russian language speakers, that reflect nationally and personally conditioned approaches to analytical and synthetic processing of information. We prove experimentally and statistically reliably the fact that Russian- speaking students are characterized by differentiating, scanning style of summary writing, while English- speaking students – by integrating, fragmenting style of summary writing. The systematization of the results of the summaries’ content analysis has demonstrated the use by the learners of their personal experience for perception, processing of the source text and in the generation of the text of a summary. Conclusions. The obtained results help to optimize the process of preparing students for writing summaries in the conditions of intercultural communication, taking into account the individual style of summary writing.  

Academic Bibliography of Syriac and Christian Arabic Studies in Russian published in 2019.

This paper gives an account of participial clauses in Agul (Lezgic, Nakh-Daghestanian), based on a sample of 858 headed noun-modifying clauses taken from two text corpora, one spoken and one written. Noun-modifying clauses in Agul do not show syntactic restrictions on what can be relativized, and hence they instantiate the type known as GNMCCs, or general noun-modifying clause constructions. As the text counts show, intransitive verbs are more frequent than transitives and experiencer verbs in participial clauses, and among intransitive verbs, locative statives with the roots ‘be’ and ‘stay, remain’ account for half of all the uses. The asymmetry between the different relativization targets is also significant. Among the core arguments, the intransitive subject (S) is the most frequent target, patient (P) occupies second place, and agent (A) is comparatively rare. The preference of S and, in general, of S and P over A also holds true for most other Nakh-Daghestanian languages for which comparable counts are available. At the same time, Agul stands apart from the other languages by its high ratio of non-core relativization which accounts for 42% of all participial clauses. Addressee, arguments and adjuncts encoded with a locative case, as well as more general PLACE and TIME relativizations show especially high frequency, outnumbering such arguments as experiencers, recipients, and predicative and adnominal possessors. Possible reasons for the high ratio of non-argument relativization are discussed in the paper.

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.    

We report results from a self-paced silent reading study and a self-paced reading-aloud study examining ambiguous forms (heteronyms) of Russian animate and inanimate nouns which are differentiated in speech through word stress, e.g. uCHItelja.TEACHER.GEN/ACC.SG and uchiteLJA.TEACHERS.NOM.PL1. During reading, the absence of the auditory cue (word stress) to word identification results in morphologically ambiguous forms since both words have the same inflectional marking, -ja. Because word inflection is a reliable cue to syntactic role assignment, the ambiguity affects the level of morphology and of syntactic structure. However, word order constraints and frequency advantage of the GEN over both the NOM and the ACC noun forms with the -a/-ja inflection should pre-empt two different syntactic parses (OVS vs SVO) when the heteronym is sentence-initial. We inquired into whether the parser is aware of the multi-level ambiguity and whether selected conflicting cues (case, word order, animacy) can prime parallel access to several structural parses. We found that animate and inanimate nouns patterned differently. The difference was consistent across the experiments. Against the backdrop of classical sentence processing dichotomies, the emergent pattern fits with the serial interactive or the parallel modular parser hypothesis.

The article brings under scrutiny an understudied dialogical account about the deposition of the patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas IV Mouzalon (1147–51). A close reading shows that this is not an official record of the proceedings but a piece of fiction that deliberately inverts the generic conventions of the two types of texts indicative of the 12th-century literary landscape, namely 1) minutes of church councils and 2) syllogistic theological dialogues. The anonymous author invites the reader to recognize the all-familiar scheme of the Socratic interrogation but eventually departs from it investing the protagonists (Manuel I Komnenos and Mouzalon) with features that distance them from their Platonic models. The text seems to be inextricably linked to Mouzalon’s canonical dilemma: can an archbishop who previously voluntarily fled from his office be appointed archbishop once again? In fact, the author’s primary concern is not the patriarch but the emperor, a judge-logician who is at one and the same time Socrates and more than Socrates, and the new language able to reflect the changing balance between the imperial and ecclesiastical powers in mid-12th-century Byzantium.

The investigation gives the author’s view on teaching creative translation by researching the case of the cognitive political discourse analysis procedure. Of a particular interest is the fact that the research material is based on the example of the discourse analysis of modern political terminology and other non-equivalent vocabulary within the bounds of political contexts. Unlike traditional approaches connecting creativity to literary texts studies, the paper deals with the methodology of comprehending and translating foreign academic and scientific texts. The cognitive study of contextual actualization of political concepts in the English and Russian discourses through their comparative analysis is aimed at professional explanation of motivation in choosing translation equivalents. The algorithm of making up an associative thesaurus based on cognitive signs of lexical marking has been used as the major tool of political discourse analysis as well as the foundation for the original creative model of teaching translation.

Many aphasia assessments and therapies select and/or sequence verbs based on linguistic complexity of their verb argument structure (VAS). However, further empirical testing is needed to fully understand whether and how VAS parameters affect the cognitive difficulty of verb processing in different tasks and contexts. The study investigated whether more linguistically complex VAS universally implies more cognitively difficult verb processing, as predicted by the Argument Structure Complexity Hypothesis (Thompson, 2003). We hypothesized that this would only be the case at sentence level, whereas in single-word tasks more linguistically complex VAS would facilitate lexical access via lexico-semantic associations with potential arguments, contrary to the Argument Structure Complexity Hypothesis.

The effects of three VAS parameters (number of arguments, number of valency frames, canonicity of thematic role marking) were tested in two tasks (single- word naming and cued sentence production) in two aphasia types (fluent and non-fluent, 20 participants per group). We analyzed how VAS parameters affected accuracy and latency in naming and canonicity and well-formedness in sentence production. As hypothesized, VAS effects were different at the sentence versus single-word level. In sentence production, one VAS parameter (the number of arguments) showed the expected negative effect of greater linguistic complexity on sentence canonicity. No other comparisons were significant, likely due to ceiling effects. In contrast, in single-word naming, VAS effects were mixed. The number of valency frames showed the predicted facilitatory effect of linguistic complexity. The number of arguments showed a non-significant statistical trend in the same direction. For canonicity of thematic role marking, greater complexity had a negative effect on naming, possibly because it does not affect the number of lexico-semantic associates of the verb. All findings pertained to both non-fluent and fluent aphasia. When accounting for VAS parameters in selection or sequencing of verbs for assessment or therapy, the cognitive difficulty of verb processing should be estimated for a particular task. In sentence-level grammatical processing, most cognitively difficult verbs are those with more linguistically complex VAS. In contrast, in single verb retrieval, verbs with more linguistically complex VAS may be cognitively simpler if their richer lexico-semantic associations with potential arguments provide extra routes of lexical access.

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.