Authors

This article continues the series of publications on the “active” grammar of the Russian language. The grammar of the “active” type, included in the socio-cultural context, makes it possible to identify and describe choice patterns of certain forms of actants depending on the meaning which the speaking (writing) subject aims to express. The research was conducted in the direction from the meaning of the verb to the expression form of its actant positions. This article is devoted to the role identification of the evaluative component of the meaning ‘shame’ of the verbs in the realization of syntagmatic properties within the actant structure. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how the subject’s negative assessment of his actions affects the way of designation of verbal actants. Analysis of the actant structure of ‘shame’ verbs has shown that the evaluative component requires a special arrangement of actants, one of which is the object of evaluation, and the second designates a witness, a real or potential eyewitness to an event unpleasant for the subject. The way these positions are formalized depends on the meaning of the verb, on the characteristics of the objects themselves, and on the value attitudes of the culture. In Russian culture, the “position of responsibility” is understood as a position for a person or a group of persons who occupy a higher position in the social, family or intellectual hierarchy than the subject. The “status” of Russian culture is indirectly reflected in verb syntagmatics.

The article discusses the concept of cultural transmission. The language is considered as one of the tools for the transmission of values from one generation to another. The work is based on the materials of dictionaries and the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The research confi rms the thesis about the existence of fundamental culture codes, which manage its language and perception schemes. Understanding the signifi cance of cultural codes makes it possible to form and develop a national cultural identity, which contributes to the implementation of cultural transmission. Special attention is paid to identifying linguistic areas of concentration of cultural meanings. In the course of the study, it was found out that the internal form of the word and evaluative vocabulary open up great opportunities for establishing cultural-specifi c meanings hidden from direct observation. The meanings of words containing a subjective component allow us to formulate some laws of “naive” ethics. The use of words with evaluative semantics indicates the moral rules of the society or reveals their violation. The article also shows how values are refl ected in the formation of the ethnic style of communication. This work is deeply connected with such topical questions as the national and cultural specifi city of connotations, the means of their lexicographical representation, the decoding of speaker’s value system.

The article deals with the cognitive essence of zoomorphic metaphor and its national and cultural identity in the Russian language. The study was carried out based on dictionaries and text corpora of the Russian language. The purpose of the article is to analyze the vocabulary material and its textual implementations in order to determine, based on the analysis, which cultural information is not fully reflected in explanatory dictionaries. In the course of the study, it was found that the names of animals, which represent cultural standards in the Russian language, mainly capture negative character traits of people and their appearance. The images of flying birds, on the contrary, capture and describe in a figurative form the positive characteristics of a person. The analysis of dictionary definitions showed that different names of the same animals often have different associative potential in the national-cultural sense. Explanatory dictionaries do not always capture differences in the connotative volume of lexical units. The results of this study can be used in lexicographic practice when creating a complex dictionary, which involves the inclusion of connotative and associative meanings in the interpretation of words. Such dictionaries are necessary both when teaching Russian as a native language and when working with foreign students who study Russian.

The article deals with the direction in linguistics focused on the description of the language for productive and receptive speech actions. The developer of this direction, Igor G. Miloslavskiy, proves in his writings that the classification approach is clearly insufficient to describe in full the language understood as activity. Orientation to the reflection of reality and to the understanding of speech activity as a set of receptive and productive actions lead to the understanding that language serves to ensure speaking / writing and understanding when listening and reading. Different initial data (meaning and text) require that the grammars intended for reception and production should have fundamental differences. The speaker/writer’s goal is (ideally) to strive to make an accurate choice of language units and ways of connecting them that correspond to his intention. For a person reading / listening, the most important task is to extract complete and accurate content from lexical and phraseological units in the process of listening or reading, as well as distinguishing between objective and subjective meanings contained in the statement. As convincingly, showed Miloslavskiy, the activity approach to the language, demanded by life and society, is able to ensure the effective development of the linguistics of the future. The article presents a brief review of the works of Igor G. Miloslavskiy and the main stages of his scientific and pedagogical activity, strongly associated with the Lomonosov Moscow State University.

The article examines cultural standards of modesty in the Russian and Chinese languages. The study is based on dictionaries and text corpora of two languages. The purpose of the work is to determine universal and nationally specific features in the formation of cultural standards of modesty in the Russian and Chinese languages. The object of the study is modesty as a traditional value of Russian and Chinese linguistic cultures. Modesty is encoded using cultural standards that reflect the essential features of modesty as a sociocultural value that characterizes Russian and Chinese cultures. The study found that in the Russian language, modesty, which is predominantly gender-based, is mainly associated with the image of a girl (woman). Modesty as a universal human quality is realized contradictorily: 1) “the modesty of a hero, a real person” and 2) “the modesty of a quiet, timid, dependent person.” In Chinese linguistic culture, “modesty” occupies a strong position, and its “standard” implementation, determined by the ideas of Confucius, is an integral part not only of etiquette, but also the worldview of the Chinese. In the Chinese language, the “standard” implementation of modesty, defined by the ideas of Confucius, is an integral part of etiquette. The Chinese modesty system is associated with natural objects and plant images that are of great importance to Chinese culture. The results of this study can be used in lexicographic practice and in teaching Russian and Chinese languages.