Authors

The current article focuses on the methodical aspect of providing instructional materials for teaching Chinese as a second language within an intercultural educational paradigm as a part of an effective coping strategy for students with learning difficulties. Acquiring communicative competence plays a crucial role in language learning and teaching. Therefore, competency-based approach is suggested to define the major principles of designing innovative instructional materials for students acquiring bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The article discusses the experience in teaching 1st – 3rd year students majoring in Linguistics and Intercultural Communication and focuses on topical issues related to resolving difficulties that students encounter while studying. According to the survey performed among students studying Chinese as a second language, a comparatively low level of communicative competence was demonstrated. Didactic analysis proved the lack of tasks aimed at developing pragmatic component of communicative competence in the textbooks used in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. The author outlines a set of methodical principles for creating instructional materials aimed at acquiring communicative competence.

The paper continues a series of works dedicated to the study of lexical concepts Zapad in Russian, West in English and 㾯 in Chinese languages as content-bearing mental structures in diachronic perspective. Since interdisciplinary research has been one of the main trends in cognitive linguistics these days, understanding of how various mental structures mediate real-world information to our mind is still a burning issue. It’s very well known that lexical meanings are constructed based on schematic mental spaces and can be considered as highly dynamic systems. However, as far as the system of spatial reasoning is claimed to be inherent and, hence, stable, the question of its conceptual structure’s inner dynamics appears to be one of the most challenging. Thus, diachronic perspective on concepts that embody the knowledge of cardinal points appears to be a promising technique to better understand the relations between different types of cognitive structures verbalized by the means of language and how original spatial knowledge is connected to more recent non- spatial knowledge in a conceptual content system. The author focuses on the role of extra-linguistic factors in conceptual knowledge formation on different stages of conceptual development.

The current article forms part of the broader research that investigates the mechanisms of gradient semantic shift within synonymic series of adjectives denoting personal characteristics in Russian and Chinese languages.

The paper is devoted to examining the semantic dynamics within a synonymous series with the lexeme “агрессивный” (aggressive) as a core element and its synonyms in Russian, as well as a number of its Chinese equivalents (such as 侵略性, 攻击性, 强势, etc.). The aim of the article is to identify systematic patterns in the conceptualization of aggression as a human characteristic in distantly related languages, namely, the changes in emotive valence and cultural load within the synonymous series.

The research is carried out within the framework of cognitive semantics, relying on the integrative methodological approach that combines the tools of prototype theory, componential analysis, and conceptual analysis.

Through a detailed comparative analysis of synonymous series of descriptive adjectives in Russian and Chinese, the structural and connotative differences in the semantic dynamics across the synonymic series in the two languages under study are demonstrated. The study establishes the universal nature of the gradient shift in emotive valence from the negative to the positive pole when moving from the core to the periphery of the synonymic row. It is also demonstrated that the linguistic embodiment of this shift is conditioned by the perceptions of aggression inherent to native speakers of Russian and Chinese. The study illustrates the profound interconnection between semantic processes, the language-specific conceptualization, and the value systems of Russian and Chinese cultures, contributing to the theory of semantic variation and intercultural communication.