Inaugural-Dissertation, Universität zu Köln, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Glattochronology is a branch of linguistics which attempts to provide dates for a historical relationship between languages, as well as to establish degrees of lexical relationship. In much the same way as carbon 14 dating provides dates for archaeological finds, glottochronological analysis is a technique utilized to estimate linguistic prehistory. The hypothesis that a proto Balto-Slavonic language has existed in prehistoric times is tested in this paper. This test is based on the cognate count, which reflects the cognation, in percentages, of corresponding lexical forms in both languages. The validity of the results obtained in the cognate count is dependent on the method of determination of cognation. Therefore, only an extremely rigorous approach, in the comparison of corresponding farms in Latvian and Russian, can be accepted as a reasonably valid method of determining true cognation. The corpus of the cognate count consists of 207 items in either language. Each item is formed by corresponding free morphemes in both Latvian and Russian, and is designated as either a positive, or a negative item, depending on the cognation of the corresponding forms. The results of the cognate count are then processed according to the accepted glottochronological methods. According to the results obtained, it was concluded that the hypothesis, claiming a prate Balto-Slavonic language, had to be rejected due to insufficient evidence for such a language. It also appeared that a substantial increase in sample size could furnish this type of investigation with mare reliable results. The conclusions reached indicate that the determination of a genetic relationship between languages, with the aid of the glattochronological technique, tends to be inconclusive. It appears that glattochronological analysis is a valuable method for use in the determination of degrees, of relationship between languages. The results obtained from this type of analysis should be utilized in correlation to results obtained by other disciplines in an endeavour to reconstruct prehistory, as dates obtained via this technique should be viewed as not absolute but rather as relative measurements. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

No description available.

The diploma thesis deals with Russian language periodic press in the Czech Republic from 1990 to 2016. Based on a quantitative document analysis, the thesis describes changes in number of periodicals, identifies three types of publishers and details the biggest publishing companies. Readers and functions of Russian language periodic press are defined with the help of in-depth interviews with media producers. The thesis is supplemented by a list of Russian language titles published in the Czech Republic in 2018. It also contains a description of producers of this minority language media and their working conditions. The thesis concludes that there is a declining tendency in number of Russian language titles published in the Czech Republic. The age of readers of this type of minority media varies. The audience speak and read in Russian and it is also comfortable for them to read in this language. These printed periodicals provide their readers with civic and cultural explanation and with apolitical information with so called Czech element. These functions enable their readers assimilation into the major society.

The materials examined here consist of 121 Russian letters dating from 1700-1715. The present study aims to  define a stage in linguistic evolution and analyze the morphological heterogeneity in the textual corpus. The letters are divided into three categories: private, semiofficial, and official. All nomina (substantives, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals) are registered and their occurrences processed statistically case by grammatical case. The focus is on linguistic features where a choice is possible and variation is in evidence. Conservatism asserts itself primarily in strongly standardized texts such as the official correspondence, while  phonetic spelling reflecting akanie and dialectally influenced syncretism between different cases (e.g., the GDLsg) is observable mainly in the private letters, which consitute the least standardized category. There is a trend break among u-genitives and u-locatives, where our findings indicate that the u-ending is losing ground. A statistically established correlation between declensional type and the presence/absence of a coordinated adjunct is noted in the instrumental plural of masculine o-, jo-stems. The choice of the archaizing Ipl-ending suggests that repetition of the –mi- element is perceived to be redundant. In the singular paradigm of the adjective the feminine instrumental forms are strongly conservative, and the modern short ending occurs in only a few instances. In the nominative plural the modern ending –ye, -ie dominates for all cases and in all letter categories. The use of samyj for the comparative degree is not particularly prominent in these 18th-century letters. Because this descriptive comparison type developed in the 17th century, its use could have been expected to rise in the 18th, but our materials do not indicate any such increase. With few exceptions, pronouns generally display forms corresponding to modern usage. One notable deviation is the occurrence of a pronoun with an adjectival ending in the genitive singular (tago), but it is an idiosyncratic feature. Numerals for the most part correspond to modern usage, although their low frequency does not invite generalizations. / <p>978-91-86071-61-5 (del 1), 978-91-86071--62-2 (del 2), 978-91-86071-63-9 (del 1-2)</p>

In this dissertation, I examine metaphorical expressions of biblical and sacral origin (bibleisms) that occur in Russian narrative literary texts. The interpretation of bibleisms is carried out within the framework of interaction theories of metaphor, making it possible to account for the use of bibleisms in Modern Russian, and for the role of their original meanings in the development of their new metaphorical associations. This is viewed as a set of intertextual relationships between the biblical and sacral texts, the Modern Russian language and the literary texts in which the expressions occur. Different types of metaphor are distinguished in terms of interaction theory. This has implications for the translation of bibleisms. It is demonstrated that in different interactive situations, the same bibleism can be referred to different types of metaphor, and hence the translation procedure may only be determined by taking into account the metaphorical language in each individual case. / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

The study investigates prediction factors of children's proficiency in Russian among children from Russian-speaking families in Saskatchewan. For that purpose, 5-7 year old children and their parents were interviewed about their language use, proficiency, and language attitudes, as well as children's Russian language proficiency was measured and compared to monolingual children in Russia.

TITLE: Words of Old Church Slavonic Origin in Contemporary Russian Language AUTHOR: Jitka Peschel DEPARTMENT: Department of Russian studies and didactics SUPERVISOR: doc. PhDr. Lilia Nazarenko, CSc. ABSTRACT: This diploma thesis researches words of Old Church Slavonic origin in contemporary Russian language. The aim is to provide a comprehensive analysis of these words in the Russian language. The diploma thesis is divided into three parts. The first part describes the origin of the Old Church Slavonic language, its arrival in Russia, its influence on the Russian language, the penetration of the Old Church Slavonic words in the Russian language, as well as the development of the Russian standard language. The other two parts are dedicated to words of Old Church Slavonic origin in contemporary Russian language. The second part analyses the phonetic, morphological, semantic and stylistic aspects of these words. The third part is focused on the differences in meaning of Old Church Slavonic words having Russian equivalents and semantic processes by which words of Old Church Slavonic origin passed. The appendix includes a list of words occurring in the thesis. KEYWORDS: lexikology, loanword, Old Church Slavonic, Russian language

The object of this study is a translation from Polish to Russian of the Polish historian Maciej Stryjkowski’s Kronika Polska, Litewska, Żmódzka i wszystkiej Rusi, made at the Diplomatic Chancellery in Moscow in 1673–79. The original of the chronicle, which relates the origin and early history of the Slavs, was published in 1582. This Russian translation, as well as the other East Slavic translations that are also discussed here, is preserved only in manuscripts, and only small excerpts have previously been published. In the thesis, the twelve extant manuscripts of the 1673–79 translation are described and divided into three groups based on variant readings. It also includes an edition of three chapters of the translation, based on a manuscript kept in Uppsala University Library. There was no standardized written language in 17th-century Russia. Instead, there were several co-existing norms, and the choice depended on the text genre. This study shows that the language of the edited chapters contains both originally Church Slavonic and East Slavic linguistic features, distributed in a way that is typical of the so-called hybrid register. Furthermore, some features vary greatly between manuscripts and between scribes within the manuscripts, which shows that the hybrid register allowed a certain degree of variation. The translation was probably the joint work of several translators. Some minor changes were made in the text during the translation work, syntactic structures not found in the Polish original were occasionally used to emphasize the bookish character of the text, and measurements, names etc. were adapted to Russian norms. Nevertheless, influence from the Polish original can sometimes be noticed on the lexical and syntactic levels. All in all, this thesis is a comprehensive study of the language of the translated chronicle, which is a representative 17th-century text.