Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-59). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1984. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 273-281).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Svetlana Evdokimova. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-221). Also available online.

The Diploma Thesis "Morphological defectiveness as a problem in teaching Russian as a mother tongue and a foreign language" occupies with the cases of explicitly codified defectiveness in morphological system of standard Russian. The chapter on verbs describes the issue of defectiveness paradigm in the 1st person singular in a certain group of verbs. It also includes the illustrations of such defectiveness forms from the internet forums and references about the problem both from prescriptively grammars and studying materials intended for native speakers and students of Russian as a foreign language. The chapter on nouns occupies with broken paradigm of nouns in genitive plural. This problem is taken from the historical perspective and again it contains the examples from the internet forums, codified grammar books and individual books. The chapter on participles examines the formation of active participles of the future tense which are codified as no normative but also illustrations from the literature of the past centuries and present, which can be found on the internet forums, show us that the problem is quite topical. The outcomes of the questionnaire investigation are summarised in an individual chapter, in the process the attention is focused on three main topics which were concentrated on in...

Despite the volume of research into fairytales, gender and ideology in media studies, the specific subject of animated adaptations of national fairytales and their role in constructing gender identities remains a blind spot at least in relation to non-Western and non-Hollywood animation. This study addresses the gap by analysing animated adaptations of Russian national fairytales in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema and television. It does so as a tool through which to approach the gender politics of the dominant ideologies in national cinema and also, though to a lesser extent, in television. One of the key perspectives this research adopts concerns the reorganization of the myths of femininity, as stored in ‘national memory’ and transferred through the material of national fairytales produced during a century-long period. By providing a detailed critical treatment of animated adaptations of Russian magic fairytales, this research examines the interaction between the cinematic versions of the national fairytales and the representation of female characters on screen. It draws on a range of feminist theoretical approaches on media representation. By performing a systematic study of the under-researched field, through a combination of qualitative and empirical analysis, the work demonstrates how totalitarian regimes and new democratic societies implicitly control gender constructions in similar ways, and specifically through the animated versions of national fairytale adaptations. The research identifies how the constructions of femininity are manipulated through the reshaping of the national past coded in the ancient folkloric narratives. The findings of the study reveal the principles on which the implicit patriarchal gender politics is based. These principles include the conservative choice of fairytale material adapted to the screen, the reactionary increase of production of animated fairytales targeted against liberalisation, the exclusion and reconstruction of strong matriarchal fairytale female characters, stereotypical representation of selected female characters, and normalisation of domestic violence. In so doing the study identifies a weakness in the existing scholarly discourse on ideology, which traditionally has claimed that Soviet animation was non-violent. Further, the study establishes the constructions of national memory and female identity as a part of the dominant cinematic discourses.

From Introduction: The Artist was denied any role in Plato's Republic because of his ability to impair reason by imitating reality through his works. Aristotle, however, welcomed the artist because of his ability to express ideas about society through artistic form. Ernst Fischer agrees with the latter view, "Art enables man to comprehend reality, and not only helps him to bear it but increases his determination to make it more human and more worthy of mankind. Art is itself a social reality, society needs the artist ... and it has a right to demand of him that he should be conscious of his social function" (Fischer: 1963:46). Fischer adds to Aristotle's view by stating that society has a right to demand a social function from the artist. This issue has been the subject of controversial debate throughout the history of art. In a society based on class, the classes try to recruit art to serve their particular purposes. Art is seen by some as a powerful weapon - a means by which people can be swayed towards certain ideals. At the time of the Counter Reformation Italian artists were given strict instructions by the Jesuits on how to persuade and educate the people with their paintings. Napoleon urged his men of letters, painters and architects to refer to the classical ideals of ancient Greece and Rome to shape the emergent French Republic. The French philosopher, Dennis Diderot, stressed the futility of art unless it expressed great prinCiples or lessons for the spectator. Ideals of justice, courage and patriotism were embodied in the Neo-Classical movement. The didactic paintings of Jacques Louis David portray the above ideals. History records several attempts by those in power to coerce artists into conforming to their idea of society, indicating that authoritative manipulation of the arts is not purely a twentieth century phenomenon. This thesis intends to examine aspects of Russian art since 1917. Because Soviet art was dominated by policies which enabled authorities to determine its content, its history raises ideological issues which are relevant to the study of art. The theories of Suprematism, Constructivism and Socialist Realism will be discussed and conclusions will be drawn as to whether these theories succeeded as art movements which were ostensibly designed for the improvement of mankind. Present attitudes toward the visual arts in Russia will also be examined. However, in order to examine the above it is necessary to place the development of art into historical perspective.

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

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The theory of the Universal Grammar developed by Chomsky has been known for many years. The main idea behind the theory was that the processing of the language does not depend on the culture but it universal among all the languages. Further psycholinguistic studies developed the ideas about schematic comprehension of the language, giving rise to the idea of the "garden path effect". Research focused on the processing of the ambiguous sentences and found the tendency for readers to prefer interpretations of specific sentence areas as objects. The current study summarizes the ideas of psycholinguistic study and incorporates a novel language structure to study readers' syntactic preferences. In addition, conducting the study in Russian language accompanies previous research in other languages, also arguing in favor of the Universal Grammar model given the hypothesis was supported. It was hypothesized that readers would prefer the comparison of the two direct objects over the subjects, which would be reflected by faster reading times. Self-paced reading ask was administered to the participants in order to measure their reading times. The analysis found no significant differences in the reading times of the critical area, thus hypothesis was not supported. Possible explanations, limitations, and further directions are discussed.

No description available.