Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

During the first half of the XVIIIth century in Russia, deep social and cultural changes led to a chaotic linguistic situation. The Russian scholar Michail Lomonosov played a key role in the grammatical and lexical organization of the Russian literary language around the middle of the century. His contributions are reviewed and their importance analyzed in the present thesis. / Chapter One provides an analysis of the linguistic situation during the first half of the XVIIIth century. The role and the functions of different linguistic elements are examined, including West European lexical borrowings, the native Russian, the Church Slavonic, and their mutual interactions. / Chapters two and three analyze M. Lomonosov's role in the standardization of Russian grammar and vocabulary by examining his two major philological works: the "Rossiaeiskaeiia Grammatika" and the article "Predislovie o polbze knig tserkovnikh v rossiiskom yazike." / Although Lomonosov's merit is widely acknowledged among scholars, the importance of his stylistic theory has been challenged lately. In Chapter Four, Lomonosov's linguistic contributions to the development of the modern Russian literary language are weighed and assessed against these critical arguments.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [164]-173).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Uppsala universitet, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-266).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Uppsala universitet, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-266).

A language is so constructed that the speaker is able to draw out of its resources whatever he wishes to communicate, yet whenever cultural borrowing occurs he cannot altogether avoid borrowing the words which are associated with it. Russian written records indicate that the language has been exposed to numerous foreign influences from very early times. With the intense introduction of "Westernization" since the sixteenth-century both English and French have had a considerable influence on Russian and especially in the twentieth-century this has even increased. For the purpose of this study, therefore, the writer has chosen to analyse English and French loanwords that are found in use in present-day Russian; examples from other languages, especially German, will be given occasionally insofar as they support the arguments presented. This thesis attempts an overall description of the morphological assimilation of loanwords. Phonological analysis and discussion of the socio-cultural context is given consideration in order to enable the reader and the analyst to see this paper as a whole. It was necessary to abstract linguistic elements at different levels of analysis so that some problems that are not explainable at the morphological level, would not be left unsolved. To some extent future borrowings into the Russian language in connection with cultural borrowing may be predicted. The pronounciation of a loanword depends on the degree of assimilation and whether or not the speaker is aware of the fact that it is a borrowing or wants to alert the listener as well. On the whole, loanwords are subject to phonological as well as morphological adjustments. Loanwords are sometimes under the pressure of both the native and foreign morphological systems, which in turn causes fluctuation of forms. Important external factors in the assimilation of loanwords at both levels are the audio and visual means of communication involved in transferring a loanword from either English or French into Russian. An interesting feature for future investigation is the analysis of loanwords on the lexical level and the correlation of lexical patterning with morphology in the process of loanword assimilation. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

<p>Nybörjaren i ryska eller litauiska stöter strax på en svårighet, som han eller hon oftast inte mött tidigare: den rörliga betoningen. Om man som jag studerat båda språken frågar man sig så småningom om överensstämmelserna i deras betoningsmönster – som så många andra av likheterna – beror på ett gemensamt ursprung. Kan det rent av vara möjligt att utifrån betoningen hos en viss ordform i det ena språket förutse betoningen hos en viss ordform i det andra språket?</p><p>Jag har därför försökt sammanställa de ljudlagar som förändrat betoningsmönstren från baltoslaviskan och fram till våra dagars ryska och litauiska. Jag har dock begränsat mig till substantiven, inte minst därför att det är denna ordklass där den studerande möter de största svårigheterna. Jag har dessutom avstått från att beskriva utvecklingen före baltoslaviskan, och inte heller tar jag upp enstaka avvikande former. Dessutom har dualen lämnats därhän, eftersom dessa former är helt utdöda i dagens ryska och obsoleta i litauiskan, varvid den modernspråkliga komparativa effekten går förlorad. Uppsatsen gäller accentförhållandena, och förändringarna i ordens böjning – som är uppenbara när man betraktar de många exemplen – berörs inte heller.</p><p>Först kommer en beskrivning av ”start och mål”, d.v.s. substantivbetoningen i de båda moderna språken. Avsikten är att den som endast studerat det ena språket ska få en inblick i förhållandena i det andra. Därefter följer en redogörelse för accentförhållandena i baltoslaviskan, och sedan – parallellt så lång det är möjligt – de ljudlagar som lett fram till dagens förhållanden. Avslutningsvis försöker jag att med ett antal exempel visa hur man kan följa ett ord från ryskan till litauiskan eller vice versa för att pröva överensstämmelsernas pålitlighet.</p>

This study examines attitudes towards anglicisms in Russian expressed in print media articles. Accelerated linguistic borrowing from English, a particularly visible aspect of the momentous language changes after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, has engendered a range of reactions. Print media articles spanning two decades and several central outlets are analysed to show how arguments for or against use of anglicisms are constructed, what language ideologies these arguments serve, and whether mediated language attitudes changed during the post-Soviet era. A summary of the history of Russian linguistic borrowing and language attitudes from the Middle Ages to the present day shows that periods of national consolidation provoked demands for the restriction of borrowing. Then, a survey of theories on language ideologies demonstrates that they function through the construction of commonsense argumentation in metadiscourse (talk about talk). This argumentation draws on accepted common knowledge in the Russian linguistic culture. Using critical discourse analytic tools, namely analysis of metaphor scenarios and of argumentation, I examine argumentative strategies in the mediated language debates. Particularly, the critical analysis reveals what strategies render dominant standpoints on anglicisms self-evident and logical to the audience. The results show that the media reaction to anglicisms dramatises language change in discourses of threat, justified by assumed commonsense rational knowledge. Whilst there are few reactions in the 1990s, debates on language intensified in the 2000s after Putin’s policies of state reinforcement came into effect, peaking around times of official language policy measures. Anglicisms and their users are subordinated, cast out as the Other, not belonging to the in-group of sensible speakers. This threat is defused via ridicule and claiming of the moral high ground. This commonsense argumentation ultimately supports notions of Russian as a static, sacred component of Russian nation building, and of speakers as passive. Close textual analysis shows that even articles claiming to support language change and the use of anglicisms use argumentation strategies of negativisation. Overall, a consensus on the character and role of the Russian language exists between all perspectives, emphasising the importance of rules and assigning speakers a passive role throughout.

From 1914 to 1940 Russia lived through a series of traumatic events: World War I, the Bolshevik revolution, the Civil War, famine, and the Bolshevik and subsequently Stalinist terror. These events precipitated and facilitated a complete breakdown of the status quo associated with the tsarist regime and led to the emergence and eventual pervasive presence of a culture of violence propagated by the Bolshevik regime. This dissertation explores how the ongoing exposure to trauma impaired ordinary perception and everyday language use, which, in turn, informed literary language use in the writings of Viktor Shklovsky, the prominent Formalist theoretician, and of the avant-garde writer, Daniil Kharms. While trauma studies usually focus on the reconstructive and redeeming features of trauma narratives, I invite readers to explore the structural features of literary language and how these features parallel mechanisms of cognitive processing, established by medical research, that take place in the mind affected by traumatic encounters. Central to my analysis are Shklovsky's memoir A Sentimental Journey and his early articles on the theory of prose "Art as Device" and "The Relationship between Devices of Plot Construction and General Devices of Style" and Daniil Karms's theoretical writings on the concepts of "nothingness," "circle," and "zero," and his prose work written in the 1930s. My analysis probes into various modes in which trauma can present itself in a text, in forms other than semantic content, and points to what distinguishes a modernist text from one written under the impairing conditions of trauma, despite their structural similarities.