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The thesis consists of a translation of chapters pertaining to the construction and reconstruction of the famous St. Petersburg Anichkov and Beloselskiy-Belozerskiy palaces, detailing the founders, owners, and architects who designed and built them. These translations contain extraordinary and insightful information regarding the development of architectural St. Petersburg. The translated chapters also document the many changes that took place over time with each new resident of the palaces and outline the artistic architectural features of each palace. A preface to the thesis details the research and problems encountered in the process of translation. This annotated and photo-illustrated translation describes the architectural innovation inherent in the construction of each palace and illustrates the current state of restoration. The significance of the translated chapters lies in the fact that they contribute important cultural and historic information to English-language readers about the architectural history of St. Petersburg in its three-hundredth year.

<p> This dissertation is focused on analyzing phonological contact between Slavic and non-Slavic languages in southeastern and northeastern Europe, with the particular goal of describing how the social context of language contact interacts with linguistic factors to shape the outcome of contact-induced change. On the basis of case studies drawn from north Russia and the Balkans, it is argued that feature selection &ndash; understood in terms of Mufwene's (2001, 2008) ecological approach to language change &ndash; constitutes the situation-specific optimization of four potentially competing factors: social prestige, phonological groundedness, faithfulness to L1, and mappability to L2. Chapter 1 of the dissertation provides theoretical context for that claim by reviewing the role that phonology has played up to now in the study of language contact and theoretical approaches to modeling the linguistic outcome of language contact. </p><p> A methodological consequence of this proposal is that it is crucial to examine case studies in a way informed by a thorough understanding of the historical and demographic background underlying the specific sociolinguistic dynamics of each case study. Chapter 2 provides an extensive overview of the historical and sociolinguistic background pertinent to the case studies discussed in later chapters. A particular contrast is drawn between the sociolinguistic environment of north Russia, in which Russian has spread at the expense of other languages for the last millennium, and that of the Balkans, which has been characterized by a more multipolar dynamic of multilingualism, in which no single language played a dominant role in the linguistic ecology of the region. </p><p> Chapters 3, 4, and 5 explicate case studies that show how the factors of social prestige, phonological groundedness, faithfulness to L1, and mappability to L2 interact differently depending on the specific sociolinguistic dynamics of each case study. Chapter 3 is dedicated to a case study examining how the Slavic jers behaved in situations of intense language contact, comparing the outcomes in two particularly interesting locales. The northern periphery of Slavic is represented by Novgorod, which is contrasted with Opoja, where the contact language was Albanian. Chapter 4 examines the breakdown of vowel harmony in West Rumelian Turkish, drawing on data from Macedonian and Kosovar Turkish to argue that the loss of grammatically productive harmony in West Rumelian Turkish is due to grammatical imposition from the surrounding Indo-European languages. Chapter 5 examines the emergence of phonemic palatalization of Veps (a Finnic language spoken in northern Russia) and contact-induced readjustments in the distribution of laterals and diphthongs in Albanian and Slavic dialects in northern Albania, Montenegro, and Macedonia. The case studies discussed in chapter 5 illustrate some possible structural outcomes of language contact under conditions of language maintenance in an intensely bilingual (or multilingual) environment. </p><p> Chapter 6 presents conclusions, with a particular focus on showing how the case studies discussed in chapters 3, 4, and 5 exemplify and support the theoretical proposal outlined in chapter 1 and on evaluating the theoretical account presented here with reference to the recent approaches to language contact discussed in chapter 1.</p>

<p> The recent boom in ecological criticism invites reconsideration of the role nature plays in the works of Anton Chekhov. Drawing on existing accounts of nature in Chekhov&rsquo;s fiction as well as in Russian literature and culture more broadly, this thesis reveals a crucial and previously unrecognized affinity between five of Chekhov&rsquo;s most celebrated stories: &ldquo;The Kiss&rdquo; ([speical characters omitted], 1887), &ldquo;Fortune&rdquo; ([speical characters omitted], 1887), &ldquo;Gusev&rdquo; ([speical characters omitted], 1890), &ldquo;The Man in the Case&rdquo; ([speical characters omitted], 1898), and &ldquo;The Lady with the Little Dog&rdquo; ([speical characters omitted], 1898). In each of these otherwise unrelated stories, nature complicates the characters and the stories they tell themselves and one another. In some cases, nature gives the characters new insights and helps them to evolve. In others it gives readers a new understanding that the characters themselves do not share. In all cases nature in Chekhov&rsquo;s works opens a broader perspective, dwarfing the characters and their existential anxieties by the immensity of land, water, or cosmos. Ultimately, Chekhov presents myriad ways in which nature frames and exceeds human experience, incites and resists narrativization. </p><p>

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Abstract not available.

No description available.