Those of the 16–17th c. grammars that are supposed to teach language for communication purposes pay attention to discourse phenomena and, in a way, anticipate some of the crucial ideas that appeared in the 20–21th c. functional grammars. They focus on syntax, semantics, pragmatics, going beyond the level of separate sentence onto the principles of building dialogue. Anchieta, Figueira, Estêvão and Pereira write on coherence, expressivity of speech, discourse markers, phatic and allocutive elements.

The article focuses on a selection of words metaphorically defining Mary as Mother (begetter) of God, protector and defender of mankind. The words are passed down by, and were drawn from, Church-Slavonic liturgical tradition and medieval orthodox Slavic literature. The analysis is based on etymological and semantic commentaries and serves to evaluate existing Italian translations and to propose new language. This work represents a preparatory study within the project for a multilingual lexicon of religious and philosophical-theological words.

The article deals with the problem of analysis of oral speech in the context of Russian national culture and intercultural communication. Enabling linguo-cultural problems in the courses of Russian pronunciation for foreigners we have the opportunity to increase the students’ interest in Russian phonetics and expand their knowledge in the field of cultural studies and cultural linguistics. The solution of the latter problem is particularly important in dealing with foreign specialists in philology. It seems appropriate to determine the four linguo-cultural thematic sections in the course of Russian pronunciation. The first section involves the study of Russian literary pronunciation in the context of a cultural tradition. It is important to take in consideration, that a limited variability and strict requirements to the pronunciation in Russian language are often surprising and strange for foreigners, since in most languages the situation is different. In the second section the main diffiulties of the modern Russian literary pronunciation are discussed. Particular attention should be paid to the standard deviations, which can be found even in the media and in the speech of educated people. That is necessary, because the pronunciation of native speakers is perceived as exemplary by foreigners. The third section is devoted to the means of creating phonetic “portrait” on stage, on screen and in literature. In this thematic unit the analysis of imitation of foreign accent in Russian speech proves to be subject of serious investigation. The fourth unit includes phonetics of the poetic text, and sound symbolism. As s rule, sound associations are universal, which makes the study of this problem particularly important in a foreign audience.

The article deals with the problems of one-for-one translation of works of art retaining national and cultural originality of the text, the ways of its analysis with the purpose of elicitation of implicit meaning of the original text. The problems of hermeneutics connected with the interpretation of hidden meanings of the text is being investigated along with the examination of the questions concerned with the ways of correct conveyance of national and cultural realities while translating from original language into translated.

In the course of the 16-century Italian language controversy (questione della lingua) one of the recurrent topics was the origin and development of Italian. In the XVth century it was common to regard it as a mixed, “bastard” language, the result of Germanic conquests and subsequent language contacts. In the 16th century value judgments gave way to native language apology, to attempts at drawing parallels between Latin and Italian language systems. Thus, in the “Cesano”, a treatise by Claudio Tolomei, one can find ‒ alongside with the défense et illustration of Italian ‒ a number of original ideas on history of language. Tolomei describes the main phonetic changes from Latin to Italian and tries to account for some deviations from these rules.

The present article inquires into peculiar problems related to the translation into the Russian language proper names occurring in the poetry of Catullus. Although the main role of names is to indicate single objects, the proper names can bear the additional connotations, for example, to talk about the status of the carrier name; moreover there are discussed the charactonyms and the names forming part of the tropes. The choice of the Russian version of the name, related whith the literary predilections of the translators and their views on the poetry of Catullus is considered on the example of translations of 18–20 centuries.

The article comprises an analysis of short-stories from the anthology “They say, I’m a Monkey!” (2002) by the Indonesian female writer Djenar Maesa Ayu (born in 1973). Djenar is one of the pioneers in “The Generation of Women” sastra wangi, or “Fragrant Literature”, women’s writing of Indonesia. Sharp social issues and personal problems of women, children and girls-teenagers come to the front line in her short-stories. The paper deals with narrative surrealistic techniques, descriptions of dreams and nightmares, “steam of consciousness” of Djenar’s heroines. The outstanding short-stories set new prospects for the development of Indonesian women’s writing and Indonesian psychological literature in general.

«The Word for Mercy» is one of the earliest and most striking specimens of genre of the sermon, which was revived in Russia in the second half of the 17th century. Its creation is attributed to Epiphanius Slavinetsky or to his disciple Euthymius Chudovsky. The researchers of this work, despite the different opinions about its authorship, unanimously considered ‘the Word’ to be an original essay, written in Moscow. The article proves the dependence of the Church Slavonic text of the Word from Piotr Skarga sermon “Kazanie o miłosierdziu”, first published in Krakow in 1588. The discovery of the Polish original of the Word makes it necessary to compare two sources according to the method of the study of the translated texts with the aim of describing translation techniques and language of the translation. The recognition of the transferable nature of the Word allows one to include it to the circle of translations from Polish made in the literary environment of Chudov monastery in Moscow.

The article deals with the basic principles and methods of adaptation of the complex theoretical concepts facilitating their understanding and assimilation at literature lessons at school and on classes in the propaedeutic course “Introduction to Literary Criticism” at philological faculties. The article is followed by approximate slides of the author’s presentation.

The report focuses on Bulgakov’s characters implementing cultural oppositions “alive / lifeless”, “artificial / natural”, “organic / mechanical”. The typology of such characters is outlined and their place in the system of Bulgakov’s poetics is shown.

The article deals with the possibility of improving the organization of distant education in the specialty of Russian as a foreign language. The author presents the educational documentation, reference materials and types of work that will help students acquire necessary competence during the learning process, that in the future to achieve success in their profession.

The author examines the possibility of using the sitcom as the authentic material in teaching listening skills and speaking Russian.

The article introduces the concept “borderline epoch” concerning the first third of the 20th century. The author notes that personality as the object of interdisciplinary studies is included to the universal system of categories. However, there is a contradiction between the importance of the artistic conception of personality and the insufficient development of its categories in the literary system. To solve the problem the terms “categorical imperatives” and “hypothetical imperatives” introduced by E. Kant are used to represent artistic deontology of heroes of Belarusian literature. Particularly, hypothetical imperatives can be applied to describe linguistic phenomena related to the concrete national material. Its translation into the language of another culture shows that it is difficult to fill all the gaps and find proper equivalents. The conclusion of the peculiarities of national personality and its artistic models is made on the material of Belorussian prose of the first third of the 20th century.

The article considers the creative works by English writers Ishiguro and McEwan and continues studying literature process in modern Great Britain and artistic devices inherent to literature at the turn of 20–21th centuries. It is being proved that the Great tradition of the realism of English literature is not interrupted. English writers labour to maintain eternal moral values, using the devices of secondary conventionality, contiguity, the shift of the interrupted timeline, fragmentarity, when the whole art work turns into the psychological image of a person and surrounding reality. After the leading Russian philologists the article states the idea of that if in the center of scientific search in foreign literature of 19th century was moral or social self-confirmation of an individual in the frames of his relationships with environments, then in 20 century the relation man-world in a wide sense of the word was the main idea.

The article deals with a study of collocations (low-idiomatical turns) in terms of the theory of semantic fields in traditional lexicology. The author considers the dependence of collocation semantics on its context studying material of German and Russian languages. Distinguishing features of collocations are marked and a short overview of the theory of semantic fields is given. A concept, in which the appearance of a collocation associates with relations of a semantic field is suggested.

The subject of this work is the process of grammaticalization of the verb ville ‘to want’ in combination with bare infinitive in the Danish language of mid. 19th – mid. 20th centuries. The study is based on two literary Danish texts – “The Snow Queen”, a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen (Danish: “Snedronningen”, 1844) and “The Ring”, a novel written by Karen Blixen (Danish: “Ringen”, 1958). These texts represent different periods of the Danish language’s history, and their comparison lays a solid foundation of a research, carried out from a diachronic perspective. Such a research enables us to reveal the differences in grammatical use of the constructions considered and discover the grammaticalization path of the verb ville, which was developing for more than a century.

The article deals with the functions of animals in Dutch folk tales. The Dutch folk tales are almost not known among the readers and researches, which makes them a good material for analysis. In the article twenty five folk tales were analyzed, fifteen of them were published and eleven were found on the web-site of a folklore research institute in Amsterdam “Meertens institute”. The animals from the folk tales are regarded in this work as a zoo-metaphor, which corresponds with the theory of conceptual metaphor of G.Lakoff and M.Johnson. The idea of conceptual metaphor and the accepting of animals as metaphors let the author speak about the reflection of a perception of the world by the Dutch folk in the animal concepts. Three main functions of the animals were noted in the work: a hero, an instrument and a unit. A mention should be made about the fact that two of these functions can be represented at the same time: a hero and a unit. So that the function of a hero can be divided in two ones: “a hero-unit” and “a real hero”.