Institute of Linguistic Studies

Abstract The paper discusses North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) varieties spoken in the village of Urmiya in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, where Assyrians constitute the majority of the population. The Christian Urmi dialect is the dominant NENA variety in the village. We focus on non-Urmi varieties represented in the village, specifically on the variety spoken by the so-called šapətné Assyrians. Although its name suggests a relation to the village of Shapat in the Hakkari region of southeastern Turkey, we argue that in Urmiya, the ethnonym šapətné has likely become an exonym used by the Urmi Assyrians to refer to Assyrians of varying origin from southeastern Turkey. We discuss the sociolinguistic composition of the village, as well as the distinctive phonetic and morphological features of the variety spoken by the šapətné against Christian Urmi and other relevant NENA dialects. We identify northern Hakkari varieties and the Van dialect as closest to the major non-Urmi varieties of Urmiya.

This paper presents the outcomes of the second scientific and practical conference organized by INION RAS, dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) in library activities. The essence of the presentations is summarized, covering both theoretical and practical aspects of using neural network applications in library practice in Russia and neighbor countries. Notably, whereas a year ago the tone of the presentations was set by information business, this year the majority of speakers were library professionals, clearly indicating AI expansion and deepening implementation into the library field.It is evident that library processes today are adapting to the realities of a new level of digital environment. Librarians are constantly addressing emerging technical, methodological, and organizational challenges. Significant progress has been made in cataloging, subject indexing, and high-quality recognition of documentary collections, which has enabled the introduction of substantial information resources into cultural circulation. Despite the high cost of implementing neural network solutions, they demonstrate their effectiveness and economic feasibility. By automating routine tasks, these technologies allow library specialists to focus on more complex and creative objectives.At the same time, the participants observed that the niche for libraries as information intermediaries was steadily shrinking due to the launch of intelligent systems that interact with users at the level of guiding researcherы or expert consultantы. This compels serious reflection on the role and functions of libraries in the near future.The conference participants expressed their strong belief that intensive AI use had to become the integral part of library profession. Its informed and knowledgable application can help the libraries to regain the role of active agents in the information sphere, providing services up to the latest standards.

El objetivo de la investigación fue explorar la presencia de información pragmática acerca de las unidades fraseológicas (UF) en los dos diccionarios de regionalismos más antiguos de la lexicografía cubana: el Diccionario provincial de voces cubanas, de Esteban Pichardo, y Diccionario de provincialismos de la Isla de Cuba, inédito hasta 2021. Es una investigación exploratoria y descriptiva, de tipo cualitativo, realizada desde una concepción amplia de la fraseología. En la parte informativa del artículo lexicográfico de una muestra de 203 UF, busqué datos relativos al contexto comunicativo donde estas se insertan, que no fueran suprimibles para el procesamiento mental del significado en el discurso, pues actuarían como “semas diferenciadores”. Hubo información pragmática en el 72.5 % de las UF de Pichardo y en el 36.1 % del diccionario de 1831, lo que demuestra que no hubo sistematicidad en su inclusión. Dicha información comprendió la performatividad de los actos de habla, el grado de indirección del acto ilocutivo, restricciones constitutivas (anclaje deíctico, condiciones preparatorias y de ejecución), modificaciones de la fuerza ilocutiva primaria, escalaridad. Tal información fue insertada como parte de la definición enciclopédica que caracteriza a estas obras, pero sin marcas lexicográficas, como resulta esperable por la datación de las obras. Con todo, las observaciones realizadas permiten valorar a nuestros primeros diccionarios como protomodelos de diccionarios que introduzcan contenidos pragmáticos. Estos son imprescindibles en la definición de las unidades fraseológicas pues, como metáforas lexicalizadas, su significado último es más dependiente de factores contextuales (incluidos los culturales) que en el resto de las unidades léxicas.

The article reconstructs the origins of Ovid’s expression longus Hellespontus (Met. 13. 407; Fast. 4. 567; 6. 341 where the toponym invariably stands at the end of the hexameter, while the epithet is placed separately in a hyperbaton; cf. Fast. 4. 278 and Trist. 1. 10. 15–18). The epithet longus is accurate in that it corresponds to the long and narrow form of the strait; however, it does seem somewhat trivial to be repeated many times, and moreover, Ovid is the only Roman poet to use it. It is suggested that the expression longus Hellespontus was originally inspired by the scholarly discussion of the Homeric formula πλατὺς Ἑλλήσποντος (Il. 7. 86; 17. 432; Od. 24. 81 placed invariably at the end of the hexameter in the accusative or dative) where the epithet πλατύς, if taken to mean “broad, i.e. wide and flat”, is a strange description of a notoriously narrow strait. After an overview of solutions proffered by ancient scholars, it is shown that Ovid had probably devised the expression longus Hellespontus as another solution to the problematic formula in Homer: Ovid modified the epithet πλατύς to longus, displacing the focus of perception from the width of the strait to the extension of its coastline.

Dominique Maingueneau ha dedicado diversos escritos a reflexionar sobre la problemática del ethos. A partir del estudio detenido de corpus variados y atendiendo a géneros semióticamente distintos (imágenes visuales, iconotextos, discursos orales y escritos provenientes de diferentes campos) abrió caminos para la reflexión teórica y la práctica analítica. El artículo que presentamos es deudor de esos trayectos investigativos. En este caso, nos centramos en los ethos asociados con algunas “figuras” de Javier Milei, principal referente de la extrema derecha argentina. En primer lugar, a partir de uno de los logos de La Libertad Avanza, la peluca, que remite metonímicamente al político, reflexionaremos sobre los ethos que habilita y nos detendremos en la pose fotográfica en la que la importancia de la cabellera se acompaña de otros atributos posicionales, gestuales y vestimentarios, para finalmente considerar los ethos que construyen representaciones pictóricas que parten de la serie fotográfica. En segundo lugar, analizaremos una digresión en un discurso institucional proferido en la Argentina ante empresarios, en la que se construye la figura del empleado emprendedor a la vez que se la hace convivir con las del héroe o el profeta, evidenciando la necesidad de alcanzar a diferentes perfiles de alocutarios. En tercer lugar, atenderemos a un fragmento del discurso pronunciado ante la asamblea de la ONU, en el cual el ethos que busca construir es el de un sujeto seguro de su posición, que enfatiza el despliegue de una palabra propia. Sin embargo, el reconocimiento, por parte de periodistas, de un texto fuente proveniente de una serie televisiva, lleva a destacar otra figura, la del simulador que plagia.

Abstract Following other newly independent Central Asian republics dominated by a Turkic- speaking population, Kazakhstan is currently in the process of transferring the graphic base of its national language from Cyrillic to the Latin script. This process has turned out to involve particularly many challenges, as it has been difficult to reconcile the theoretical and practical aspects of the project with the linguistic and political realities of Kazakhstan and the Kazakh language. Many of the problems are connected with the desire to design the new Latin orthography on the basis of the established Cyrillic norm without considering the occasionally misleading phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences incorporated in this norm. Other problems are connected with the political difficulty of choosing the actual set of Latin graphemes, for which several possible models are available, including those already officially established for the national languages of other Central Asian republics, as well as for Turkish in Turkey.

The second part of the article, dealing with the question of Plato’s own position in the discussion of naturalism and conventionalism in the Cratylus (for part I, see Hyperboreus 29: 2 [2022] 196–233), continues with an analysis of a key point in the discussion between Socrates and Cratylus (434 a – 435 c). Cratylus argues that when the descriptive properties of a word conflict with each other and thus make it impossible to establish which “thing” such a word denotes, a competent native speaker capable of analyzing such properties is forced to follow linguistic habit like ordinary speakers. Socrates points out that following the linguistic habit with which a competent native speaker is forced to “agree” is nothing but understanding a word that is dissimilar to its referent. This in turn entails, in accordance with the dilemma of the whole discussion, that understanding in such cases can be based only on a “contract”, or “agreement” stipulating the meaning of a word, with the competent speaker negotiating it with himself. Cratylus’ forced agreement that contract plays a role in linguistic communication is usually understood by scholars as a partial concession to conventionalism on the part of Plato himself, or even as evidence that Plato fully supports the arguments of conventionalism and sees no need for words that have similarities with their referents. The article substantiates a different understanding of this part of the dialogue. It argues that Socrates agrees with Cratylus in treating linguistic habit as an independent factor in linguistic communication: understanding a word on the basis of habit does not need a word to resemble its referent through the descriptive and “mimetic” capacities of words; however it does not follow that the meaning of such words derives from the arbitrary “agreement” by which any arbitrary name can be assigned to any thing and at any moment change its name, as according to the theory of Hermogenes. The “agreement” of the competent native speaker with the meaning that a word possesses according to habit applies, first, only to a limited category of words that have no resemblance to their referents (in this the author of the article agrees with David Sedley’s understanding). Plato does not mean that understanding according to habit should make the similarity of a word to its referent superfluous: the highest purpose of words is their philosophical purpose as “instruments” for distinguishing the essential properties of things, while linguistic habit provides only knowledge of what a word refers to, but not of the properties of this referent. Second, the “agreement with oneself” by which a competent native speaker is forced to agree to habit in the course of communication differs significantly from the arbitrary contract of assigning meaning to words in Hermogenes’ theory. Socrates’ argument does not assume that linguistic habit arises from such an establishment of meaning that makes any people, even the most mediocre ones, creators of language. On the contrary, his reasoning about the word σκληρότης is based on the premise that this word was created by one of the wise creators of language who strove to create words similar to the things they designate. This implies that the similarity was either not achieved, through error, or was lost in the course of the long history of language; the habit has nevertheless preserved the word’s connection to the thing to which the word was assigned by a “lawgiver” of language (apparently by virtue of his high authority), although the sound composition of the word does not allow us to define this thing by virtue of its intrinsic properties. Following the linguistic habit should thus be understood as an imperfect kind of linguistic communication, a forced retreat from the principles of naturalism, but not as a concession to conventionalism or even as Plato’s acknowledgment of its victory.

At the present stage, the type of lexicography focused on colloquial speech description is represented by dictionaries of the following three directions: (1) the traditional one, which is aimed at describing colloquial vocabulary, (2) the communicative one, describing specific units of oral colloquial speech (usually those not included in explanatory dictionaries), and (3) the one connected with online communication, whose task is to represent units that appear in internet slang, i.e., the so called oral-written form of network communication. Academic dictionaries of neologisms which contain new vocabulary that entered the language throughout one year - the annual dictionaries of new words - represent a separate genre of lexicography which has been focused on the reflection of speech neologisms and the lexical-semantic dynamics of Russian speech since the 1960s. The dictionaries of this type which were compiled in the 20th century contained mainly colloquial literary vocabulary found in newspapers and magazines and therefore they could be attributed to the first, traditional, direction. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, due to systemic changes in the mass media language and to the emergence and development of online communication, the nature of new lexical units represented in neological dictionaries has changed significantly, which has expanded the object of lexicographic description to communicative and discourse units, as well as some units of online communication and internet slang (such as memes and hashtags), all of them being new if interpreted in the framework of traditional lexicography. The mentioned modification allows us to attribute neography to the second and third directions of "speech" lexicography. The review article substantiates the theses formulated above and briefly describes those dictionary entries represented in the online information retrieval resource "New in Russian vocabulary" which illustrate this problem.