Abstract The article under studies deals with the issue of the conversives structure and semantic characteristics in the models noun – verb, verb – noun, noun – adjective and adjective – noun. It consists of four stages. The first stage regards the main approaches to the phenomenon of conversion in line with system-structural, communicative-functional and cognitive paradigms, as well as elaborates the definitions, used in the work. The purpose of the second stage is to form the research material. By a continuous sample of three academic dictionaries New Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language (2009. 5th ed. London: Pearson education), Macmillian English Dictionary (2006. In M. Rundell (ed.), For advanced learners. London: Palgrave Macmillan) and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2009. 5th ed. London: Pearson education), a total amount of 18,263 conversives was written out. To avoid repeating the conversives given in the dictionaries, we have developed a sample, in which every conversion pair occurred once. The total number of the studied conversives is 10,140 tokens, grouped into 5,070 conversion pairs. The third stage highlights the structural and semantic features of conversives in modern English. It describes the peculiarities of parts of speech and semantic transitions, as well as determines the conversives structural models and their modifications. In order to establish regular semantic changes, the conversion semantic models are singled out, quantitative characteristics of each model are established and the most productive transitions from the generative to the derivative are described. At the final stage, the results of the work are summarized and the prospects for further research are outlined. The obtained results will enrich the theory of nomination with the new systematized material of conversives, which are an integral part of natural languages, and the analysis of English language conversives will supplement the theoretical and methodological basis for further study of the phenomenon of conversion in other languages.

Abstract The study will focus on the quantitative assessment of nine stories, considered important contributions in the supernatural and in the early and modern science-fiction prose. Besides the two treatments of the topic of imaginary Flatland – penned by E. A. Abbott and C. H. Hinton –, the corpus includes writings by H. G. Wells, A. Blackwood, M. Leinster, G. Waldeyer, R. A. Heinlein, L. Padgett, and A. C. Clarke. Texts are researched on the bases of four analyses (moving-average type-token ratio, average tokens length, Busemann’s coefficient, and collocation associativity), with the results tested for statistical significance; next, the textual comparisons will provide a springboard for sketches of literary criticism interpretations. The analyzed corpus has revealed the distinctive and colorful take writers have in their stories. By the nature of their subject, the texts are expected to share higher dimensions and time warps, a thread implying a meeting point in terms of vocabulary richness, plot development, and possibly of narrative structure. Yet, in most cases, the findings suggest basic and nuanced differences, hinting at clear stylistic physiognomies in the authorship. The outcome affects not only the assessment of the weight individual samples have, but also the interface between a common (sub)genre and personal style.

Abstract In dem vorliegenden Beitrag gehen wir davon aus, dass der informationsbetonten Textsorte Meldung das fraktale Bauprinzip zugrunde liegt. Unter Fraktalität wird die rekursive Selbstähnlichkeit des Objektes verstanden. In der Textsorte Meldung der deutschen und ukrainischen Medienkultur lässt sich die Zweifraktalstruktur identifizieren: Überschrift als Anfangsfraktal (α) und Fließtext als Endfraktal (ω). Laut der kontrastiven Analyse ist die deutsche Meldung standardisierter und verdichteter als die ukrainische. Im Gegensatz zur deutschen Medienkultur, bei der die Meldung eine verarbeitete Mitteilung diverser Nachrichtenagenturen ist, veröffentlichen die ukrainischen Medien häufig eigene Mitteilungen. In der Mikrostruktur von deutschen und ukrainischen Meldungen sind einige Gemeinsamkeiten anzusehen. Im α-Fraktal dominiert der einfache Satz, durch den die Hauptproposition der Nachricht ausgedrückt wird. Im ω-Fraktal wird die Hauptproposition erweitert und ergänzt, indem es stilistisch neutral durch einfache Sätze und Hypotaxen ausgedrückt wird. In beiden Medienkulturen pflegen Berichterstatter überwiegend indirekte Rede bei der Informationsvermittlung zu verwenden. Im nonverbalen Aspekt weisen die deutsche und ukrainische Meldung viele Gemeinsamkeiten auf. Dies spiegelt die aktuellen Trends im Design von Medienmeldungen in modernen Tageszeitungen wider. Die Zeitungsmeldungen werden üblicherweise am Rande der Zeitungsspalte unter einer allgemeinen typografisch hervorgehobenen Dachzeile als ein Block angegeben.

Abstract This paper focuses on the phonetic, morphological and semantic principles determining the grammatical gender of nouns in German. Based on the experiments we established the main trends in determining the gender of the German equivalents and interlingual homonyms and the role of the interlingual and intralingual interference in this process. The results of two experiments show that Ukrainian students take into consideration suffixes of German nouns when choosing the correct gender. Phonetic or semantic gender allocation rules play a subordinate role. The interlingual interference determinates the gender choice in the target language: the gender of the mother tongue lemma interferes the selection of the gender in the foreign language equivalent. This effect appears more frequently in interlingual homonyms than in translation equivalents. A plausible interpretation of these results could be: the lemmas of two similar nouns or translation equivalents share the same concepts, the relationship between them is rather close, and the competition between the two lemmas and their genus nodes is strong and influences language production. This conclusion supports the hypothesis that both languages, the mother tongue and the foreign one, can be activated during language producing.

Abstract This article investigates the possibility to form determiner complexes in English nominal groups and the potential of leftward transfer of functional elements in nominal groups. The research finds that it is not possible to form hypotactic determiner complexes; rather there are hypotactic numeral complexes, hypotactic Epithet adjective complexes, hypotactic Classifier noun complexes and hypotactic Thing noun complexes, and the words for all the slots have the potential to form paratactic complexes. The corpus-based research confirms the potential of leftward transfer in nominal groups. Thereby, four types of shifts were identified: the shift from the Thing noun to the Classifier noun or adjective is a process of metaphorization from the group rank to the word rank; (2) the shift from the Classifier adjective to the Epithet 2 adjective is a process of subjectification from the distinctive to the nondistinctive features of the Thing noun within the domain of ideational metafunction; (3) the shift from the Epithet 2 adjective to the Epithet 1 adjective is a process of subjectification from the domain of ideational metafunction to that of interpersonal metafunction; (4) the shift from the Epithet 1 adjective to the post-Deictic adjective is a process of grammaticalization from the open-set attitude adjectives to the closed-set attitude adjectives.

Abstract The article focuses on analysing activity in the selected sonnets of the Czech and Russian nineteenth-century literatures (100 poems per each). Busemann Coefficient (Q) is counted for the samples, and the individual authors are tested on statistical significance by means of the nonparametric Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon test. Another product of the research is a scatter plot, where the counts of the significant MWW test values for the poets and their average Q’s are compared; these figures are clustered according to the k-means method, and interpretations are formulated on the basis of the groupings. Both microanalyses penetrating into an author’s production, and literary-movement investigations are provided, so as to make the research of use for literary criticism, too. Finally, two ways of comparing the Czech and Russian data are sketched, with the outcomes being commented upon.