Volume 69, Issue 4

This article focuses on the literary construction of the ‘Recovered Territories’ on the basis of the novel Station on the East and West (2004) and the compilation of short stories Keys to the River (2013) written by Maria Sidorska-Ryczkowska. The setting within the poetics of the magical realism leads as the main characteristic of the two chosen texts. The literary creation of the small town on the Polish-German border, which is portrayed both as the microcosmic piece of a bigger entity and as the unique tablet inscribed by the history of the Polish and German nations, is the base of both texts. The intertwined relationship between the magical realism as the literary strategy and the categories of memory and remembering is a significant theme presented in the texts. The aforementioned theme transports the portrayal of the small town depicted by Sidorska-Ryczkowska into the memory space that combines realistic and magical features.

In the democratic society of interwar Czechoslovakia, there was a lively discussion about women’s emancipation and the accompanying changes in the gender order. The modernist romance Pacientka dra Hegla [Doctor Hegel’s patient] (1931) by the Czech journalist and writer Marie Pujmanová (1893‒1958) occupies a liberal position in the debate. In the story of a young woman who gives up her plans to marry in favour of a relationship outside wedlock, issues such as female sexual liberation, abortion and free motherhood are topicalised. The article highlights the connections between the romance and gender discourses of the time and examines the ideological stance of the text. Special attention is paid to the stereotyping of the four main characters, who all represent certain concepts of personal identity that were very popular in the 1920 s.

Empirical research, especially on sensitive topics such as corruption, has always been a challenge – and not only in Russia. Since February 24, 2022, research on corruption has become almost impossible; after three decades of courage and innovation, the topic is now on hold. Anti-corruption research is becoming “undesirable”, along with many of the organizations that are involved in such research, such as Transparency International. This paper, which was written before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, addresses the challenges of the current corruption paradigm. Using informality as an alternative approach, it focuses on two key areas of post-Soviet life where corruption is often endemic and where anti-corruption practices can best be studied: business and higher education. Russia’s history teaches us that it can be difficult to make accurate predictions, but the country remains an important subject for future research.

This paper presents an experiment with onomatopoeia formation. Fifty-one Slovak participants were asked to imitate ten sound events of various frequencies by writing down onomatopoeic words using the letters of the Slovak alphabet. The purpose of the experiment was to examine the role of image iconicity in producing new onomatopoeias. Image iconicity is expected to be manifested in the participants’ agreement on the form of the proposed onomatopoeias and, therefore, in the possibility of establishing onomatopoeic patterns. The pattern structure was determined by the realization of five characteristics: initial position, final position, transition, lengthening, and repetition. In addition, the established patterns make it possible to examine the role of sound-symbolism, particularly phonesthemes in the formation of onomatopoeias.

This article explores the features of noun declension in the Khislavichi dialect, focusing on the use of the genitive case ending -u . The study is based on data from the Khislavichi Corpus, which consists of texts recorded from native speakers in the western part of the Khislavichi district of the Smolensk Region during field trips in 2018–2019. The linguistic situation in this area is characterized by the Russification of genetically Belarusian dialects. The analysis examines the preservation of dialect features, the historical and contemporary usage of the genitive case in Russian and Belarusian, and the specificities of the genitive ending -u in the Khislavichi dialect. The findings indicate that the Khislavichi dialect employs the -u ending in the genitive case for a larger number of lexemes compared to standard Russian. This raises the question of whether these "extra" -u forms can be linked to the previous Belarusian system. The study explores the variability found in the usage of both the -u and -a endings, suggesting that their selection may be contingent upon the intended meaning and the age of the speaker. Additionally, the article contributes to the development of a broader theoretical problem: the transition from one idiom to another, and ultimately the theory of language change. This research adds to our understanding of dialectal variation and the mechanisms of language change, particularly in regions experiencing language contact and assimilation processes.

The present article proposes an analysis of a subset of functions of the Lithuanian verbal prefix be -, one of a small group of prefixes performing functions usually characteristic of particles rather than prefixes, such as those of focus, phasal and scalar markers. They have correspondingly been called ‘particle-like prefixes’ in Lithuanian grammar. While in its aspectual use be - is mainly progressive in modern Lithuanian, its original function was phasal (continuative), and it is this meaning that extended to scalar meanings. The article focuses on the variety of functions this scalar be - has acquired in grammar, and the ways in which it has become a marker of various constructional meanings that can be characterized as modal. More generally, it shows the importance of the Lithuanian data in elucidating the role of scalarity as a mediator between aspect and modality.