The article focuses on identifying relationships between an action expressed by the infinitive and an action expressed by the verb in a personal form representing a predicate in such sentences as Il aime raconter des histoires (He likes telling stories). The research is conducted from the perspective of the sematic-functional approach, which allows defining syntactic status and thus discovering nominative potential on the basis of the content analysis. Taking into account the notions of basic and non-basic propositions within the semantic-functional classification of the predicate, the predicate complex aime raconter is qualified as the compound predicate, which consists of the matrix (main) predicate and the second predicate referring to the same subject. In this case, the infinitive has a function of the second infinitive predicate expressing an additional predication of subordinate type in comparison with the matrix predicate. Matrix and infinitive propositions form a content block inside of which both actions have the relationships classified as the taxis ones. The realization of the taxis relationships is affected by the specific character of the infinitive, which expresses a non-localized in time action, the implementation of which is regarded as hypothetical or potentially possible. The article concludes that the above-mentioned features of the infinitive restrict the possibility of expression of the taxis character of the relationships between the matrix and the infinitive actions due to the usage of the specific lexico-semantic groups of verbs representing the matrix predicate.

The article is devoted to the variation of pronunciation depending on the stylistic features of oral texts. Phonostylistic means act as significant indicators of variation of the pronunciation norm. One of the genres in which the dependence of the change in phonetic-prosodic means on the nature of extralinguistic parameters is clearly traced is sports commentary. The focus of the study is the degree to which articulation clarity is implemented at various stages of commenting. When conducting phonostylistic studies, it is advisable to take into consideration three degrees of articulation clarity: very high, medium-high, and reduced. At each stage of a sports competition commentators form a certain psychophysiological state that affects the clarity of articulation. The article provides an audit analysis at the segmental level, which helps to trace the completeness of the implementation of sounds and their variation in various phases of building a sports report. As a rule, in any sports report four phases can be distinguished that describe fragments that are not saturated with struggle, phases of active rivalry, victory and defeat. As indicators of the segmented level of speech we consider the implementation of a solid attack at the beginning of a word and syllable, the implementation of the longitude of a vowel in an stressed syllable, the implementation of aspiration of deaf sensory-explosive consonants “p”, “t”, “k”, the implementation of “r” in a closed syllable in a position after a short vowel, the implementation of a reduced vowel “e” in finite syllables, realization of the final consonant “t”. Phonostylistic changes are due to the psychophysiological reaction of the speaker to the actions of the athletes at the time they show strong-willed efforts to achieve victory or, conversely, when the course of the competition changes, when the favorites do not justify the hopes placed on them.

The aim of this article is to explore linguistic representation of the concept “way” in Irish fairy tales. Image, key lexeme, which is the core of the field, information content with its cognitive attributes and interpretation field, which is the periphery of the concept are elaborated. The results obtained show that the “way” in its direct and indirect meanings is the image and the key lexeme is “path”. It has been established that information content has seven cognitive attributes: exploration of new space, aim, distance, adventure, difficulties, destiny, and travel to afterlife world. Interpretation field includes two groups of proverbs with the first group presenting the “way” in its direct meaning and the second group comprising proverbs with the metaphorical usage of the “way”. Modelling the frame of the concept “way” allowed us to define the typical slots: subject of movement; the starting point of movement; trajectory; the environment of movement and the method of movement; locus; distance; driving power; and motivation. The concept “way” was structured using linguistic and cognitive approach, which made it possible to determine the image, information content and interpretation field. The study of the image of the concept revealed that “way” encompasses different aspects. The “way” is the basis of a person’s life. The “way” is considered not only as the road the person walks along covering big distances but as life in general that is associated with its ups and downs as well as with overcoming difficulties along the way. The idea emphasizes the importance of the “way” in people’s lives and culture, and specifically in Irish culture.

This article highlights the presence of the gender component in any type of discourse and its linguistic implementation. The aim of the study is to determine the gender component in the discourse of Western and Russian gender-oriented lifestyle magazines using a comparative analysis of the used English and Russian language means of lexical-grammatical (gender-marked language units) and semantic-syntactic (assessment, modality of sentences, syntax sentences) levels. The cognitive-linguistic approach allows us to prove that in the publications in question two types of discursive representation of masculinity and femininity are used: the type of “reflection” and the type of “construction”. The presence of gender neutral or gender-marked units of language in texts is associated with the intensity of the male / female dichotomy, this ratio reflects the predominance of egalitarian or traditional gender representations in society. The authors’ choice of the lexical repertoire, the general modality of statements and the syntactic organization of sentences correspond to the discursive tasks of publications, the linguistic tools used at the cognitive level translate certain models of gender behavior into the minds of the general readers. Analysis of 4000 contexts taken by continuous sampling from popular men’s and women’s magazines in the UK, USA and Russia for the period of 2012-2017 (“GQ”, “Men’s Health” (MH), “Men’s Fitness” (MF), “Esquire”, “Tatler”, “Cosmopolitan” (Cosmo), “Glamour”, “Women’s Health” (WH), “Women’s Fitness ”(WF),“ Marie Claire ”(MC)) allows us to identify common features and peculiarities of the discursive representation of masculinity and femininity in English editions and Russian-language versions of the same name, containing both translated and original (author) articles.

The article represents the results of an experimental study conducted in the autumn of 2018 in Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), which embraced 107 undergraduate and master degree students, studying German as the main foreign language. The study was aimed to bring out conservative and inventive trends in forming feminine gender markings (“feminatives”). An additional aim was to prove the anticipation that the morphological norms of the studied language (German) and foreign language cultural norms can transfer themselves onto the language of a student who is a Russian native speaker. For the study the method of a two-stage survey was chosen, the results of which were further processed utilizing IBM SPSS statistical software package. In the first stage the surveyed students were asked to build a feminine form for 60 denominations of professions or occupations given in a masculine form; in the second stage the surveyed were offered the list of variants to appraise through the prism of the language norm. The results obtained show that the forms belonging to the grammatical norm of the Russian language were statistically dominant. The anticipation that the norms of a studied language (German) can interfere with the speech culture of Russian native speakers was proven only partially. Occasional creative forms found in the survey replies reflect the balance existing between conservative and inventive linguistic trends.

Anthroponyms often act as a frequency derivation component included in various toponyms in the Swedish language. The value of the derivational component may be different and structurally diffuse. The subject of the research is the semantic, derivational characteristics of toponyms with anthroponymic foundations. The material for the study was 105 language units from the Swedish and the Russian sources, selected by the continuous sampling method. The article specifies the main lexical meanings of anthroponyms as the producing bases, identifies the main types of derivational models; possible semantic links are determined. The article is intended for linguists, geographers, ethnographers and for all those who are interested in geographic names.

The article examines types of dialogism in French newspaper discourse and determines factors that cause dialogism in discourse and lingua-pragmatic forms of realization of its types. These factors are communicative situation and intertextuality. A communicative situation underlies two types of dialogism: the interactional dialogism, which is a speech interaction between a text author and its reader, and the interlocutive dialogism, which is the interaction of speech actors within the interview genre. Intertextuality in the form of quotations in media texts and/or text headlines creates transtextual dialogism, represented by its two forms: intertextual dialogism (speech interaction between a text author and a quotation author) and paratextual dialogism (authorization of a quotation included into the text headline by a text author). The first two types of dialogism and intertextual dialogism are characteristic of various discourse types, whereas paratextual dialogism is a distinctive feature of newspaper discourse. For discourse analysis there were selected texts of various genres from printed and electronic versions of French national and regional newspapers such as Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, Le Parisien and Nice-Matin.

The article deals with the interaction between the “conflict” and “crisis” event concepts in the cognitive modelling process. The developed modelling procedure is focused on the analysis of “conflict” and “crisis” lexical units represented in the lexicographic sources and economic media texts’ fragments of “The Financial Times” dated 2018. According to the main trend expounded by Russian and foreign researchers, the cognitive modelling scheme is based on a conceptual analysis. The “conflict” and “crisis” concepts’ verbal representations reflect their referential properties in the economic media text in accordance with its covered topic. The “conflict” and “crisis” cognitive models are specified through the structure of the concepts by means of cognitive criterion located in its core, close and far periphery. The study of economic media texts suggests that lexical units with negative connotations are the explicit identifiers of the “conflict” and “crisis” concepts. It is stated that the “conflict” and “crisis” concepts’ interaction is characterised by the whole range of parameters. In media texts the content of the concept “conflict” narrows to the trade wars. The concept “crisis” acquires the common meaning of the lexical unit “crisis”. The article is addressed to linguists interested in the cognitive language research.

The article is focused on set expressions with cardinal numerals in Spanish newspaper language. These fixed expressions are part of linguistic expressive means, which realize one of mass media functions. The purpose of the article is to analyze set expressions with cardinal numerals, classify them according to some criteria and determine newspaper spheres in which they are most frequently used. Fixed expressions with cardinal numerals are more numerous in number than those with ordinal ones, or multiple, partible or fractional numbers, and include expressions with numbers from zero to eight and numbers with a hundred, a thousand, and a million.

For the purposes of the research fixed expressions with cardinal numerals are divided into two groups: the invariable expressions with a fixed cardinal numeral, and the variable expressions with a changeable cardinal numeral. In the article there are provided classifications of set expressions with cardinal numerals based on grammatical and semantic criteria, and their components. There is analyzed the use of fixed expressions in the language of newspapers. Set expressions with cardinal numerals form part of the phraseological thesaurus of the Spanish language and the language of news media in particular.

The fixed meaning and the variability of symbolic language codes changing principle is inapplicable when translating certain football terms to denote footballers’ roles to play on the field. These social media football terms are not yet enshrined in English dictionaries; what is more, these terms tend to change their original meaning when translated from English into Portuguese and Russian. The reluctance of the target languages to accept the given football terms leads to the use of Russian and Portuguese local traditional football terminology instead. Therefore, as distinct from the original, this terminology lacks semantic precision, leading to distortion and further confusion. With regard to structure and meaning, the Russian language has two translation patterns to render the meaning of the given football terms. These are neutral word collocations which narrow down the given English terms and professional football jargon which can be compared to the meaning of the term as enshrined in the English-English dictionary entry. Conversely, the Portuguese language has only one pattern to translate the given terms, i.e. neutral football terms that also distort the original meaning of the terms in English. Surprisingly, this distortion is different from the one in the Russian translations of them. The disparity in meaning caused by artificially adapted terms denoting footballers’ roles to play on the field in the way they exist in the target languages of translation is apparent when translating the terms from one target language to the other. The pattern leads to distortion in translation and consequent communication failure. Such a shortcoming can be avoided if all the four dimensions of such football terms are taken into consideration. The latter include player location, function, role to play on the field and personality. The research findings may have practical application for students of Russian and Portuguese as well as interpreters and translators.

Irvine Welsh, being one of the most prominent writers belonging to the postmodernist movement of the end of the 20th century, still retains his popularity in youth culture. Due to deep social insight of his works, they are being studied not only by literary scholars, but also by socio-humanitarian researchers. In this article the study of his work is mainly based on literary analysis, but also includes concepts of philosophy, cultural and social studies. Otherness, primarily a socio-philosophical concept, in “Trainspotting” reveals its new shades, which require a multidisciplinary research approach. In our analysis we consider the historical situation in Britain at the end of 20th century closely connected with the elimination and deconstruction of traditional class, ethnical and gender identities. For the Scottish society of that time identity and otherness issues become highly relevant: along with the reforms of economic and social policies, individualistic mindset is being shaped and the freedom of self-identification is enhanced. Irvine Welsh’s main creative intention is to reflect on these processes. The analysis of the image system of the novel reveals the most important aspects of otherness illustrated in “Trainspotting”: ethnical, gender and existential.

Slogans have a thousand-year history and have always played a significant role in the life of the Chinese people. Many slogans have become precedent symbols of certain historical eras, not only do they reflect important moments in the country’s political life, but also the linguistic picture of the world. Perceived subconsciously, the content of slogans becomes a guideline for people’s conduct. In slogans you can see traditions and customs of the Chinese, as well as understand the realities of the time in which they appeared, history and culture of the country.

Slogans, used by the Chinese leadership to broadcast the main political installations, are one of the means of propaganda. They still remain in China one of the most popular means of disseminating information. Written in different styles, with different content, slogans do not lose their relevance and remain an important element of Chinese culture. At present, when coding of knowledge has to a greater extent a rationalistic basis, slogans play a more significant role.

The article considers slogans about happiness in different time periods, which allows you to find out how the Chinese’s perception of happiness was changing in the course of time.

The article attempts to study the development of relations between Russia and Iran (20152019) in the Persian political discourse. The aim of the paper is to represent the main characteristics of Iranian-Russian relations based on the research of Iranian leaders’ and other officials’ speeches and statements related to cooperation and relationship between the two countries. The methodology was based on a qualitative-quantitative express content analysis of the texts extracted from media resources. To reach the above mentioned goals the study was carried out in five stages: determination of the analysis categories (measurement units “relations” / “relationship” and “cooperation”); selection of content units (articles); count of word usage according to the selected categories; systematization of subcategories i.e. qualitative characteristics of the selected categories; conclusions. The findings confirming the positive dynamics of the Iranian-Russian relations in the period of 2015-2019 may be helpful for the international relations’ experts, foreign policy officers as well as interpreters.

The article is dedicated to the investigation of the phraseological expressions in the Spanish language that contain names of profession or trade. Idiomatic expressions are combinations of words that present greater difficulty in the process of learning a second language and in intercultural communication in general. Spanish phraseological units include several names of professions (barber, apothecary, coal, butcher, carpenter, carter, hunter, cook, etc.) and religious occupations (abbot, canon, chaplain, priest, friar, monk, bishop, parish priest, sacristan). We have focused our research on 40 paremias related to the occupations of priest and friar. Based on the analysis of semantic aspects and the cognitive interpretation of phraseological units, we have defined their denotative characteristics, stylistic, expressive and historicalcultural connotations. The study reveals the obvious anticlericalism of Spanish sayings and proverbs and exposes possible causes of the negative connotations developed in phraseology.

The article reviews the autobiographical prose of Tsvetaeva in a rhetorical aspect. Narration in Tsvetaeva’s texts is structured by the intimate feelings of the addresser: any eventuality is subjectively characterized and evaluated. Author’s strategies are determined by the character of the narrator, content of the text they produce and its implied meaning. Tsvetaeva’s works are oriented on prepared readers, on recipients, who have a system of certain cultural and philosophical images and expectations. The interaction of the author and the reader suggests having common memories, understanding of cultural and historical context, merge of the question, set by the author with an expected answer, given by the reader on reception of the text. The recipient is actively involved in the process of empathy, cognitive area of the text becomes subject to congruous interpretations. In the course of hermeneutic research the subject of perception mentally creates their own text, reflecting the depth and degree of understanding of the original, as well as the chosen angle of reading. Rhetorical aspect of impact does not only suggest deep understanding of the meaning by the recipient, but points out the changes in recipient’s consciousness, which are results of such impact. The article broadens the perceptions of cultural and historical context of the epoch and of Tsvetaeva as one of the greatest artists of the XXth century, the genre features and philosophical and ethical significance of her autobiographical prose.