The main objective of the article is to study the evolution of Decalogue interpretations in the Russian Empire during the 18th century. In the paper, we analyze the genre history and consider the most popular compositions. We study the unknown manuscript “Pre-religion compositions” of the late 18th century and compare it to the previous catechism literature tradition because Decalogue interpretations are an integral part of catechesis. As a result of the complex analysis, we determine some characteristics of provincial religious literature of the end of 18th - beginning of 19th centuries.

The main objective of the study is to examine Lermontov’s youthful novel from the point of view of gothic narrative’s poetics. Gothic elements are noticed in the system of images, in the characters’ conflict, in the chronotope, in the plot, in the landscape scatches, and in particular artistical details. M. Lermontov extends and modifies the frameworks of gothic narrative in his own manner. It was the gothic that allowed the young author to present the scene of Pugachev’s revolt in his first prosaic experience, which was rare in the literature of the 1830s. This study helps to clarify the genre differentiation of gothic tradition in the Russian literature of the first third of the 19th century. It also analyzes the structure of M. Lermontov’s novel “Vadim” in the more complete way.

The article presents the unique part of S. Ponomarev’s work. It was written in 1854 and is dedicated to the study of Russian journalism. It’s S. Ponomarev’s PhD thesis, which is little-known. During the Ponomarev’s life, the work wasn’t published. But it’s known that it was completed in 1853, when S. Ponomarev was in Moscow. The author didn’t mention it his own bibliography. The value of the research is the material in which S. Ponomarev evaluates the journalistic work of writers. In this regard, the underestimated V. Zhukovsky’s works have the highest interest. Research material of S. Ponomarev has made a great contribution to the history of Russian literature.

The article analyzes the views of Jack London on the creativity and the creative personality from the point of view of understanding purposes and forms of creative process, and also in connection with the problem of the personal development of a person. The basic content of the study consists of the analysis of articles and some artistic works of the writer, which makes it possible to reveal the author’s position. As a result of the study, the conclusions were made about the writer’s understanding of the important role of literature in the life of society, about the significance of this problem in connection with the understanding of the special features of the artistic world of London. The author presented a new view on the creative laboratory of the writer, actualized an issue of the new reading of the American classical literature.

The relevance of the study is determined by the active research of the diachronic aspect of the problems of a new national (German) identity in the European social and cultural space and in the literary consciousness of the 19th-21st centuries. The article proposes to consider the poem by Wernher der Gartnaer “The Peasant Helmbrecht” not as a social and cultural product that addresses the issues of upward mobility and morals, but as an element of the mythic consciousness. Not only as a reworked story about the prodigal son but as an open opposition of types of thinking: archaic-mythical and linear. The opposition which is expressed in the ancient motive of the battle of the father and the son. The authors convince in ambiguity and infinity of ways to comprehend the medieval poem, to critically analyze the signs of the latest German reality in it.

The article investigates the features of the images of nature in E. Kostrov’s works. Kostrov’s creative work is considered as an integral element of the artistic system associated with the traditional neo-classical view on nature, which underwent qualitative changes in the last third of the 18th century. In panegyrical poetry, the images of nature are called to convey enthusiastic emotions, create the illusion of the «golden age» that has been established in Russia. Since the 1780s, Kostrov increasingly introduces into his conditional landscapes individual details that animate abstract neo-classical images, give plasticity and picturesqueness to the pictures of nature. In a number of cases, Kostrov demonstrates his ability to notice the slightest changes in the natural world, reflecting the natural «sense of nature» present in the human soul. At the same time, in all cases, nature is a symbol or an allegory, designed to express certain «universal» experiences. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that Kostrov is characterized by «etiquette humility» before the classics, who remained a model of high service to art and the motherland for him.

The objective of the article is to describe one of the poorly covered sides of Anna Bunina’s biography, namely her cooperation with periodicals. “The Son of the Fatherland” and especially “Ladies’ magazine” are chosen as examples. The article analyses publications dedicated to Bunina as well as the editorial policy of the publishers of journals - Nikolay Grech and Petr Shalikov. A hypothesis is advanced that both editors significantly contributed to modeling Bunina’s literary reputation as one of the best poetesses of her time, as well as reasons are revealed for fixing her in this status. The theoretical and practical significance of the research is the clarification of one of the aspects of Bunina’s creative biography. The article is addressed to philologists, specialists in the history of women’s literature in Russia.

The objective of the article is to examine functions of the mirror image in A. Carter’s novels, paying particular attention to its role in the self-identification process of the characters in her works. In the course of the study, both general theoretical advances related to the semantic problem of the mirror image in literary works and separate conclusions on this issue that based on A. Carter’s creativity were analyzed. J. Lacan’s concept of “mirror stage” was put into use for a more comprehensive study. It is noted that scientists point to the relationship between the mirror image with self-identification processes. Positive and negative aspects in establishing links between the protagonists of the novels and their mirror reflections were highlighted in this article. The author managed to cast a new light on the problem of the semantics of the mirror in its connection with self-identification problem of the characters in writer’s works by considering the gender aspect of the representative practices in A. Carter’s novels. The article is addressed to philologists.

The article studies the causes of the tragic situation of a man in society on the material of O’Neill’s “All God’s Chillun Got Wings”. O’Neill as a shrewd psychologist examines the process of transformation of social norms into the internal psychological norms of each individual. The problem of racial antagonism is solved by the playwright as part of the ethical problem of human relationships in the selfish and predatory world. The author reveals the artistic features of the drama, reflecting the principles of O’Neill’s thinking and representing his worldview. The slow beginning of the drama scenes is replaced by a high psychological intensity created by the concentration of all social problems in the interaction of two people capable of love, which is not realized due to social conditions.

The author of the article identifies the typology of images of hunger in the works of writers that belong to Russian, European and Asian cultures - I. Shmelev (“The Sun of the Dead”), K. Hamsun (“Hunger”), Liu Zhenyun (“Remembering 1942”). The author analyzes the motives and images in the context of the specifics of different historical conditions, national mentality, biographical situations and marks style dominants of the texts. Describing hunger as a personal or national tragedy, an existential, ontological, socio-historical phenomenon; showing the limits of physical and moral suffering; depicting the psychotypes of the famished and their reflections; Hamsun, Shmelev, Liu Zhenyun built a narration on similar keynotes. A man is represented in the conditions of a downward evolutionary ladder as a biological, but also a rational, phenomenon towards salvation. It consists in establishing literary analogies, general and specific characteristics of artistic perception of stressful situations. The content of the article is an example of comparative studies.

The article deals with one of the main notions of lexicography - glossary. Basing on the data from various lexicographical sources, the author gives different definitions of the word. The author also analyzes several approaches of leading scientists to understand the essence of the concept glossary. With the help of explanatory and terminological dictionaries, the main features of glossary are explained. The study shows that any dictionary, depending on words composition type, is compiled differently. When selecting the units to include in the vocabulary the compiler should consider the purpose and objectives of the dictionary.

The article highlights the approach to the analysis of the features of the reference names of the fable characters of I. Krylov and I. Dmitriev. It is argued that one of the means of creating an allegorical meaning in fables is the name (nominal group) in the case of its conditionally-defined reference use. The conclusions are confirmed by the results of a comparative analysis of data obtained by continuous sampling of the names of characters from the collections of works by I. Krylov and I. Dmitriev. The article is addressed to philologists and linguists who are interested in the theory of reference and the language specificity of fable texts.

The purpose of the article is a comprehensive description of the history of the Russian words with the formant -мейкер-. The main content of the study is the analysis of contexts from the National Corpus of the Russian Language and examples from the Internet that contain these words. The analysis showed that, on the one hand, there are direct borrowings with the formant -мейкер-, and on the other hand, there are words formed in the Russian language by this element. That is why it seems impossible to unambiguously assess the word-formation status of the formant -мейкер-. The author was able to summarize the material of the previous studies and link the word-formation problems of this word group with their origin and history.

The article deals with the use of words related to the lexical-semantic group “city” in the mass media language. The authors justify the idea that in the modern Russian language, the composition of this group is expanded and replenished due to the updating of obsolete words and inflow of borrowings. The emergence of new city namings is also associated with the emergence of new types of large localities in the modern world. The study showed that in journalistic texts words with the meaning “city” can acquire different shades of meaning, which allow to express the author’s assessment of the described events. The image of the city plays special role in advertising. The patterns of lexemes functioning in a certain lexical-semantic group in mass media that are revealed in the article can serve as a basis for further research in this field.

The article in a broad historical and etymological context of Slavic and Nakh languages considers the part of their basic vocabulary (according to the various lists known today) which the author attracts to prove the existence of the concept of Slavic-Nakh language union. As a result of the made analysis, the author establishes the unreliability of the corresponding facts and impossibility of their attraction to the proof of the existence of the considered language union.

The concept of FAMILY in the Russian linguoculture reveals the culture of society, traditions and its continuity in the modern world. The universal concept of FAMILY is one of the most important of values in upbringing and education. The article provides the analysis of the lexicographic facts; defines the concept’s meaning-forming sources which reflect the most complete picture of the concept’s FAMILY functioning. It also studies the paradigmatic relations, their interaction and implementation both in language and in the national picture of the world.

The article shows an analysis of text’s units with the semantics “city” as an element of textual semantic field “patriotism”. The authors analyzed the corpus of the Russian song texts of the 19th-20th centuries. The analysis revealed the textual units with semantics “city”, which actualize the patriotic semantic in the context. It also showed that the majority of units consist of toponyms. According to the results of the study, the authors concluded that these textual units acquire additional incremental patriotic semantics in the song context. The authors proposed methods for studying the lexical level of a song text by constructing a text semantic field. The article is addressed to specialists in the field of philology and related fields of humanitary knowledge.

Supertext modeling should take place in the coordinates specified by the following factors: non-textual structure, value position of the subject of the creative action and his semantic setting. Such factors determine certain principles of supertext modeling: the principle of conceptual co-ordination between supertext and non-text reality, which form the intrinsic unity; the principle of the dialogue-type interaction between non-textual structure and collective creative conscious; the principle of the continuity of text generating process; principles of architectonics and transgression. The supertext is not only holistic but also a systematic phenomenon, which generates structure; by that, the importance of consistency principle is emphasized. The content of the above principles is demonstrated with the help of several supertexts: Northern Russian Literature, Lomonosov and Pushkin supertexts.

The article analyzes the synonymous, antonymic and homonymous relations of the word красота. The sources of the research were lexicographic data: “Dictionary of Antonyms of the Russian Language” by M. Lvov and “Dictionary of Synonyms and Similar Expressions” by N. Abramov, as well as the results of the experimental studies carried out by the author. The article argues that the synonyms of the word красота are different in stylistic coloring, and notes the expansion of its antonymic potential and the absence of homonymous relationships.

The article deals with the features of modern functioning of pronouns associated with the processes of substantivation and predicativation of the pronoun vocabulary (including phraseological units with a pronominal component), which relate to the phenomena of transposition in parts of speech. The basis for the transposition can be called the subjective potential of pronouns, arising from their categorical meaning, namely from their abstract semantic nature. The subjectivity of pronouns manifests itself in their direct relation to the speech act, to the figure of the speaker, which allows us to specify their semantics in the context of the speech situation. As a result of the transposition, the pronominal vocabulary can occupy a position in the center of another part of speech (не по себе, ничего), on the periphery (ничего, не в себе, я, себя), in the syncretism zone (я, ты, себя, весь из себя, весь такой).

The main objective of the article is to critically examine the attempt of one of the modern researchers to justify with the material of Nakh languages Václav Polyak’s hypothesis about the Slavic-Caucasian language union. It was already criticized by researchers, including the author of the article. As a result of the made analysis of language and historical and linguistic data, which were used to justify a similar union of Nakh and Slavic languages, the authors provide their full theoretical and practical insolvency.

The article explores the interaction of fields (reciprocity and temporality), i.e. the task posed in the functional grammar, that highlights the field of reciprocity in the field of voice. The generating model of the field of reciprocity undergoes the convergence in the process of realization in speech (from a complex sentence to a simple word) and divergence (from a word to a simple sentence and a complex sentence). In the text, the model can be a complex sentence, and a simple one, and a combination of words in the sentence members - their idiom, or a word that carries information about mutual relations. The author raises the problem of the subjective-objective nature of the functional-semantic category of temporality, which is revealed in interaction with the chronotope of the field of reciprocity. This is important for the methodology of research of functional-semantic fields and linguodidactics. The author reveals the autonomy of the subjective time of the field of mutual relations, which is fixed mainly lexically (the periphery of the functional-semantic categories). As well as the objectivity of the semantics of the grammatical center of the functional-semantic category of temporality, which is realized in speech acts of thought-speech-language activity.

The article considers functional and semantic features of colloquial vocabulary which differs at the present stage of development of the language by diffusion. The phenomena of transition of neutral lexemes to the periphery of the literary language due to a distribution of secondary colloquial and slang meanings are analyzed (жрать, ржать, достать, etc.). The article shows the specifics of the functioning of desemanticized colloquial verbs which indicate exaggerated, vigorous actions, made with enthusiasm (махнуть, чесать, etc.). The linguistic experiment on the basis of data of the National Corpus of the Russian Language is made and cases of redistribution of neutral and colloquial meanings are revealed. The results of the work can promote a deeper assessment of the condition of modern Russian and find application in the lexicographic presentation of the expressive colloquial speech.

The author of the research conducts a structural-semantic analysis of compound sentences of an explanatory-object type and reveals in them the features of the syntactic appearance of time. There are purely temporal meanings of precedence, total and partial simultaneity and sequence of events. The specificity of the expression of the shades of simultaneity (total and partial) / difference (precedence and sequence) in the explanatory-object sentences is generalized and theoretically interpreted. It is proved that in the semantics of the verbal temporal forms different human relations to real time are reflected, and the syntactic time, based on morphological, syntactic, lexical, intonational means, acquires the possibility to deviate from the real time characteristics of the described events.

The article’s aim is to consider the history of the lexeme обаяние in the history of the Russian language. The synchronous-diachronic method and the method of component analysis allow to review the derivatives from the point of view of the integral-differential semantic features. On the basis of the study, motivational links were revealed, lexemes-synonyms were presented, the presence of a dialectal word-formation nest with the top -баять- was established. The article also notes cases of the development of the additional meanings of the word обаяние and its derivatives. The author of the article proposed an extended interpretation of the lexeme обаяние in modern Russian. The theoretical and practical significance of the research lies in the compilation of these lexicographic sources and the complex description of the semantic structure of the word обаяние. The article may be addressed to university teachers of the in the preparation of lectures and practical exercises in lexicology and etymology, school teachers to improve the spelling literacy of pupils, as well as to anyone, who is interested in the history of the Russian language.