Res Humanitariae

Aim of this work is to discover the usage of foreign words in textbooks for primary schools because foreign words are more crucial components of vocabulary. As figures of statistics show there are too many of foreign words used in textbooks for children in primary classes. Teachers consider that foreign words should be included in the textbooks in a more limited amount. Yet time has come to consider young learners self-assessment as well. The main attention at the teachers’ studies courses is paid to teaching foreign methodology.

Simple and clear at the first glance, the word sea, having Indo-European parallels which have practically the only meaning ‘sea’, on a closer examination turned out to be not so clear. Linguistic and ethno-linguistic, including folklore, data of Slavic traditions make it possible to interpret the word sea in Slavic languages and dialects in the sense of ‘water’ in general, and especially – the vast expanse of water – regardless of salinity, flowage and other properties of water. Moreover, the same semantics are characteristic of many, if not all, Indo-European denominations of the sea, and many words of non-Indoeuropean languages as well. Aspects of future studying of this topic can be seen in the explanation of other words with root *mor-/mar-, identification of their semantics, motivational relations and etymology, as well as other lexems, denoting the sea, the causes of their emergence or preservation in i.-e. languages and solving a number of other problems of diachronic aspect.

In terms of date of recording the earlier and most interesting Lithuanian musical folklore material, the 64 songs of Prussian Lithuanians collected in the 19th century and preserved in the L. Rėza archival legacy, have more or less never been considered in terms of influences from a multicultural environment. The aim of this article is to discover and reveal the Lithuanian and/or German/European relationship in the songs. Analysis of the songs showed the archaity of the melodies in the L. Rėza legacy, traditionally associated with the spiritual culture of the ancient Prussian or Lithuanian tribes, is highly suspect and a matter open to debate. Many of the rare individual songs turned out to have “foreign melodies”, i.e., local variations arose based upon direct or indirect influence by German or common European melodies.

According to 15th to 18th-century written sources, priests-vaidiluciai, successors to the servants of the cult of the pre-Christian religion, performed various duties, including therapeutic activities. Descriptions in sources indicate that the nature of the therapeutic assistance they provided varied according to the magic activity they performed. The healing activities of vaidiluciai have not been systematically studied. This article extends the analysis of data on the therapeutic activities of different groups of vaidiluciai in 15th to 18th-century written folk sources, and identifies the reflection of these activities in 15th to 18th-century folk medicine based on archive records and healing faith records. The research helps to trace the meaning and origin of some therapeutic methods of folk medicine, and the possible development of traditions.

The article focuses on problems of chronology and textual development in the Ruthenian translation of the Czech Lucidarius. This translation is known from five published and one unpublished Cyrillic manuscript copies written between the second quarter of the 16th and the early 19th century. A new explanation of the information contained in these manuscripts regarding the time of the translation and the dating of the Czech original is proposed. Particular attention is paid to establishing the initial structure and sequence of the texts in the Ruthenian translation, which reflect its non-extant Czech printed source.

The article examines the stereotypes of the Ukrainian, Russian and Lithuanian linguo-cultures of cooperative communicative behaviour in the context of cognitive and communicative categories of cooperativity. The process and mechanisms of stereotyping the national communicative behaviour have been characterized, the individual and collective stereotypical impressions about the concept of “cooperativity”, as well as the cooperative linguistic individual in Ukrainian, Russian and Lithuanian communicative cultures have been identified on the results of empirical research (due to the socio- and psycholinguistic experiments). The universal and national specific parameters of auto- and hetero-stereotypes of Ukrainian, Russians and Lithuanians on their level of cooperativity in communication have been established.

Polish language in Latgale today is only one of many languages spoken in the local community. The Polish minority here forms seven per cent of population but Polish language, which extended to the territory during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, is in fact threatened with extinction. The regiolect in question is mainly exposed to the influence of the Russian and to a smaller extent Latvian language, thus it extensively incorporates foreign linguistic units. The report aims at describing some structural and semantic peculiarities of verbs functioning in the spoken variety of Latgalian Polish. Current research is based on interviews with eighty-six Poles born from 1922 till 2006 representing all generations of the local Polish minority.

The article focuses on kuršininkai ethnic group living in the Curonian Spit since 15th C. as an object of scientific investigations at the end of 19th C. and the beginning of the 20th C. My attention is paying also to the reasons which stimulated scientists interest to this small ethnic community cultural traditions in the German Empire, where the policy of ethnic minorities levelling was growing sharpat that time. I emphasize in this my article the importance of Franz Tetzner’s cultural perceptivity concerning kuršininkai ethnic culture transformations in the context of processes of modernisation and assimilation. It is very important to have a comprehensive information from Tetzner investigations on such ethnic traditions of already disappeared kuršininkai community at present times. This information helps us to understand much better the specific features of kuršininkai local identity (such as Latvian speaking at home, specific customs, fishery terms) and their ties with Prussian Lithuanians’ culture traditions (Evangelical Lutheran confession, Lithuanian language in the church and at school). The investigations from this my article have an idea to enrich particular research works on historical Prussian Lithuania region cultural heritage.

In the article the principles of text analysis within the limits of thematic criticism are applied to investigate Nelė Mazalaitė’s (1907–1993) novel “In the mist” (Lith. „Migloje“). The main implications of the text, related with the theme of the sea, as projected by the artificial consciousness, are observed. The leitmotif of the sea is analyzed through the most significant semantic aspects which form the structure of the imagery of the novel, plot development, style, and characters. Romantic, fairy, and musical connotations reveal the theme of the sea. The sea becomes the archetype of the beginning as life and festival and tranquility, death. The souls of characters are viewed in the light of the meanings of the sea as mist, waiting, freedom. Miscellaneous expression of the leitmotif of the sea in Nelė Mazalaitė’s novel makes it possible to speak about transcendental relationship between personality and sea, marine worldview and culture.

The movement of Vikings not for all regions of our continent was concussion of bases of public life. In Grobiņa and on Kaup Scandinavians didn’t manage to take decisive places in these settlements and their activity proceeded under strict control of local power structures. Westbaltic sacral phenomenon became the absence reason in Grobiņa and Kaup of settlements with the lines typical for the trade and craft settlement of an era of Vikings.