Res Humanitariae

The foundation of the Republic of Latvia in 1918 changed significantly ethnic relationships in the country. Ethnic Latvians became not only the numerical but also the political and cultural majority, and thereby the concept and status of ethnic minorities were created. This article examines the visibility of ethnic minorities in the newly established state, focusing on the case of the Archives of Latvian Folklore, founded in 1924, as one of the core institutions that strengthened national cultural values. The ‘folklore of other ethnicities’ category was introduced and discussed at the archive during the first years of its existence. Volunteer folklore collectors played an active role in the discussions, revealing the bottom-up aspects of the implementation of the archive’s policy. However, rather than pointing to the ethnic affiliation of the involved people, the archival records reflect more often the blurred linguistic boundaries in Latvian society.

On the ground of conceptual metaphor conception, metaphor is discussed as thinking strategy, which is implemented in language by metaphorical expressions. Metaphorical expressions for which target domain is criminal and crime were gathered from texts which were published in two Lithuanian news portals in the years 2001–2015. It is important to reconstruct the conceptual metaphors not only because they reflect viewpoint of society regarding certain phenomenon, but also because implemented in the texts of media influence on the public opinion, inasmuch as the metaphor is not only some linguistic form and conceptual structure, but also manifestation of communicational function.

В статье исследуется жизненный путь одного из аристократов Великого Княжества Литовского позднее ставшего подданным Российской империи Людвика Скумин-Тышкевича (1748–1808). Это был человек, которому повезло не только избежать репрессий или лишений во времена суровых перемен, но и войти в элиту тогдашнего общества, получить доверие новой власти. В исследовании анализируется карьерные траектории аристократа и изучается причины, благодаря которым представитель не самого могущественного рода Литвы сумел попасть в элиту тогдашнего общества.

The article discusses the origin of the place-name Preila. Preila is a settlement located in the Curonian Spit. To this day, there is no obvious and definitely proven interpretation of this name’s origin. The reason for this is a failure to detect linguistic motivation of the origin of the onym in the kursenieku language. The settlement itself was set about as late as the 19th century, while most linguists tend to look for ancient (Curonian of Prussian) origin of its name. Both phonetic and morphologic structure of the name seems to support this approach, but there was a shortage of proof that motivating lexeme with the theme Preil- could survive through to the 19th century in the language or onomastics of kursenieku language.The article employs several analysis methods, in particular: comparative, internal reconstruction, cartographic, geolinguistic. As some proof surfaced of presence of the onym in cartography prior to establishment of the settlement, the author makes assumption that it was an undocumented Curonian person’s name that gave birth to a place-name, which could initially be just a name of a steading or a micro-toponym.

The article is aimed to clear out the cognitive significance of the concept SEA for the Ukrainian mentality, and culture. Turning to the characteristics of Ukrainian cultural concept SEA, the author identifies two main aspects of it: “external” (related to the territorial and geographical self-identification of the Ukrainians) and “internal” (cognitively associated with the “external”, representing the emotional sphere of romantic personality). The study is based on the Ukrainian dooms of the XVI–XVII centures, collected and published in 1927–1931 by Ukrainian researcher Catherine Hrushevska, and on poems about the sea written by outstanding Ukrainian poetess Lesya Ukrainka and poets of the “Executed Renaissance” (A. Vlizko, J. Pluzhnyk and others).Comparison of two dimensions of the Ukrainian concept SEA (external and internal) gives an opportunity to carry out certain parallels between their cognitive and axiological characteristics. Both in its internal and external dimensions the concept SEA reveals the duality, axiological ambivalence, correlation with the idea of primary chaos, danger and overcoming.

This article analyzes the proper use of various meanings of the adjective draugiškas ‘friendly’. It discusses the semantic structure of this adjective and its different interpretation in the Dictionary of Modern Lithuanian Language and in the Dictionary of Lithuanian Language. The semantic structure of the adjective draugiškas has been specified based on the data collected from the Corpus of Modern Lithuanian Language and other sources, the problem of its figurative use is discussed, and its validity from the stand point of proper usage of new meanings such as „safe“, „harmless“, „comfortable“ is evaluated. The data was collected from various functional styles and the conducted survey shows the real use of the modern adjective draugiškas. In addition, it shows that some of the phrases used with this word that are indicated as incorrect by users, are not violating the norms of language use. The appropriateness of new phrases, such as draugiškas restoranas, draugiška kuprinė, is discussed.

The article examines the main approaches to the analysis of A. Bely’s poetry, determines the most relevant and productive strategies, and critically comprehends the religious and philosophical views, motifs and images of his contemporaries. It presents an analytical review of articles, reviews, and the first monograph, as well as diaries, memoirs and notes of contemporaries, allowing us to consider Bely against the background of the era, and to identify features of his religious and poetic consciousness.

The goal of the article is to examine chronologically the specific nature of the Easter holiday in

The paper focuses on the concept ‘new’ and the reasons of its great influence on modern advertising discourse. This concept is of special significance for the production of modern advertising texts. Most of the goods, which are advertised in the magazine ‘Cosmopolitan’, are positioned as new, recently launched, non-existent before.A good may be advertised in two ways: as reliable, durable and as new. The first method is rarely used, while the second is becoming more dominant – the word ‘new’ does not only appear on new goods, but it is also observable on the goods that have been already existing in the market for a long period of time.A considerable frequency of words meaning ‘new’ indicates that the concept ‘new’ is very important for modern society. Despite the ‘newness words’ (новый, новинка, новшество, инновация), there is a group of lexemes, united by the newness semantics, in advertising texts: these are words that acquire such meaning only in the context.

The article proceeds with the issues of the origin and evolution of the Lithuanian prayers and analyzes the beginning of the Sign of the cross and the Crossing formula. The linguistic analysis of the prayers was conducted by Zigmas Zinkevičius in the scientific study of language Lithuanian prayers in 2000; however, the features of the Sign of the cross or the Crossing formula and their relation to the Gospel were not highlighted, the wider context and the question whether the authors, translators and publishers have written the prayers in translations or original or semi-original writings, such as the cathechisms, theological treatises, postillas (educational writings) or the collection of prayers and prayer-books, also hymnals, were not taken into account. It is essential whether the text of the prayers is written in the translation of the Bible text, found in the citation from the Bible or freely recreated paraphrasing or remaking extracts or prayers from the Bible. The text of the Gospel in which Jesus Christ tells his disciples the christening formula (Mt 28, 19–20) is not the Crossing formula yet. It is necessary to perform the textual analysis and compare the respective passage with the originals.The object of research consists of the translations published in Prussia and GDL in the 16–17th centuries with the sources and original and semi-original texts.The aim of the article is to determine the origin of the variation of the beginning phrase of the Sign of the cross (Crossing formula). The tasks: 1) compare the beginning of the Crossing formula or the Sign of the cross with the originals, 2) examine the effect of various languages (Latin, German and Polish to begin with), 3) determine the origin of the insert God in the Lithuanian Crossing formula, 4) systemize and describe the results of comparative analysis.