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Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian) : From the Study of a Language to the Identity of Languages The article deals with the linguistic system which includes the standard Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin languages. The structure of these standards (the history of their formation is noted) shows that it is a unique linguistic system, with several essentially lexical variations. The intercomprehension between these standards exceeds that between the standard variants of English, French, German, or Spanish. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are not translated from one into another. At most one саn 'Serbianize', 'Croatianize', 'Bosnianize', or 'Montenegrinize' a text written in one of the other variants. Moreover, they are not new and did not appear with the breakup of Yugoslavia. Each one simply acquired its own name and the status of an autonomous standard language. The teaching of the linguistic system presupposes (as for English or Spanish) that the learners have a passive knowledge of ail the standards and that they actively speak at least one of them. As for the problem of designating a unique linguistic system and standards, it is closely linked to the identity function of the language, both unifying (for a given group of speakers) and differentiating (in relation to other groups). This article provides several examples, citing the two names for the variant spoken in Bosnia, 'Bosnian' and 'Bosniac', and the term 'Serbo-Croatian', still used by many speakers. The case of Serbo-Croatian and its standard variants shows what the criteria of differentiation between languages саn be in linguistics and the role of the identity function of each language.

The Slavonic Languages' Perfective Aspect as a Hypercategory : A Cognitive Approach In our approach, the following parameters are used to describe the aspectual value of a verb in a given context: — Semantic types of situations (state, event, ordinary process and refined process), — Selection of the whole situation or one of its parts: moment or stage, — Selection of a control operator: iteration, intensity modification, flow modification, sequential or parallel composition of situations. These concepts were used to describe a sample of Polish verbs (in context) as well as they allowed us (Wlodarczyk A. et H. 2003) to compare different aspectual meanings in various languages (not only Slavonic). The cognitive approach makes it possible to bring together the two categories of aspect and Aktionsart into one Hypercategory of Perfective Aspect in which verbal prefixes inherit several aspectual features. Following this hypothesis, no verbal prefix саn be viewed as semantically void but different configurations of features are possible. As a matter of fact, since the Perfective Aspect may be expressed by more than one verb derived from a single verbal root, none of them саn be considered as a 'pure' synonym of the root verb. Prefixed verbs that are traditionally described as Aktionsart verbs should be described as different realizations (specializations) of one perfective hyper-category.

Elements of Slavic Folklore in Serbian Contemporary Literature : Milorad Pavic's Novel The Khazar Dictionary Pavić's poetic form comprises elements of mythical perception, especially with regard to spatial logic and the use of subconscious energy. The mystification of the poetic image is, moreover, obtained by introducing elements from Slavic mythology and folklore. In his novel The Khazar Dictionary, we note the interaction between the author' s poetic imagination and elements of Slavic mythology. His taste for ambivalence and the incertitude of the subconscious and of dreams is consistent with the nature of pagan divinities. This link is evident, notably with regard to the incorporation of figures from popular Slavic traditions into the realm of dreams. For the fantastic element of Pavić's novel derives from human fears when faced with the unexplained phenomena which the mind translates into demons and which lie buried in the subconscious as a natural heritage of human experience (archetypes). This heritage, full of the ambiguity and incertitude present in dreams, is evoked by the author who creates his own vision of a world of magical realism. Thanks to the demons, ghouls, witches, chthonian animals, ail of which constitute, according to Slavic mythology, the true reality he gives a new interpretation of this subconscious energy. The mystification of the poetic image in Pavić's novel may be interpreted as a return to the primary and essential sources of the perception of the world, which survives in folklore and popular tradition.

The ways of history in the contemporary polish literature Laying down as a theoretical narratological principle that history has never taken the shape of an actual experience, but was until today a mere narrative representation, the author aims at following the evolution of the relation between literary shapes and historical past in the Polish literature after the Second World War. From 1945 onwards history does not appear any more as a kind of strategical staging; instead it becomes an attempt to live an immediate experience regardless of any intellectual reconstruction. Otherwise, sentimentalization and ideological recovery of the past lead the Polish writers to a real denial of history thanks to (self) parodical literary forms. Finally the multiplication of autobiographical works means a new attack against the traditional historical novel. Thus, thanks to this triple strategy which leads to a dismantling of history consistent with the now prevailing bursting of narrative forms, Polish literature brings its own answer to the history crisis which is to be seen nowadays in the western literature.

“Acquainted with the Night” : The Struggle of Czech and Polish Writers with Totalitarianism Though the literary representation of totalitarianism has become a current theme of analysis, critics have somehow neglected to study the forms of opposition to it. Still, Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts, because of his original thinking and his political disgrace, allow us to understand the essential mechanisms at work behind an intellectual refusal of totalitarian rule. The polyphony concept, that is the existence of many voices, representing diverse points of view in a narrative, might have the power to challenge the monologues of dictatorship. The laughter principle tends to introduce relativity into ail forms of hierarchy. Third, the 'chronotope' theme, namely the linking of one specific time and one specific place in a narrative, helps to escape the seemingly helpless confinement, deriving from the 'here and now' perspective. We chose to apply the Bakhtinian concepts to the writings of some contemporary Czech and Polish authors, who demonstrated their particular resistance to the regime, such as Jan Patočka, Václav Havel, Josef Škvorecký, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Konwicki, Paweł Jasienica. Their primarily moral revolt became a literary project. It then appeared that the Bakhtinian concepts are useful in describing literary mechanisms, and asserting the existence of a reflexive conscience, the most resilient obstacle to totalitarianism, in real life as well as in literature.

Etiologic texts in eastern slavic tradition. The introduction is an attempt to offer a typology of the Eastern Slavic corpus of etiologie texts. The specificity of this corpus is double. Firstly, some thèmes developped in it are not represented in other etiologie traditions. Secondly, certain thèmes are hère more richly presented and in a wider range of variants, as for instance the female thème. Depending on what genre (fairy taie, animal tale, legend inspired by the 'Folk Bible') the texts are related to, it is possible to distinguish différent areas of diffusion.

Josef Dobrovský and czech criticism at the end of the 19th century. In the 1880s, the thought of Josef Dobrovský (1753-1829) has become a main reference for the linguistic, historiographie and ethical discussions of the 'realistic' scientists united around Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937). This acknowledgement of Dobrovský's scientific and symbolic leadership, along with a somewhat reductive interprétation of his héritage, marks an attempt to introduce in the national thought of the 19th-century Czech lands a line of criticism linking the enlightenment period to the fin de siècle radically critical orientations.

Two instances of linguistic interference in old novgorodian documents : the words for 'church' and 'master'. Old Novgorodian кьркы and осподинъ are two instances of contamination between the Slavic term and the Scandinavian one. Кьркы for цьркы, far from being a reliable instance of the absence of the second palatalisation of velars in the Novgorodian area, is a re-borrowing from Germanie, this time from Old Swedish, which took place after the palatalisation had ceased to be active. Owing to the fact that Novgorod had an important Varangian community, that Varangians were the fïrst to adopt the new Christian faith, and that they had a dominant position in Novgorodian society, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the Swedish name for 'church' survived for a while in Novgorod. The case of осподинъ is différent : the Novgorodian variant, without [g], is probabbly due not only to the influence of Church pronunciation, as traditionally assumed, but also to the influence of the Old Swedish word for 'master', hosponde, assimilated from husbonds (Engl. husband) : Scandinavian initial [h] was very weak, and is never reflected in Old Russian. The Swedish term, phonetically close to Slavic господинъ, blended with the latter. In both cases, the process is similar : the stem retains its Scandinavian form, and receives the morphological pattern (suffix, inflection) of the corresponding Slavic word. It is also possible that the assimilation in husbonde > hosponde, regular in Old Swedish, is to account for the few cases of progressive assimilation in Old Novgorodian (e.g. сторовъ < съдоровъ, instead of regular здоровъ, with régressive assimilation), which could reflect a Scandinavian-influenced pronunciation.

Semantic and stylistic analysis of polish priamels. The présent paper deals with the problem of a certain formal-semantic type of proverbe called 'priamels' . The main purpose of the paper is to describe the Polish priamels according to the semantic and stylistic aspects. At first the author characterises priamels from the seman- tic point of view. The analysis of quoted éléments makes it possible to draw conclusions as to the most frequently occurring classemes, the most numerous classeme links as well as to the type and place of the major semantic feature. The author established the semantic-pragmatic value of the common feature and the type of the semantic link between the common feature and the quoted éléments. The stylistic part contains the enumeration of the stylistic figures of speech as well as lexicographie labels, discussed in the context of: quoted éléments, the common feature, and the priamel treated as a whole.

Underworld slang in Ukraine: paradoxes and regularity in linguistic reality. This article examines the development of underworld slang as an integral subsystém within the languages of contemporary Ukraine. Since linguistic phenomena are considered within a broad political, social and cultural context, data of a différent nature were used: especially the colloquialisms particular to the urban milieu and the mass-media on the one hand and the language used by criminals to communicate in prison on the other. The field research focused on the following questions: What changes hâve transpired in slang since independence? What if anything will these changes tell us about contemporary Ukraine? The prisoners' attitude towards the usage of slang was also examined.

A blue ribbon and a bluish dove. On the history of a borrowing. The article présents a critique of the English etymological trace of the Russian word sinij [goluboj] ('gay, fag, homosexuál'), which is widely accepted by linguists and culturo- logists. The authors rather see its origin in the Soviet convict labour camp environment.

Free indirect style in translation. This article deals with the translation of free indirect style from French into Russian and from Russian into French. More than direct and indirect speech, free indirect speech may be corrupted in translation. Translation may cause changes in perspective, displace a given text-unit in the continuum between free indirect style and narrative and sometimes transform free indirect style into narratorial passages. These changes are caused by syntactical or lexical factors. It is especially through the choice of verb past tenses that French translators détermine whether a given text-unit belongs to free indirect style or to narrative, and also the character of the free indirect style (more classical, or closer to direct speech) and his temporal relation (whether, for instance, anterior or simultaneous to the temporal reference point). By comparing différent versions of one work one сап observe évolution in the translation of free indirect style. For many years, Russian translators seem to hâve misunderstood French temporal conditionnel-futur du passé as a modal device. This situation improved in more récent translations, the translators seeming to have better knowledge of French grammar.

Novel/affair with the word: Andrej Belyj's Kotik Letaev. Kotik Letaev by Andrej Belyj, a narrative of childhood about the entry of language into the human consciousness, can be also analyzed as a meta-narrative about the functioning of language in a literary text. Using the Lacanian version of psychoanalysis and the semiotic apparatus, the author delineates the transformation of traditional novelistic poetics performed by Belyj. The central question addressed is what are these innovative principles of the construction of the text? In Kotik Letaev, the hierarchy of traditional narration is reversed: the language and linguistic tropes abandon their conventional function of narrative and rhetorical means, and assume the role of the protagonists and of the driving forces of narration. In Belyj' s book, the linguistic associations acquire the status of a narrative subject, while the referential séquence is reduced to a category of auxiliary means. The story is not anything more than the motivation for the play of signifiers which constitute the principal narrative séquence. Suspension and déferrai of signification are accomplished by the spécifie use of metaphoric and métonymie mechanisms that provokes the effect of 'the removal of exterior objects' and the production of 'a little meaning' which is purely linguistic. The comparison of Belyj, Proust and Nabokov highlights the innovative character of Belyj's prose and the 'semiotic' nature of his poetics.

Varlam Šalamov's Kolyma Tales : an open work. Varlam Šalamov's Kolyma Tales is a monumental, fragmentée! whole which includes 145 stories divided into six cycles. In this article, the author argues that Šalamov's work should be treated as an open work that allows many différent interprétations and leaves much room for the reader's active participation. The cohésion of the whole dépends mainly on a complex system of various intertextual links (récurrent characters and situations, répétitions, thematic and symbolic echoes). Most links are only virtual connections, and the reader must actualize them by constructing a network of associations which bind the stories together but also reveal many ambiguities and contradictions in the global work. Thus the unity of the whole always remains fragile, problematic.

Boris Pahor or the originality of slovenian literature in Trieste. Like the cities of Italy, Central Europe and Balkans, the inhabitants of Trieste have in the past and still enjoy today a cosmopolitan culture. An important centre of Slovenian cultural and political life developed in Trieste during the 19th century. After 1918, when the city became Italian, the Slovenian minority suffered under the régime of Mussolini. One of the greatest exponents of Slovenian literature in Trieste is Boris Pahor (born in 1913). The article deals with his work, which is classical in style and largely based on personal expérience. Two events which marked the life of the writer are reflected in ail his work: the fire set by young Italian Fascists who burnt down the Slovenian cultural centre in Trieste in 1920 and the author's life in Nazi death camp during the Second World War where Pahor had been sent as a member of the résistance. In spite of this tragic background, Pahor's vision of life remains full an optimistic one, reflected in his writings.