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On Verbal Dual Endings in Slavic The dual ending of the third person -ta in Old Church Slavonic (especially in the Bulgarian tradition) and Old Russian, replacing the older ending -te (still found in OCS), is traditionally assumed to be analogical after the nominal dual ending -a. However, the process is more complex : ultimately the ending -ta is that of the second person dual, transferred to the third person to avoid the homophony between -te (third person dual) and -te (second person plural). This first step amounts to a neutralization of the personal opposition within the verbal paradigm. It is common to OCS and Old Russian. Then, because -ta was homophonous with the nominal dual ending -a, in periphrastic verbal forms such as the perfect, which combine a nominal form (the participle) and a verbal form (the auxiliary), the ending -ta in šьla jesta was reinterpreted as identical with the -a of šьla, that is, as an ending of a masculine dual, and thereby acquired the category of gender (which is normally alien to verbal forms), hence the new third person dual ending -tě with a feminine subject in some OCS manuscripts, after the nominal feminine dual -ě. Only this second step involves an interaction between the verbal and nominal inflectional Systems. It is specific to OCS, and is not attested in Old Russian.

The Vocabulary Related to the Navigation in Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian This article is the result of a research on the vocabulary related to the navigation in Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian, and concretely on the semantic subdomains «boats», «parts of boats» and «crew of boats». With this aim, we analyzed several religious and historiographical works of both Southern and Eastem Slavic origin: the four ‘canonicaľ OCS Gospel manuscripts (Zographensis, Marianus, Assemanianus and Savvina kniga), the Codex Suprasliensis, the Apostolos Strumički, the Povest´ vremennyx let, the Old Russian translations of the Byzantine chronicle of Georges the Monk and of the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, as well as the three main editions of the Russian Bible (Gennadian, Ostrog and Synodal). First of all, we observed that in the translations from Greek the words корабль ‘ship' and лодьѣ ‘boat, small boať are used in a generic sensé, while in the original Russian chronicles their meaning is more specific. Secondly, we found a majority of loanwords from Greek, besides some loanwords of Scandinavian and Baltic origin in Old Russian. And finally, we showed how the study of the vocabulary of shipping in Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian, together with the evidence of the historical sources, would allow us to reconstruct the whole evolution of shipbuilding among the Eastern Slavs.

Resultative Constructions in Russian and in French : Some Hypotheses In this paper, we will try to bring out some of the semantic constraints which determine the formation of the resultative participial constructions in these two languages. Our approach consists in putting in evidence several criteria which explain tendencies proper to each language, beginning with semantic properties of different classes of verbs able or not to have resultative.

What is 'мантифолия' and Why is it with Vinegar ('с уксусом')? The article is dedicated to the meaning of expression 'мантифолия с уксусом', used by Anton Čexov in his Ward № 6. The research also shows that this expression is very significant for the psychological portrait of one of the central characters of the story – Dr. Xobotov. At first sight the expression 'мантифолия с уксусом' is the author's contamination of two French idioms (folie mantique and manteau (habit) (doublé) de vinaigre). However the appearing of every fact of the language has several reasons. So analyzing the process of 'мантифолия с уксусом' formation we took in consideration the functioning and evolution of several other words and expressions, connected by numerous associations in the system of Russian language.

The Applied Phonology of the ‘Language Builders' in the USSR in the 1920's Our paper proposes a study of a topic of history of phonology in the USSR. We base it on the analysis of a very few known conception, the phonologic doctrine of Soviet linguists involved in the 'language building' (Jakovlev, Polivanov, Suxotin). Their phonologic approach goes back to Baudouin de Courtenay and to Ščerba. But it has its own practical aims: elaboration of scripts for unwritten languages of Caucasus region. It is an 'applied phonology'. The paper analyses their approach and the filiation Baudouin de Courtenay-Ščerba-Jakovlev-Troubetzkoy.

Nikolaj Berdjaev and Sergej Bulgakov Confront Picasso Very early on, Russian critics and thinkers began to contemplate a new form of art, conventionally named 'Cubism,' consisting of a geometrization of the objective world. The most illustrious exponent of this new form was Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. In 1914, two representatives of Russian religious philosophy, N. A. Berdjaev and S. N. Bulgakov, dedicated articles to Picasso. In the present essay, the author attempts to bring to light the main elements of the reception of Picasso's work by the two Russian thinkers. He also highlights the influence of the analyses of French critics and essayists, particularly Jacques Rivière, on them. The author then examines Berdjaev and Bulgakov's responses to the 1913 exhibition of S. I. Ščukin's famous collection of French art, which took place in his mansion and was dominated by the works of Matisse and Picasso. Berdjaev and Bulgakov recognize Picasso's genius, but for them, it is a demonie genius that distorts ail notions of Beauty. Looking back to the magnificent examples of the Renaissance, Berdjaev laments the loss of everlasting embodied beauty and the distortion of the female form. Не insists that Picasso's work is not the beginning of a new art, but the end of an entire era in which the beauty of the flesh was the measure of art. For his part, Bulgakov speaks about 'the corpse of beauty' and the abominable, scandalous, diabolical work of Picasso. For him, as for Berdjaev, the artistic form is not subject to fundamental transformation, and both see in Cubism and Futurism a 'crisis of art', a sort of illness. The Russo-Ukrainian painter and theorist A. Grischenko, however, correctly noted that the problem is not a 'crisis of art', but a crisis of the approach to art. Despite their overall negative reaction to Picasso's work, Berdjaev and Bulgakov took his creation of a new world vision seriously. It is interesting and paradoxical to note that the debate that took place at the beginning of the 20th century over the corporeal measure of art, as opposed to its dematerialization, re- appeared at the end of the century, particularly in the work of essayist Jean Clair. Clair, until recently director of the Picasso Museum in Paris, began to lead a war against abstraction and conceptual art in the name of this same corporeal measure of art, the perfect example of which is the author of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon...

From the very beginning of his career as a writer, Nikolay Ostrovsky (1904-36) received hostile criticisms of his style, which was described as 'coarse,' and which led some observers to conclude that his success was due more to his prowess as a soldier than to his talents as a writer. But his success was incontrovertible. Readers rushed to buy his book How the Steel Was Tempered, despite the absence of publicity when it appeared. What accounts for the extraordinary success? Readers' letters contained in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) can help us answer this question. Over the past ten years there have been many studies in which scholars have sought the organizational basis of socialist realism as an esthetic, putting the literariness of the work before its political character. It certainly seems logical, since esthetics is not just a question of production but also of consumption (Jauss, Iser, Lotman), that this program of research should also include the acceptance of the texts, their reception by the readers.