Articles

The Bayero University Dictionary, published in 2006, is the first Hausa explanatory dictionary, compiled by a team of authors from the Center for the Study of National Languages of Nigeria, Bayero University in Kano. Unfortunately, the dictionary does not indicate the number of words, but the sheer volume of the dictionary — 502 pages — suggests that the dictionary provides interpretations of a large number of words, including those that are not recorded in earlier Hausa-English dictionaries. The dictionary explains new semantic neologisms that have emerged in the Hausa language over the past 30 years. The second dictionary was created by Ayuba T. Abubakar, who worked on its compilation for more than 25 years and during the work consulted Hausa language scholars both in Nigeria and abroad. Unfortunately, this dictionary does not indicate the number of dictionary entries. It is interesting that the author provided each dictionary entry not only with an explanation of its meaning, but also with a large number of examples. For better understanding, excerpts from songs are also given, since some words are used only in songs. Particularly interesting and useful not only to linguists, but also to ethnographers and historians is the explanation of the various appellatives that the Hausa give to children along with names taken from the Koran. Most of these appellatives are not noted in other dictionaries. Both of these dictionaries are an important source of knowledge on the vocabulary of the Hausa language both for philologists involved in the study of Chadic languages and Hausa in particular, and for students of this language.

The paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economies of North African countries. The pandemic is shown to have had a significant impact on the economies of the countries in the region. Despite the decisive measures taken by the governments of the North African countries to limit social contacts in order to slow down the spread of the virus, the consequences of the pandemic have significantly slowed down economic and social projects and worsened the internal situation. The leading country in the region, Egypt, faced a high rate of spread of the coronavirus due to its densely populated population, but was best prepared for the financial and economic turbulence caused by the consequences of COVID-19. Morocco’s economy coped relatively painlessly with the COVID restrictions and showed good recovery growth rates. Algeria’s economy experienced slow economic growth on the eve of, during and after the pandemic. The worst impact of the pandemic was felt by the Tunisian economy, which was in deep stagnation at the start of the pandemic. The stimulus measures had a short-term effect and did not have a decisive impact on the Tunisian economy, which continues to show low rates of economic development. The graphs presented by the authors on the dynamics of total GDP and GDP at purchasing power parity clearly support the above conclusions.

The “Pivot to Africa” officially proclaimed by the decision-making bodies of the Russian Federation is gradually being filled with specific content. Along with the propaganda discourse, the official and academic approach to the realities of African countries — potential partners is being updated, and the Russian Federation’s capabilities for developing dialogue with Africa are being clarified, taking into account the current state of international relations. The article, based on numerous publications in 2023, reveals the mutual influence of academic, propaganda and official discourse in the process of building a new policy of the Russian Federation towards African partners.

The article examines the potential of the Russian language and cooperation in education as a source of Russian “soft power” in Nigeria. Today, Africa is becoming an increasingly relevant regional area of foreign policy of the Russian Federation. The spread of Russian “soft power” in Nigeria, one of the key states in sub-Saharan Africa, will promote national interests throughout the continent. Cooperation in education has proved to be a more influential source of soft power, while a number of difficulties accompanies the popularization of the Russian language in Nigeria. Russia’s lack of a strategy to form elites in Nigeria slows down the possibility of intensifying cooperation with this African state.

The phenomenon of the “new” novel in Swahili, which arose at the turn of the last and current centuries, can be considered as one of the highest achievements of modern Swahili literature. Among the writers who created and develop the “new” novel, we should first of all name the Tanzanian authors Euphrase Kezilahabi and Said Ahmed Mohamed and the Kenyans Kyallo Wadi Wamitila and Tom Olali. Their works reveal a number of similar features, one of which is the depiction of the current state of Africa and the whole world and the vision of their future. The idea of this future as a catastrophe can be traced at different levels of the text, including the level of its “topography”, consisting of three main elements — the human world, the other world (as a rule, the underground world with obvious features of hell), and the world of the future. All these worlds closely interact with each other, thereby expressing the authors’ idea — humanity is persistently building (or has already built) hell on earth, which is destined for an exclusively apocalyptic future. The authors see a possible way out of the situation in the joint efforts of those who are not indifferent to the fate of future generations, under the slogan of “unity in equality”. These joint efforts should be made in various areas — primarily in the dissemination of education, knowledge and creativity, creation instead of consumption, mutual support instead of the “laws of the wolf pack.” In this case, humanity can even again count on the support of higher powers — and the scenario of a possible future may not be so gloomy.

The first part of this article is dedicated to the problem of correlation between the categories of modality and subjectivity. The notion of modality is one of the most debatable in linguistics. The scholars tend to define the field of modality by listing the varieties of the modality meanings and group them around several conceptual centers. This article provides a comparative overview of existing classifications of the types of modality, as well as gives a working definition of modality that suits the aims of the current research. The modal meanings express an assessment of the status of the situation in relation to the real world, a subjective assessment of the content of the statement by the speaker, as well as its communicative intention. Based on the ideas proposed by E. Paducheva, we consider that subjective-modal meanings are located on the intersection of two semantic fields — modality and egocentricity/subjectivity, which allows us to interpret modality as an egocentric category. The second part of this work justifies the relevance of studying subjective-modal meanings in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. The analysis of real language examples illustrates such problems as: compatibility of different types of modality in one statement, attributing the possibility and necessity to the sphere of subjective modality, as well as the question of expressing modality in Egyptian Arabic by grammatical means.

The paper presents an overview of ultrasound and laryngoscopic studies which have gained ground in the last two decades and made a significant contribution to the understanding and description of the articulatory base of phonological features characteristic of African languages. Ultrasound studies shed light on the peculiarities of click production and provided a comprehensive picture of the posterior constriction location during their articulation. The posterior constriction was shown to occur in various parts of the post-velar region depending on the type of click, which gave grounds to replace the notion of velaric airstream mechanism with the notion of lingual airstream mechanism. The studies also revealed the important role of the tongue root retraction as part of the rarefaction gesture, which is a key step in the production of clicks. Ultrasound studies shed light on the role of the tongue root and tongue body height in the production of the advanced tongue root contrast. The tongue root movement was shown to be an independent gesture, the difference in tongue body height during the production of the vowels of different harmonic sets being non-significant or inconsistent across vowel types and speakers. Laryngoscopic studies have made a significant contribution to the understanding of the articulatory base of the advanced tongue root feature and the production of different phonation types. The laryngoscopic studies gave primacy in production of the contrast to aryepiglotto-epiglottal constriction while all the other mechanisms postulated before — tongue root position, the volume of the pharyngeal cavity and larynx height — are considered as parts of a synergistic system of laryngeal articulations. Laryngoscopic studies also shed light on the production of different phonation types including the so-called faucalised voice which has not been reported as a contrastive feature outside of Africa.

A review of the book: Foreign Policy and Diplomacy of the Republic of Korea / M.P. Kukla, L.E. Kozlov, E.M. Ermolaeva, K.A. Pak, V.I. Voloshchak; under the general editorship of M.P. Kukla. Vladivostok: Far Eastern Federal University Publishing House, 2022. 252 p.

The article discusses the main stages of creating and implementing a strategy for building a green economy in the Republic of Korea. The directions of implementation of the principles of sustainable development and green growth in the leading sectors of the economy and the role of the state in this process are analyzed. The financial and institutional drivers of the green growth of the South Korean economy are determined. The goals, objectives, and targets for the implementation of the New Green Course in South Korea for the period 2020–2025 are given.

This article examines the economic policy in the last years of Park Chung-hee’s presidency (second half of the 1970s), ending the period of rapid economic growth and marking the transition to economic deregulation. The period under review is marked by significant political, social and economic changes. In Russian Korean studies, the process of transformation of the economic policy of the Republic of Korea at the turn of the 1970–80s is shown in insufficient detail. This work analyzes the political aspects of the transition from industrialization, built on the budget support of heavy industry, to deregulation of economic in the Republic of Korea during the last years of presidency of Park Chung-hee. Particular attention is paid to the role of economic management institutions in this transformation. The article examines internal and external factors which South Korean economy faced in 1970s (including imbalances resulted from industrialization, 1970s oil shocks, etc.) as well as methods South Korean government utilized to deal with their consequences. The system for making key economic decisions and the discussion around economic policy measures, in particular the role of the Economic Planning Department, are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the stabilization measures announced by Park Chung-hee in 1979, which actually marked the transition to a neoliberal model of economy.

The article examines the influence of Russian literature, in particular the short stories “Misery” by A.P. Chekhov and “Happiness” by M.P. Artsybashev on the work of Korean writer Hyŏn Jin-gŏn, who made a significant contribution to the formation and development of realism in Korean literature. It explores the intertextual interaction between the short story “A Lucky Day” written by Hyŏn Jin-gŏn in 1924 and the eponymous work written by Yi Mun-yŏl in the postmodern period in 1987. In Korean literary circles, it is generally accepted that Hyŏn Jin-gŏn wrote his story “A Lucky Day” under the impression of A.P. Chekhov’s story “Misery”, borrowing both the theme and the narrative structure from the Russian writer. However, the authors of the article come to the conclusion that the above-mentioned story by Hyŏn Jin-gŏn has much in common with the story “Happiness” by M.P. Artsybashev which Hyŏn Jin-gŏn translated into Korean by himself. The motif of imaginary luck is the leading one both in the story “A Lucky Day” and in the story “Happiness”. And this motif is strongly associated with the phrase “Lucky Day” among modern carriers of Korean culture. The authors of the article also note that Hyŏn Jin-gŏn’s story “A Luchy Day” can be directly compared in terms of tragedy with the story “Rickshaw” published a year later, in 1925, but not with the postmodern story “A Lucky Day” by Yi Mun-yŏl. In their opinion, this story by Yi Mun-yŏl, based on a deliberate reference to the story by Hyŏn Jin-gŏn, remains underestimated in the Republic of Korea, and its main advantage is not the spirit of tragedy, but irony.

Joining research of the phenomenon of enantiosemy (auto-antonymy) in different languages of the world, the article deals with examples from fictional literature (including those found in Japanese language corpus), where one can observe auto-antonymy in the meaning of the verb kureru “give”. This is the first work exploring semantics of a Japanese lexeme from the point of view of enantiosemy. Based on analysis of usage of this verb as auxiliary we suggest there is a semantic shift, which leads to simultaneously existing benefactive and malefactive meaning, and also differently directed vectors of the act described by the verb (either “from within to outside” vs “inside from the outside” or “from the second or third person to the first person” vs “from the first person to the second or third person”). Results of the informant survey (60 people, aged from 18 to 45 and older) confirm existence of antonymous meanings and differently directed vectors of the act, depending on the semantics of the main verb and context, including grammatical context.

The article investigates the biography and academic legacy of the famous Russian representative of classical Oriental studies Boris V. Miller (1877–1956). His life along with his scholarly and pedagogical activities reflected turning points in the history of linguistic, folkloristic, historical and ethnographic studies of the Iranian-speaking peoples of the Caucasus — Talysh, Kurds and Tats at the end of the 19th — first half of the 20th century. Professor B.V. Miller is remembered in the history of Oriental studies in Russia as a talented and highly motivated scholar who made a significant contribution to the development of Iranian studies, and as one of the founders of Iranian studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

The Encyclopedia of Japanese Linguistics (Nihongogaku daijiten), published in 2018, is a new type dictionary concerning Japanese linguistics. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Linguistics, which was compiled over a long period of time from 2006 to 2018 by a collective of prominent native and world linguists, highlights the achievements of modern Japanese and world linguistics in compliance with modern approaches. This dictionary is the first Japanese dictionary in which new linguistic terms and description of the linguistic methods and terms are presented. The dictionary includes more than 800 dictionary entries and introduces almost all epochs and theories of linguistics as well as the most significant concepts of world linguistics from ancient times to the present. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Linguistics was preceded by “The Japanese Linguistic Dictionary” (1955) and “The Japanese Great Linguistic Dictionary” (1980). Both dictionaries were reprinted several times and reflected the achievements of linguistics at the time of their publication, but no longer meet the requirements of the contemporary time. It should be noted the appearance of a large number of new dictionary entries and the expansion of the list of personalities in The “Encyclopedia of Japanese Linguistics” on account of the description of new linguistic approaches. The dictionary also includes a number of appendices, which are described in the following review. Being a fundamental source of linguistics knowledge, the dictionary also makes a significant contribution to the development of Japanese lexicography.