Articles

The article examines the peripheral actants in Japanese utterance on the degree of expression of their prototypical agentive characteristics: volition, affectedness, ability to control, individuality, etc. The research was based on the material of author’s parallel Russian-Japanese fiction corpus. While analyzing cases of permutative voice in Japanese it is revealed that cases of anthropo-oriented impact of an inanimate subject are characterized by a focus shift from a human as a causation object and bringing him to the syntactic periphery with the raising of a means/instruments or somatics to an object position. A specific type of syntactic transformation is revealed: the movement of the possessor from the original dative to the attributive non-agentive position in possessive constructions, which contributes to the proof of the theoretical thesis about the restriction of the dative coding of the external possessor in Japanese. Special attention is paid to case variation of peripheral actants because case alternation in the design of high-agent and low-agent actants also demonstrate the importance of the propositional level of utterance and prototypical agential features. As a result of a complex study of the agential potential of peripheral actants it is confirmed that the processes of actant-predicate interaction are largely determined by the semantic features of not only the core, but also of the peripheral syntactic and semantic participants.

This article is based on existing research and published archives and, by systematizing this information, seeks to reflect as fully as possible the process of decision-making on the restoration of diplomatic relations between China and the USSR in 1932. The main focus is on the analysis from the perspective of the Nanking government: the conceptual development and choice of interests of the Chinese and Soviet sides in the issues of Sino-Soviet relations and interaction with Japan during this period are examined. Soviet-Chinese diplomatic relations after 1931 underwent a relatively difficult process of reconstruction. Much of the Chinese and Russian literature provides limited analysis of this topic with simplistic conclusions. Due to widespread contradictions between China and the USSR, the Nanjing government was mistrustful of developing relations with the Soviet Union. At the same time, faced with unrest beyond the Far Eastern border, the USSR, out of caution and “distrust of the Nanking government,” also took a series of actions that were seen as “developing Japan-Soviet relations.” Under increasing pressure, China finally decided to start negotiations with the USSR to unconditionally restore diplomatic relations to prevent the Soviet Union from getting too close to Japan. The fact that the USSR gradually began to view Japan as a factor of instability also created conditions for the restoration of Soviet-Chinese diplomatic relations and their further development.

The article analyzes the actual problem of gender relations in Uzbekistan at the end of the XX — beginning of the XXI century, as well as the impact of gender relations on the economy of the state. There is a significant gender imbalance in the country, manifested in domestic violence, an impressive wage gap between men and women, forced marriages and so on — all this slows down the economic development of the state. The paper examines statistical data reflecting the employment of men and women of Uzbekistan in the labor market, the legislative framework governing the employment of the population. The role of mentality and religion in shaping the structure of gender relations in the economic sphere is determined. The stability of Muslim traditions in society is noted, which complicates the search for methods to achieve equality between men and women that do not contradict the foundations of religion. The segregation of the Uzbek labor market is considered and the main areas of employment of men and women are highlighted. The causes of the gender imbalance are determined, as well as attempts to correct it in politics are being studied. The paper examines the specifics of women’s employment, ways to encourage women’s participation in political and social activities, as well as the effectiveness of the methods used.

The paper discusses issues in the contemporary historiography of the West Punjab region, which now forms the Punjab province of Pakistan. The ethnic specificity of this area has been fully recognized by researchers; however, it is interpreted indifferent ways. To this end, the basic criterion has been the algorithm of “fixing” West Punjab within the general South Asian context. A detailed study of works on Punjabi ethnocultural identity allows us to distinguish two main research approaches: 1) consideration of West Punjab’s peculiarities in view of its ages-old cultural legacy; 2) analysis of its historical path and contemporary place based on the political realities of mid-ХХ–ХХI cc. While the first line of thinking is based on the assumption that West Punjabi culture has been inseparable from that of South Asia, the second one suggests that West Punjab should be considered exclusively as a Muslim-majority area, whose incorporation into Pakistan has been a natural outcome.

The article analyses the scientific and pedagogical activities of the teaching staff of the Department of the Near and Middle East History on the threshold of the 270th anniversary of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. The main goal of the authors was to make an objective assessment of the current state of the Department and its contribution to the development of Russian humanitarian knowledge, to determine its place in the structure of university science and education. Such a study makes it possible to characterize the specific nature of the training of Russian specialists in the Middle East and North Africa, the history and culture of Islam at Moscow University. At the same time, it allows us to get an adequate idea of the scientific schools formed in the Department, the level of academic research conducted by it, in order to assess the multifaceted work of the Department’s team within the framework of all-Russian and international Orientalist research projects. In the course of the work it was convincingly demonstrated that the Department of the Near and Middle East History has now firmly occupied its niche in the structure of Russian Oriental studies, becoming an important part of the Russian humanitarian community, a recognized center of education and training of qualified Orientalists for the needs of the country.

The article explores the main periods and trends in the development of studies in History and Politics in the Institute of Asian and African Studies and depicts the activities of certain departments. It reveals unity and diversity in the historical and contemporary social and political development of various parts of Asia and Africa regions.

The article is devoted to the analysis of modal constructions with infinitives in -(i)tuṃ in Pali, which is a representative of the early-middle stage of Indo-Aryan. Pali is predominantly known as the classical language of the religious and philosophical canon of «Theravada» Buddhism. As the most frequent suffix in Pali, -(i)tuṃ (historically, an indicator of a verbal noun frozen in the accusative) was also the most productive way of generating infinitives in classical Sanskrit (but the least productive in Vedic). Upon analyzing the Pali jatakas (fables about the Buddha’s earthly reincarnations) the author has identified a limited set of stable semo-syntactic contexts in which infinitives in -(i)tum occurred most frequently. The constructions discovered were analyzed and systematized throughout the prism of the functional-semantic field of modality.

The paper attempts to analyze the ways of typological evolution of four Western New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages: Hindi-Urdu, Rajasthani, Punjabi and Gujarati. In the majority of Western NIA languages the consistent ergative strategy typical for the beginning of its development later gave way to the neutral, then — to the contrastive one, which was replaced in some paradigms by the accusative system of case marking. Multidirectional processes of morphosyntactic evolution were observed at the beginning of the New Indian period. Later the changes in coding strategies as well as the changes in rules of verbal agreement became predominantly unidirectional. In certain languages, the ergative construction maintained the gendernumber agreement with the marked direct object, in others the marked direct object blocked verbal agreement. Split ergativity, characteristic of the initial period of Indo- Aryan syntactic structure, has been preserved in most Western New Indo-Aryan languages (NIA). The only exception is Dakhini where the ergative case marking got initially extended to the entire system of aspectual and tense forms, later the system returned to the nominative-accusative type. Typical for ergative systems free elision of the ergative agent got established in Apabhramsha in the beginning of the NIA period (14–15 centuries), but practically does not appear in modern languages. Co-referential omissions of ergative type were observed in Middle Indo-Aryan and in Early NIA periods, in modern NIA languages they are ungrammatical. So, with the exception of minor deviations, the evolution of the morphosyntactic systems of Western NIA languages shows a unidirectional movement towards decrease in the ergative morphology and syntax.

The article, based on Palestinian and British sources, reconstructs the journey of the ideologist and propagandist of Palestine’s national movement’s radicalization — shaykh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam (1882–1935), one of the inspirers of the Great Arab revolt of 1936–1939. ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam was the person behind the formation of underground cells of political organizations that became the mainstay of the Great Arab revolt, the most famous of which was the paramilitary group “Black Hand” created in 1930. Despite active confrontation with the British military administration and Jewish settlers, ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam and the “Black Hand” failed to achieve the independence of Palestine, but al-Qassam’s person and his activities served as a source of inspiration for the Palestinian people in their struggle for independence, and the very name of shaykh al-Qassam has become a household name for modern paramilitary structures of the Palestinian resistance.

The article considers the reign of the first emperor of the Western Han — Liu Bang, better known as Han Gao-tzu (202–195 BC). Based on the results of the study of the chronicle of the reign, preserved in the main source on the history of the period — Han shu (“History of Han” I century.) we considered the activities of the bearer of supreme power in the sphere of state administration as part of the 1 Автор благодарит своего научного руководителя к.и.н. М.Ю. Ульянова за помощь и поддержку в подготовке данной статьи. political process on the basis of the fact that the chronicle of the reign preserves all the most important actions of the emperor.

This article is a continuation of the study initiated in the article ‘The Persian Story of Shīr Farrokhzādān and the Forced Migration of the Arabs from Misikhē (al-Anbār) under Sasanid King Shapur I (240–271)’. A close examination of the story of Shīr Farrokhzādān within the historical context allows to make the following observations and conclusions. The migration of the Arabs from the region of Misikhē was the result of their struggle against the Sasanids, who won and built a fortress at Misikhē. King Shapur I considered those Arabs to be dangerous, and so, he parted them and settled them in different places under the power of his governors or, perhaps, Arabic ruler Djadhīma who is described in some sources as a vassal of the Sasanids. Those events took place before the enthronement of Shapur I, during the Sasanids’ initial expansion in the Euphrates region (225 to 240). The Sasanids’ strategic aim appears to have initially consisted in ensuring the security of their new capital, Wēh-Ardashīr, against attacks of hostile Arabic tribes rather than in establishing a barrier on the Romans’ way. However, after firmly setting foot in the Euphrates region the Sasanids used the way up the Euphrates’ course, to attack Roman possessions, in particular in campaigns involving the taking of Dura-Europos (239) and Antioch (241).

In European literature, the genre of the spy novel appeared at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, in Chinese it happened a little later — around the 1930s. By the 1940s, the genre was flourishing. Since 1937, during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the confrontation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, espionage activities have acquired a special, topical significance, which could not but be reflected in literature. The next peak of interest in the genre came at the time of the formation of New China, Soviet translated novels became a source of inspiration for the authors. During the years of the Cultural Revolution, literary activity froze, but individual elements of the spy novel can be found even in “model operas”. In the 1970s and 1980s a new rise in translated literature began, as a result of which China became acquainted with the classics of European and American spy literature, in addition, Soviet spy novels of the 1950s and Chinese novels of the same period were reprinted. Another peak of interest in spy literature arose at the beginning of the 21st century; it is associated with the popularity of the works of the contemporary writer Mai Jia. With the spread of the Internet, a large number of authors of online literature who write in this genre have appeared. Each of these stages had its own distinctive features, for example, differences in the images of the antagonists. Plots related to spies and espionage/intelligence activities are consistently popular among readers. The 21st century, together with Western translated literature, epoch-making events, and a change in systems and paradigms, has brought new themes and sources for plots to literature in general and to the genre of the spy novel in particular.

Using etymological methods, the present study has identified six Sinitic and Slavic shared (Sino-Germanic) etymologies (etyma):【旦, 嬾, 板, 塼, 媛 and 軸】. These six etyma form a rhyme correspondence. This regular sound change validates the etymological connection in question. The etymon of день (den’) ‘day’ has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic, Baltic, Albanian and Sanskrit. The etymon of лень (len’) ‘laziness’ has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic, Baltic, Romance and Italic. The etymon of день (pen’) ‘stump’ has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic and Hellenic. The etymon of стена (stena) ‘wall’ has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic, Germanic and Hellenic. The etymon of жена (žena) ‘wife’ has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Celtic, Albanian, Hellenic, Anatolian, Armenian, Indo-Iranian and Tocharian. The etymon of один (odin) ‘one’ has been identified in Sinitic, Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Albanian, Hellenic.

The study is devoted to the category of counting words (words-classifiers) in modern Chinese. A counting word is a word that indicates the discreteness of the object (object or action) it introduces. Counting words in Chinese are divided into two classes: classifiers for nouns (名量词 míng liàng cí) and multiplicity indicators for verbs (动量词 dòng liàng cí). The study deals specifically with classifiers for nouns. With regard to classifier words in Mandarin, many works have been written, where counter words are organized into different groups. These groups often differ in volume and in features that are inherent in each individual counting word. Some authors believe that the counting word is a function word that is not used as a separate category, some refer classifier words to nouns. In our study, we will adhere to the second point of view. It should also be noted that in different periods of history and in different dialects (topolects), different counter words were used to classify words according to a certain species-forming feature. We base our research on classifier words found in northern dialects that form the basis of Mandarin.

The suggested article deals with the problems of symbolism of the special instruments (sacrificial spoons) and of the corresponding substances (melted butter or fat) in them. Two types of rituals, namely, the ‘great’ one (‘śrauta’) and the ‘home’ one (‘gRhya-‘), are briefly characterized in the paper; in both of them the personified fire or God of Fire (Agni-) was always acting as the main subject and — simultaneously — as one of the objects of the ritual. It is demonstrated in the paper that the names for sacred instruments — namely, ‘srúc-’ (masc.) “scoop” and sruvá- (fem.) “ladle”- are originally the verbal nouns generated from verbal root sru- “to stream down” and “to destroy” — and an attempt is made to explain why this split in semantics of the root is not a casual one. It is also shown in the paper that ancient Indo-Aryans believed in a kind of the so called “sexual union” (mithuná) between the sacrificial spoons and melted butter (ā́ jya-) or fat (ghRtá-) as well as in the new mithuná of the substances accumulated in spoons with Agni of the altar. The detailed descriptions of the parameters of sacrificial spoons, of the types of materials used for their manufacture, of the varieties of their usage, etc. are supplied in the paper; the special function of the scoop (srúc-), as manifested in funeral rituals, is also explained. The reasons and circumstances causing the existence of the feature of “superpurity” in sacrificial spoons and in fatty substances inside them are listed in the paper; it is also marked there that it was absolutely impossible to use the spoons in question in any everyday necessities of life.